A great memoir offers the-rest-of-the-story appeal, and when the CIA, 9/11, waterboarding, whistleblowing, scapegoating, coverups, and federal prison all factor in, the page turning reaches hyperdrive. John Kiriakou spent fifteen years... Read More

Food becomes a vehicle for grief in this fascinating, sympathetic family story. Macabre in its gastronomic obsession and sometimes hyperbolic, Noley Reid’s Pretend We are Lovely reveals a fascinating slide from self-punishment to... Read More

"Didn’t Get Frazzled" is by turns sardonic, touching, raucous, sexy, and sometimes downright gross. It’s also hugely entertaining. Who knew that going to medical school was so funny? David Z. Hirsch’s "Didn’t Get Frazzled" spins... Read More

Intricate world-building makes this complex fantasy a fun and rewarding undertaking. Members of a medieval royal family and their followers encounter more than they bargained for when their invasion of a distant province unearths deadly,... Read More

"Two Tales of the Moon" is a thoughtful portrait of a modern woman who must choose between the burden of memory and a future of her own making. In "Two Tales of the Moon", forty-seven-year-old Li Lu confronts the damage China’s... Read More

What brand of privileged namby-pambiness will we get out of the twenty-something-year-old Theodore Roosevelt’s diary, he of Harvard and Columbia and the just-another-night-at-the-ball trappings of great family wealth? Here’s a taste... Read More

The world of social media is so flooded with banal, cliché, and off-putting quotes, readers have been known to spontaneously burst into flame. But great quotes, like poetry, are powerful tools because they crystallize elusive truths,... Read More

"Handmaidens of Rock" is an energetic and enjoyable exploration of the fears, hopes, and dreams of a wartime generation. Linda Gould’s "Handmaidens of Rock" reimagines the Summer of Love period, resulting in a pleasurable trip through... Read More