A headmistress moonlights as an author and meets her match in Sarah M. Eden’s delightful Victorian romance, "The Lady and the Highwayman". The novel pairs savvy Elizabeth with former urchin-cum-writer Fletcher. When Fletcher learns... Read More

Elizabeth Camden’s romance "The Spice King" captures intellectual passion and patriotism at the start of the twentieth century. For Kansas-born botanist Annabelle, a position at the Smithsonian is an exhilarating opportunity. Charged... Read More

One might assume that training brains towards perfection is a worthy goal, but German neuroscientist Henning Beck’s "Scatterbrain" promotes a different perspective. The book refutes received opinions about the brain’s apparent... Read More

"Seven Photographs" is an emotional novel in which two once-strangers brave exposure to write their own promising third acts. In Alan Rossman’s languid novel "Seven Photographs", neighbors in a Chicago suburb find strength after a... Read More

Eerie and otherworldly, Amelinda Bérubé’s "Here There Are Monsters" creeps across the page and into the woods where Skye’s younger sister has gone missing, painting a haunting picture of the sisters’ relationship, but also of... Read More

In the seventeenth century, the Netherlands became home to a large diaspora community of Sephardic Jews fleeing persecution. Their community thrived for centuries until its abrupt end under Nazi occupation. Longtime BBC reporter Lipika... Read More

John P. Clark’s "Between Earth and Empire" is an expansive work that considers the broad and chilling consequences of ecological disaster. The Earth is in such dire straits that Clark labels the present “the Necrocene,” or “the... Read More

A technological utopia collapses into a prison of nightmares in Louis Greenberg’s science fiction thriller "Green Valley", a breakneck novel that explores what remains of human nature in a world of virtual reality. When society grows... Read More