The most artful mystery writers immerse their readers in locale as well as in false leads. Marcuse has staked out the streets and parks around Columbia University as the habitat for her social-worker sleuth, Anita Servi (introduced in... Read More

Was it an accident, or did someone deliberately gun down the seven-year-old boy waiting in front of his home for the school bus? One thing seems sure: police detective Jake Hines can’t blame this tragedy on SAD (seasonal affective... Read More

If childhood memoirs praising the pleasures of family, security, and comfort are rare, then rarer still is the memoir that credits those tender memories with inspiring a creative life. With clear-eyed wonderment, Gingher revisits her... Read More

The author notes a curious confluence early on in this generally praiseworthy set of essays, before he abandons altogether the inferences of his provocative subtitle. Arbery cites some damning local press that Nobel Laureate Seamus... Read More

The India infusing this promising first novel is already a phantom, an incense shrine to a secondary source. Its naïve narrator, Leela, knows her homeland only through the lush, imported spices sold in her parents’ Kenya shop. When... Read More

As a genre, creative nonfiction is not only teasingly resistant to easy definition, but provocatively open-ended in its scope and sweep. With twenty-five short essays, Saltzman displays a deft touch at eliciting the revelations that can... Read More

“The object of your mission is to explore the Missouri River and such principal stream of it as… may offer the most direct and practicable water communication across the continent, for the purpose of commerce,” instructed President... Read More

These two 8“ x 11“ album books are best taken as a combined dose of difficult reality and escapist fantasy. Vertigo (a text-and-picture combination) demolishes the traditional city guide that comforted earlier generations;... Read More