"Centerville", a quiet novel by Karen Osborn, begins with a terrific bang, the shockwaves from which touch every part of the story until the very end. On an idyllic Saturday afternoon in 1967 in this pleasant Midwestern town, the lives... Read More

Religion can be damaging, while spirituality is freeing. So contends Johnston, whose Faith Beyond Belief introduces us to a host of religious practitioners, people whose countercultural faith relegates them to the margins of the... Read More

“69752. That was his phone number … he had it tattooed there, on his left forearm, so he wouldn’t forget it. That’s what my grandfather told me. And that’s what I grew up believing. In the 1970s, telephone numbers in Guatemala... Read More

Rosenthal’s latest book of magical journalism—a term for writing that is “informed by ideas that are impossible to believe and overdetermined by the conviction that those are the best kind”—explores contemporary Los Angeles and... Read More

Few novelists can arrestingly channel the voice of a neglected fourteen-year-old boy, half street urchin, half spiritual shaman, and emerge with an engaging first-person narrative that doesn’t drip with sentimentality or patronize teen... Read More

“You are misinformed,” Deborah Niemann states early in the introduction to "Ecothrifty", countering the many time- and cost-related excuses people use to keep from doing what’s good for them and the planet. A homesteader and... Read More

The sheer number of lists that are featured in popular magazines and websites speaks to a cultural fascination with the enumeration (and often, qualification) of all sorts of things—twenty ways to balance your budget, the top ten... Read More

"Falling for the Devil", by Britt Holmström, explores the dark era of early seventeenth-century Scotland. Readers are taken along on one woman’s internal journey as she struggles with religious faith and doubt. The book raises complex... Read More