Imagine becoming an adult under the imposing shadow of the Soviet Union. That’s what Sonya faces when she’s pulled down from her quiet life in Siberia to rejoin her mother, a Jewish dissident, in the USSR’s waning days. In Katia... Read More

"The Freelance Academic" is both a how-to guide for those thinking of branching out on their own in academia and the personal story of what led its author, Katie Rose Guest Pryal, to freelance herself. Pryal worked as a contingent... Read More

Nimble and effusive, the tales of Sam Reese’s "Come the Tide" are an aesthete’s paradise, moving from haunting snapshots toward often amorphous conclusions. There are bronzed commas of bodies, vines climbing walls like elaborate... Read More

Cutting satire and humorous jeremiads expose the hypocrisies of keeping up with the Joneses in Erlend Loe’s novel "Doppler". After his father dies, Andreas Doppler suffers a breakdown, drops out of society, and goes to live in a tent... Read More

Julia Bricklin’s "Blonde Rattlesnake" is the true crime account of the 1933 spree of robberies and assaults committed by Tom White and his wife, Burmah. The couple terrorized the Los Angeles area for eight weeks, springing out of... Read More

Amy Weinland Daughters’s novel "You Cannot Mess This Up" explores an irresistible time travel premise: What if you could go back in time and meet your family as an outsider and hear what the adults in your life had to say about you as... Read More

Emiliano Monge’s "Among the Lost" is a harrowing novel about migration and human trafficking, told from the points of view of both victims and victimizers. Set in an unnamed country that resembles Mexico and taking place over the... Read More

Martin Parr’s "Space Dogs" features a collection of Soviet memorabilia alongside a brief overview of the program that led to the eventual entry of humans into space. What began as a mere scientific experiment soon erupted into a... Read More