With noir pacing, a laid-back sensibility, and a touch of humor, the newest book in Andy Weinberger’s Amos Parisman detective series, the cozy mystery novel "The Gonif" finds the elderly detective navigating a crime impacting the... Read More

Sally Symes’s colorful, child-friendly reference text "First Big Book of How" compiles dozens of scientific questions on topics ranging from human memory to space telescopes and dinosaur extinction. The questions are siphoned into six... Read More

While some bars in Chicago have served Jeppson’s Malört for nearly a century, in the past two decades, the bitter, wormwood-derived botanical spirit found new life as both a niche favorite and an ironic countercultural drink. That... Read More

In Michael Weingrad’s slim, nostalgic literary novel "Eugene Nadelman", a nerdy Jewish boy comes of age in 1980s Philadelphia. Eugene shares his first name, and the book its format, with Alexander Pushkin’s novel-in-verse Eugene... Read More

Sneed B. Collard III took up birdwatching in his adulthood, when his son developed an interest in birds. He records his own experiences and shares plenty of tips for fellow late bloomers in "Birding for Boomers", extolling the variety of... Read More

Christophe Lebold’s biography of one of popular music’s greatest songwriters is outstanding, grounding its subject in the historical times that formed him and his art. Following Leonard Cohen from his childhood in Canada through to... Read More

In Let’s Get Festive! Joanna Konczak tells the stories of more than thirty holiday celebrations around the world. Packed with interesting trivia, the book is an engaging roundup of the myriad ways that people celebrate. The holidays... Read More

A gentle conservation message comes through in Tom Huddleston’s adventure-filled novel Cosmic Creatures: The Friendly Firecat, wherein a girl visits her aunt on a remote planet—and has to stop intergalactic rustlers from stealing... Read More