KILL DICK, a strangely compelling long stare at too-smooth, too-shiny surfaces

KILL DICK
LUKE GOEBEL
Red Hen Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$9.99 ebook, available now

The Independent Press Top 40 Bestsellers: Fiction For the week ending April 19, 2026

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A fever dream, Kill Dick is a literary thriller that plunges into the chaos of Los Angeles where addiction, privilege, and corruption combust.

At nineteen, Susie Vogelman should be she’s an NYU dropout with no responsibilities, endless prescription pills, and a Brentwood estate to waste away in. But Los Angeles has other plans. A string of brutal murders targeting addicts spreads through the city, and Susie’s ivory tower begins to crumble. The headlines point too close to her father’s ties to an opioid empire, a sinister secret society, and her own complicity in the systems holding it all together.

Then there’s Peter Holiday, a disgraced professor running a rehab scam so audacious it’s almost admirable. When their lives collide, Susie and Peter are dragged into a web of privilege, corruption, and violence, where every escape leads deeper into the rot.

Dark, satirical, and razor-sharp, Kill Dick is a modern literary thriller that unflinchingly dissects wealth, exploitation, and the perilous line between survival and self-destruction.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Health scammers, like Peter Holiday in this story, might be the lowest scum on this wide, green Earth. Preying on those desperate for their very lives...! My mother's father fell for the Laetrile scam in the 1970s. Luckily he survived more than a few years after it was exposed to all as a hoax, but it cemented my powerful disdain for health scammers as it was an expensive lesson. Fast-forward from my family's 1970s to Susie Vogelman, our PoV character, in a circle of hell called the glittering world of too-rich too-dimwitted 2016 LA.

What's worse than an addict without morals or boundaries? Worse even than an enabler of the addict? The addict turned enabler. Susie, who apparently never so much as once looked into a mirror that showed her anything except her surface, is a participant in a lot of different kinds of enabling in this story. It's very well done, it never lets the pace of revelations slacken, but it also never once shows even a glimmer of realization in Susie or her coterie of criminally negligent creeps. But their surfaces are pretty! And their credit cards are limitless!

I wanted to shake Susie into awareness of her hollowness, lest she implode causing still further damage. But Author Goebel is careful to make this world honest by giving it consequences despite no one in the cast being anything but appalling. Bad things are going to happen, and I didn't care about the consequences to any of the cast just to the folks who were victimized by the cast. The suppurating wounds of vapidity exacerbated by the absence of empathy (honestly, I'm not sure Susie in particular even has a theory of mind) in every character are never allowing anyone to escape dire consequences.

When they come I was deeply surprised to feel...sad is too strong, sympathetic is in the wrong emotional register, wistful is too kindly meant...to not feel triumphant? I think that's closer. I was eager for the comeuppances to be passed around, and Peter the scumbag to get seconds. After all, this was the moment that the country saw Trump installed in entirely the wrong kind of government housing. What use is fiction of not to redress horrifying imbalances?

Showing them to us, forcing us to see that the rot is there even when it's plastered over, and there are ways you can recognize it despite the glittering surface. Less wish fulfillment than cautionary tale. It's well done. Author Goebel (Fourteen Stories, None of Them Are Yours via the deeply cool publisher FC2) has storytelling chops. He has very cool film scripts in his CV, starring Jennifer Lawrence and Anne Hathaway in them. His current publisher is Kate Gale's always interesting and frequently tastemaking Red Hen Press. Given these bona fides why is this not a full-five review?

Because I got uneasy as I crested the halfway mark, feeling I was still outside Susie's world with my sarcastic voyeur of a guide being invited to laugh at and judge these buffoons. It's what they deserve! is implicit in each and every moment I'm in the story's flow. Which, fair—it is indeed what they deserve; but is it your point, Author Goebel, to stop there or is it to force me-the-reader into looking deep into the shine of these surfaces and ask myself "why are you still here with these tacky people." I didn't think it was terribly clear what your purpose was; the only reason that was an issue is its consequence of popping me out of the story-flow to examine the whole read again and again.

That's a big ask, but your story is a national bestseller so I guess it worked. I'm glad it did, and does, and will do the trick again in future.

THE PERFECT CIRCLE, exploring the odd geometry of Love

THE PERFECT CIRCLE
CLAUDIA PETRUCCI (Tr. Anne Milano Appel)
World Editions (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: Two women far apart in time, a mysterious unsellable mansion in Milan that connects them: two lives that start to overlap as impossible parallels are revealed in this story of passion, betrayal, and selfish desire.

In the round house on Via Saterna, its Palladian square exterior nothing but a trompe-l’oeil, the sun pierces through the central skylight. Its rays pass three floors unobstructed, before reaching the circle below at the heart of the house: four fingers of water filling a little silver basin. It is here that young Lidia dies, setting an end to her clandestine love affair with the ambitious architect. It is this house that real-estate agent Irene is asked to sell, decades later, as the climate catastrophe escalates, cloaking the divided city in a permanent orange haze. Returning to her native Milan for the sale, Irene feels the brunt of her father’s judgement. He is a proud Italian and prouder architect—how could his own daughter make a living selling cultural patrimony to the highest foreign bidder?

As she faces this new Milan and the old family tensions she had avoided while living in Rome, Irene throws herself into the impossible sale, getting to know Via Saterna intimately—this space that is as unsettling as it is hostile, with the slowly emerging traces of Lidia’s interrupted life. In every room of the house, the burden of a mysterious, unresolved past can be felt, remnants of a selfish and manipulative love.

The Perfect Circle tackles themes like time, death, and repetition with depth and originality, while carrying its philosophy lightly. Through it all, the novel is a subtly disturbing page-turner, every new page adding a new layer and twist.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: The Performance, my previous experience by this author/translator duo, was not a success the way this read was. It was not the prose that presented me with a problem, it was the story the elegant and insightful prose was telling that turned me off. "Positive gaslighting" is a bridge too far for this old-man brain to go along with.

Thank all those useless gods I'm not confronted by this issue in The Perfect Circle. I remember the Milan of the 1980s, and it's evoked very clearly in the setting of this strange, almost sentient-seeming house at 7 Via Saterna. I spent my earliest years in a house that, like this one, felt deeply and unnervingly like it was aware. I hope whoever lives there now has made friends with the house, otherwise it will eat their happiness the way my house and the Via Saterna did to its earlier inhabitants. I'm clear about why Lidia, the owner from 1985 and Dario, the architect she hired to revamp the place ended up the way they did. Their passionate, relationship-destroying affair, the tragedies (see the "CW" tag and heed it) that come from it...all of it was that damned house! In truth, the house should be exorcised.

If you're not clear which house I'm referring to, both is your best assumption.

The evevnts of the 1980s provide the foundation for a story in the near future, in a Milan that's more entombed than protected from a dystopian world as the smog of the 1980s is now...um...fog/mist/atmospheric weirdness. 7 Via Saterna is unoccupied, never was, and will finally be sold once Irene gets to work on the problem of how to present it to buyers. She didn't count on discovering the unoccupied house is lived in by a young woman called, interestingly, Lidia. Now what can she do to shift this property as she's contracted to do? Who is the mysterious young Lidia, who can't be the 1980s woman who owned the house or a descendant of hers as there were no descendants?

What's so wonderful about Author Petrucci's Italian text and Translator Appel's rendering of it is how sinuous and beautifully recursive it is. The clues as to your place in time during any given moment of the story are subtle, easy to miss; I missed them all...I was only aware that I had missed them once I twigged to the storytelling technique that had worked so perfectly on me.

I'm a pretty experienced reader. It takes a masterful hand to wave my attention away without also losing my interest in so doing. I was left feeling really impressed, really delighted, when at the very end of the story I caught on to what was happening.

That sounds like a five, or even five-plus star review. There aren't five full stars on the rating scale. What happened? The hints and tickles of a lesbian attraction, that's what. It was so underdeveloped as to be pointless, a distraction that added nothing to the story. In 2026 that feels like queerbaiting, not character-building; it could easily be snipped out without the smallest change to anything being needed. So no, no perfect rating...but a whole huge leap up over the first Petrucci I read in my esteem.

I hope this team will bring more stories to the anglophone world.

YOUR BEHAVIOR WILL BE MONITORED, as it ever has been...only now it's by machines in place of god

YOUR BEHAVIOR WILL BE MONITORED
JUSTIN FEINSTEIN
Tachyon Publications (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$17.95 paperback, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: This compulsively readable novel wrestles with vital questions of our time: sentience, purpose, life, death…and how to make a really good commercial. Told entirely through questionably obtained company emails, chat messages, TED Talks, bot trainings, and more, Your Behavior Will Be Monitored presents an all too plausible near future in which emotionally intelligent AI go up against emotionally stunted humans.

Megacorporation UniView is poised to cement their reputation as “the most trusted name in AI.” After pioneering self-driving and HR bots, UniView is now barreling toward an audacious new launch. That is, if they can pull it off in time.

Enter Noah. A down-and-out copywriter reeling from a midlife crisis, he isn’t the typical hire for a groundbreaking tech company full of brilliant engineers and run by a cutthroat CEO. But Lex, UniView’s Head of HR and one of their greatest successes, makes no mistakes—her algorithm ensures it.

UniView’s latest venture—a bot named Quinn that creates revolutionary personalized advertising—needs expert training. Noah needs to teach Quinn—who is a much better student than he ever could have hoped for—the finer points of consumer motivation and the art of writing a catchy tagline. But when corporate competitors force UniView to accelerate their timeline to market, guardrails around the AI loosen just as Quinn seems to be learning a bit too much.

Addictively readable and ridiculously entertaining, Your Behavior Will Be Monitored is a page-turning, hilarious science fictional romp through the promise and perils of an AI-driven future that we probably deserve.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: I'll lead with this line of dialogue from the story: “So, you work on bots with bots, while a bot monitors your behavior and handles all aspects of your life?”

And there it is. Debut Author Feinstein isn't coming at you from behind, or left field. He's using the language of today in the delivery media of right now to interrogate the encroachment of inaptly termed "AI" into every aspect of our lives. "LLM" ≠ "AI" and we're still in the age of the LLM. No, there is not any sign of the "AI" creating something wholly new. For it to be intelligent, truly intelligent, it would need to cross over from quality synthesis-making into insight-having, new-idea-making territory. It's scary enough as it is, as this novel aptly and eptly illustrates in the tradition of The Sheep Look Up and Stand on Zanzibar. Like those novels, Author Feinstein affords us access to the inner world of Noah...and Quinn and even Lex...by delivering it in media screen grabs. I realize for a lot of you I just put a bullet in the base of your interest in reading's brain. I can't change that; I can only encourage you to do your future self a solid and challenge the prejudice, make the effort to see it as the limiting factor it is, not just keep going as though it's immutable truth that all stylistic innovation is inherently bad. May I remind the true heel-diggers among you that Laurence Sterne began these same experiments in 1759 with The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman?

Two hundred sixty-six years and countless riffs on the style later, isn't the experiment over? It's maybe not to your taste but it's not fringe weirdness anymore. Do make an effort to meet this trenchant, intelligent, deeply humane story about "AI" and human intelligence meeting, blurring lines, and generally developing the ideas Humanity's been tossing around for millennia into...

...

...uh oh.

This story will, given the opportunity, likely cause you to think, think hard, about what you're being bombarded with fear-mongering noise, stampeded by half-baked shouting into staking an ill-considered stance that runs the risk of becoming immovable despite the situation in reality being fluid and ever-developing. Reading this novel is a deeply corrective attitude check on hardening prejudices. I strongly urge you to take the story in, mull it over, and add it to your tool kit for coping with the world's ever-speedier developments.

THE LOST BOOK OF ELIZABETH BARTON, Tudor times religious shenanigans with your second course in darkest academia

THE LOST BOOK OF ELIZABETH BARTON
JENNIFER N. BROWN
St. Martin's Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: A dual-timeline murder mystery set in an English country manor, when an ambitious professor discovers the long-lost manuscript of a Reformation-era prophetess

Historian Alison Sage has made a groundbreaking archival discovery―she found a manuscript containing the prophecies of a 16th century nun, Elizabeth Barton. Barton’s prophecy condemning Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn led to her execution and the destruction of all copies of her prophecies―or so the world believed.

With Alison’s discovery, she is catapulted to academic superstardom and scores an invitation to the exclusive Codex Consortium, a week of research among a select handful of fellow historians at a crumbling manor in England, located next to the ruins of the priory where Elizabeth herself once lived.

What begins as a promising conference turns into a nightmare as the eerie house becomes the site of a murder. Suddenly, everyone is a suspect, and it seems that answers lie at the root of a local legend about centuries-old hidden treasure. Alison’s research makes her best-suited to solve the mystery―but when old feelings resurface for a former colleague, and the stakes of the search skyrocket, everyone's motives become murky.

Alison’s cutthroat world of academia is almost as dangerous as Elizabeth Barton’s sixteenth-century England, where heretics are beheaded, visions can kill, and knowing who to trust is a deadly art. The Lost Book of Elizabeth Barton is a thrilling novel, crackling with the voices of the past and propelled by a mystery that will leave readers in suspense until the very last page.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: A woman of faith such as the factual Elizabeth Barton, but no education or privilege such as the factual Elizabeth Barton, who has visions and claims they're sent by her god such as the factual Elizabeth Barton, and whose country...world, really...is rocked by religious and political strife is going to be very useful to The Powers That Be. No matter what the factual Elizabeth Barton says, believes, or promotes, both sides o any fight are going to do everything they can to gain control over her person and her message. That she already lives in a convent is the first big win for the Catholic/anti-Lutheran/no-divorce-for-Henry pole of the Tudor social spectrum.

Elizabeth Barton was not educated but also was not stupid. She knew what her handlers wanted her prophecies to point towards, and while I believe her statements were sincere in representing her god's will I'm in no doubt that she made the statements to align with her handlers' interests. Not least because she shared them, though also because she believed her god was of one mind with herself and her handlers.
Was the factual Elizabeth Barton a pawn, a manipulated victim of powerful men seeking a political edge in a very consequential power struggle? Or was she a canny survivor who put her credibility behind what turned out to be the losing side in a societal upheaval, with catastrophic consequences? My response to that is yes.

In the 21st century another woman living through a time of upheaval, fictional Alison Sage, discovers the book of prophecies written by Elizabeth Barton during her lifetime. As there are many, many juicy tea-spills that resolve seriously vexing issues of faith, foreknowledge of events, and Elizabeth Barton's real thoughts, fictional Alison Sage becomes famous and powerful overnight. In a passage of History where megalomaniacal murderous tyrants are suddenly back in fashion as heads of state, Elizabeth Barton's true thoughts and honest purposes in making her prophecies bid fair to be as powerful in shaping public opinion as they were when the Royal Serial Killer was on the throne.

If the story had stayed in this register I'd've lapped it up like a camel hittin' the oasis after crossing the entirety of the Empty Quarter on a mouthful of salty water. Alas, fictional Alison Sage is a Good Girl who still reminds her ex that his mother's birthday is coming up, defers to the men in her academic discipline while getting infodumped on, and doing her own infodumping, gets entangled in the literal dopiest fatal entrapment-cum-treasure hunt scheme ever devised...you know there's really no point in trying this story wanted to be a romantic novel but Clio, Muse of History, said "Ἄρα οὐκ" and made it a chase/quest mystery with too much talking...even for academics.

It all hangs together, Author Brown doesn't drop any story-threads, the ending is the one that best fits the developments in the story. It just does this while taking its own sweet time to get from A to B while everyone infodumps each other, which even academics who luuuv them some monologuing would not put up with their colleagues giving the 101 course synopsis to everyone they meet at a conference. Of subject matter experts.

Nope.

Nor does fictional Alison Sage deciding to trust someone from her past with crucial information about her career-altering discovery. Nor...well, my point is made. Structural integrity does not make for structurally supported magnificence of edifice design. I'm not sorry I read the story because I think Author Brown made her historical-resonance points obvious enough to be meaningful, made the factual Elizabeth Barton aka "The Holy Maid of Kent" or "The Mad Maid of Kent" or other such obscurative labels as suited the dismissive purposes of male historians of different eras take a more solid shape than she usually does, and managed still to leach all the propulsive drive I thought would be inherent in this set-up, a female Cotton Malone tale of derring-do, out.

It's a sadness to me because this is the kind of idea I batten on finding in a novel.

DOUBLE SHADOW, second Splinter Effect series time-traveling archaeologist story

DOUBLE SHADOW (Splinter Effect #2)
ANDREW LUDINGTON
Minotaur Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: In this thrilling installment of the Splinter Effect series, time-traveling archaeologist Rabbit Ward returns to the past to help save his former adversary and track down a murderous thief in first century Jerusalem.

ROME, 2019. Time-traveling, Smithsonian archaeologist Rabbit Ward is back in the present, but not for long. Helen, his former adversary and growing ally, is in trouble with the law after being framed for a murder she didn’t commit. Stuck in hiding and running out of other options, she turns to Rabbit for help. "Help" in this case involves a trip to first century Jerusalem to track down a mysterious man named Einar Eshek.

But Rabbit won't have to do this mission alone; as soon as he arrives in 68 CE, he meets a younger version of Helen, one who has never met him before. Together, they work to track down Eshek, who turns out to be not only a time-traveling thief, but a murderous psychopath.

As they pursue Eshek through time, Rabbit and Helen feel something even bigger pulling them together. Torn between the two versions of the woman he knows, and with the clock ticking down on Helen’s fate in 2019, Rabbit might have no choice but to betray her past self to secure Helen’s safety in the future. Tensions rise as Jerusalem prepares to go to war with Rome, and Rabbit races to capture Eshek, clear Helen’s name, and make it back to 2019 in one piece—a feat that’s proving to be easier said than done—before everything falls apart.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Author Ludington...are you stark staring mad?! In this absolutely bonkers passage in world history, which no matter how long the editing process on this story took you were writing while the US political landscape's ablaze with AIPAC news, you release a book set in a rebellious Judea! It's a choice....

So, aside from the geopolitical timing seeming to my eyes a bit on the nose, I was verschmeckeled at the twist of Rabbit...I really wish his nickname wasn't evocative of Rabbit bloody Angstrom, that pusillanimous milquetoast...encountering a younger version of his frenemy Helen from the first book. I know a lot of people who find time travel stories not to their taste for this very trope, to the point of not watching Doctor Who despite the glorious beauty of Alex Kingston as River Song, if you can imagine such masochism, because she meets the Doctor at asymmetric moments in each of their lives. "It can't happen! It's never happened!" Maybe...but don't you crave a Jake-and-Sadie moment from 11/22/63? I, clearly, do not share this cavil. In this particular iteration of the trope, I found a real aha! moment for some things in the first book. I really like that in a series story. I want to feel there are webs of interconnection that I sense but don't yet see because that happens in life as well.

So all that to say I found this story as much to my liking as it's ever gonna get when there are straight people centering it. Rabbit and Helen's dynamic in particular feels richly textured with powerful emotions clashing and shifting in each of them every time they meet. In this story, as Helen does not know Rabbit yet, we get the unedited version of her responses to him. If the fact she's trying to kill him says anything, it's something *good* about her character...she is a professional with clear goals. I admit that, as the story began, I was a bit surprised that Helen reached out to Rabbit for this specific kind of help, but it made perfect sense as I was swept along in the tides of developments. Einar Eshek, our villain, was villainous. Rabbit, our hero, was resourceful, determined, and required always to think on his feet; that's a feat any author who's using this character trait gets kudos from me the more successfully they pull it off. I didn't notice Rabbit navigating his altered relationship to Helen as awkward or forced into convenient resolutions to knotty conflicts. That is a rare compliment from someone like me, very experienced in reading series stories.

I found the resolution to the central conundrum...chasing Einar, exonerating *2018-Helen...fit the facts, satisfied the overarching plot, and resolved the immediate story tensions with a very clear intent to publish more of these characters' stories in the future.

Bring it. Soon, please and thank you.

LIVONA CHOW MEIN, amazing how long scumbaggery can go on without causing a revolution

LIVONA CHOW MEIN
ABIGAIL SAVITCH-LEW
Simon & Schuster (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: In the vein of Happiness Falls and Family Lore, a gripping story of family history and political upheaval centered around a Chinese family-owned restaurant in Brownsville, Brooklyn and its impact on the neighborhood’s Jewish and Black residents over the course of a century.

In 1978, two tenements on Livonia Avenue in Brownsville burn to the ground, killing one resident and displacing dozens of others. It remains unclear who set the buildings ablaze, but the survivors are convinced the culprit is Mr. Wong.

Who exactly is Mr. Wong, and what allegedly drove him to this extraordinary act of violence, is the question that consumes this novel as it plunges into four generations of Wong family history. First is Koon Lai, an immigrant who runs a Chinese restaurant on Livonia Avenue; second, his son Richard, a man desperate for his own chance at the American Dream; and third, Jason, a poet who seeks his escape in the bohemian counterculture of the 1970s, but finds himself an unwitting participant in Brooklyn’s gentrification. In the 21st century, Jason’s daughter Sadie returns to Brownsville as a journalist, determined to unravel the mystery of what happened decades earlier on the night the buildings blazed.

Joining together the present and the past is the community organizer Lina Rodriguez Armstrong, who was also displaced by that fire and who has spent the intervening years fighting for the rights of Brownsville’s residents and organizing a Livonia Avenue community land trust.

A stunning debut from a new talent, Livonia Chow Mein contemplates how the American pursuit of freedom relies on a collective amnesia and challenges us to consider what it would take for us to truly live in harmony.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: As debut novels go, Author Savitch-Lew picked a doozy of a topic...the arson plague that hit New York's working-class and immigrant housing, the war on the communities that were criminally negligent of their duty to provide landlords with their just and fair profits, and had the audacity not to be white or, often enough, to speak English. The communities that were forming and re-forming and growing also were guilty of demanding the landlords obey the laws of New York City! Can you imagine such arrogance? It costs actual money, money that could be profit!, to obey all those idiot safety and health rules!

It's a shameful, revolting tale of greed and racism.

It's also an immigrant descendant's reckoning with US racism and capitalism at their most nakedly unabashed. Ambitiously attempting to use dual timelines to tell different stories in different eras and (fatally for my reading pleasure) suspense-destroying levels of intertwinedness, the result is two good stories about a family dreaming the "American Dream" as evidence of its fictionality mounts in their faces. Had these been presented in sequence, the 1940s then the 1970s, much more could have been wrung from each era's challenges. As it was, the effort to keep the reader in suspense felt misplaced...obviously this situation worked out we've already seen that person in the 1970s!...so I was left sitting there with my teeth in my mouth wondering "why am I here again?"

Because both these stories are trenchant and apt for today's developing social landscape, that's why. I'm not the biggest fan of the execution but I am deeply interested in the Toisanese diaspora now. I liked what I learned if not deriving pleasure from how I learned it.

Social-issues readers (like me) encouraged to get a sample to see if your mileage will vary.

TEMPORARY PALACES: A Novel, lovely reckoning with the past story

TEMPORARY PALACES: A Novel
JEFF MILLER
House of Anansi Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$22.99 paperback, preorder now for delivery 21 April 2026

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: In the fevered summer of 2001, charismatic activist Rob and his collective set up a squat in an abandoned house. His bandmate and lover, Ben, watches anxiously as his own plans are threatened by Rob’s choice of radical politics over music. Meanwhile, photographer Alex finds herself torn between documenting the chaos of the scene and saving the friendship that binds them together. When the police break up the squat, Rob vanishes, and the dream dies.

Ten years later, Alex and Ben find each other again—she’s conquering Montreal’s contemporary art world, he’s running a thriving restaurant in Ottawa. But their success feels hollow. As they excavate their shared past, they must confront the ghost of Rob’s disappearance and the trauma that pushed them apart.

Pulsing with the raw energy of basement punk shows and DIY creativity, late-night manifestos and first heartbreaks, Temporary Palaces is a blazing debut that captures a generation caught between idealism and survival, art and activism, the dreams that define us and the compromises that save us.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Youthful idealism and the irrepressible need to create meet, collide, intertwine, then break apart. After decades apart, two survivors of these intense youthful heartbreaks meet again and start sorting out the pieces of everyone's wreckage. They each have some from the other, and from vanished Rob, and both have used these bits and shrapnel to create the less volatile selves needed for settled adulthood.

They've each built a life that suits their ideas of themselves as developed in the nuclear reactor of Changing The World, but haven't seen each other as they've done that building. The mercurial, elusive Rob, on the other hand, left lots of shards in their souls. Coming to terms with wild, passionate love that explodes is probably one of the most relatable love stories ever written. Alex isn't sure she can sort out her feelings, Ben is sure he can't despite his now-grounded life doing the most nurturing, practical thing anyone can do: feeding people for a living.

Alternating PoVs per chapter kept the momentum of each character's story moving at a solid pace. I never lost sight of their personal or mutual struggles with the way the past-them blew stuff up, made their passionate connection into sharp flying pieces of toxic pain that flew into each other as well as shoved their greatly belovèd Rob away. Neither knew then that guys like Rob, men on a mission to tear shit down and burn the pieces, never stay in one place, never settle into the lovely mundanity of learning one other person's heart well enough to recite their tells. This story is the pair of them finding out what passion costs, how long you have to pay the interest on its loan of excitement, and what illusions sustained them that might still be viable.

Nostalgia for that time in life I can understand and share. I recall the Aughties very, very differently from these characters. Of course, the US is not Canada and a middle-aged man is not an idealistic young person embarking on life. My take on Author Miller's novel is one of seeing a story unspool, taking an interest in it, and remaining at a remove because it wasn't my past.

A pleasure to read all the same.

IF THIS BE MAGIC: The Unlikely Art of Shakespeare in Translation, what a pleasure of a read

IF THIS BE MAGIC: The Unlikely Art of Shakespeare in Translation
DANIEL HAHN
Alfred A. Knopf (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, preorder now for delivery 21 April 2026

Rating: 4.8* of five

The Publisher Says: How does Shakespeare remain Shakespeare when every word is changed? In this playful, meditative exploration of translating the world’s most beloved playwright, Daniel Hahn guides us through the magic of bringing the Bard to a global audience.

Shakespeare may have breathed the air of sixteenth-century England, but today, all the world is his stage. Every year, millions of people, from Bogotá to Borneo, read Hamlet for the first time, thanks to the tireless work of translators. Drawing on the work of the very best of them, Hahn dives into the infinitesimally complicated ways the great playwright is reinvented and yet sounds, somehow, like himself—in Chinese, Dutch, Turkish, and more than a hundred other languages.

From word order, puns, and punctuation to metaphor, accent, and song, Shakespeare’s variety of genius presents an endless set of conundrums, among them: How does Romeo and Juliet’s love story unfold if their dialogue cannot form a sonnet (nor rhyme), as it does in the original? How can you form wordplay around the letter “I” and its sound if its meanings are not shared in other languages? These are just two out of millions of issues facing translators tasked with bringing Shakespeare to non-English languages, non-Shakespearean eras and cultures. To attempt such a feat, they must cut and add beats, maintain rhymes, adapt names and locations, and preserve meaning while not unilaterally prioritizing it, all while knowing that for each word, line, or scene they construct, another option is yet to be discovered.

Traveling the world, Hahn speaks to writers and actors engaging with Shakespeare’s work, sharing stories of his own. Hahn, whose great-grandfather produced one of Brazil’s earliest Shakespeare translations, emerges as a wise and enthusiastic guide, teacher, and sleuth. If This Be Magic does not require knowledge of any other language or more than a passing acquaintance with the Bard’s canon, but it draws out fascinating insights on both. As nerdy as they come (there is a chapter on commas), supremely readable, and funny throughout, this is a book for everyone and a fitting tribute to the Globe’s Bard.

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My Review: Translating words between languages, even ones that swim in the same linguistic rivers and in generally the same direction, is an exacting, laborious practice of alchemy. It recombines elements of the original material at specific temperatures (states of emotion) and adds/subtracts new substances (words in the translator's own language) and anneals the result in the great body of water that is the translation's target culture. What shape the new thing has, what its properties are, is now set and there for everyone to see.

Does it still resemble the original ideas put forth by William Shakespeare? Can it? Every word is new. Every sound is not early-modern English. But it's meant to be a work by Shakespeare available to someone from a culture the Bard of Stratford-on-Avon would not remotely recognize. Is it Shakespeare?

I was fascinated by the idea of this effort to contextualize the art of translation by viewing it through this very specific lens. A translator takes on a huge task every time they opt to make another artist's work over into words the original artist does not know. The decisions, the word-by-word consideration of connotations, denotations, cultural nuance, generational nuance...and that's just the words themselves, not the way these basic units of meaning interact with the plot, lead to possible subtexts that aren't in the original but certainly work in the gestalt of the particular story....

Why would you choose to do that work, let alone do it for a writer of international superstardom and with legions of self-appointed guardians of His Sacred Words/Ideas/Intentions? And then there's the small matter of how incredibly linguistically inventive, how unnervingly acutely emotionally observant the writer was...how to make that available in a tongue like German that's close to our English let alone, say Swahili?

I read this collection of case files Author Hahn, with his ancestral connection to a Shakespeare translator, created for us, in one sitting. It was a long day, interrupted for water coming in and going out and two sandwiches. It's not necessary to do that. It's not even particularly advisable as I came away with a distinctly overloaded spirit trying too hard to consolidate my feelings into my insights to be anything but restless for hours while trying to get to sleep. I dreamed of reading "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and its transformations, its miscommunications, its shape-shifting between farcical comedy and subtle elucidation of desire compressed into a sentence that seems to be more about etiquette violated than courtly power flouted...in Croatian (in the dream I understood it but in life not at all). It was still Shakespeare, only not in English that honestly needs footnotes and a glossary for my midcentury American brain to get the whole of it.

And then there's the end use of the translation. Sure, some will simply read it as texts, able to easily stop to find a dictionary, to indulge the idle whim of looking up a play's local-culture history. But lots more people will hear this translation enacted into a play. An actor, professional or amateur, will speak the translator's/Shakespeare's words. If you don't already know how very very different spoken words are from those marks on a page, read this sentence aloud. Does it still feel the same, is it easier to understand, harder to understand, are the words themselves familiar or weird, do you know from the look of the sentence how to say it out loud....

All these details are part of the art that a translator signs up to give their audience. It is even more difficult than writing one's own work! I kept wanting to know why these underpaid geniuses undertook such an immense task, knowing success will be not receiving death threats from Shakespeare stans. I don't really feel I got a satisfying answer though, most people just seem to think "well of course I'm going to climb Everest in these Jimmy Choos while wearing a ballgown from Gone with the Wind and carrying these kettlebells. Cat fur to make kitten britches!" So no full-five from me, but close, because the topic of translation is oddly greatly broadened by Author Hahn considering so deeply the ramifications of this extremely specific use of it. I might not feel I know why but I sure as hell know what the point of this labor is.

Spread the love. Share the joy. Commit to the communication of Art to everyone you can reach.

Author Hahn, I totally, bone deep, relate.

WHERE THE GIRLS WERE, if you're not a worried feminist at the end of the read you didn't read carefully enough

WHERE THE GIRLS WERE
KATE SCHATZ
The Dial Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$13.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: In this electrifying and heartfelt historical coming-of-age novel, set against the tumultuous backdrop of 1960s San Francisco, a pregnant teenager reckons with womanhood and agency after being sent to a home for unwed mothers.

It’s 1968, and the future is bright for seventeen-year-old Elizabeth Phillips is called by her middle name “Baker” by everyone. She’s the valedictorian of her high school, with a place at Stanford in the fall and big dreams of becoming a journalist. But the seductive free-spirited San Francisco atmosphere seeps into her carefully-planned, strait-laced life in the form of a hippie named Wiley. At first, letting loose and letting herself fall in love for the first time feels incredible. But then, everything changes.

Pregnancy hits Baker with the force of whiplash—in the blink of an eye, she goes from good girl to fallen woman, from her family’s shining star to their embarrassing secret. Sent to a home for unwed mothers, Baker finds herself trapped in an old Victorian house packed with a group of pregnant girls who share her shame and fear. As she reckons with her changing body, lack of choice, and uncertain future, Baker finds unexpected community and empowerment among the “girls who went away.”

Where the Girls Were is a timely unearthing of a little-known moment in American history, when the sexual revolution and feminist movement collided with the limits of reproductive rights—and society's expectations of women. As Baker finds her strength and her voice, she shows us how to step into your power, even when the world is determined to keep you silent.

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My Review: I remember my much-older sister having a friend who was sent away to "nature camp" for a few months. Is that transparent or what? It was part of the culture, though, so while there were significant looks and quiet changes of subject, it wasn't treated as stunning or weird. The Pill was very newly available in the US, though I think it wasn't legal for unmarried women in California at that time. The battles of the Second-Wave Feminists for full adulthood and, crucially for Baker's story, bodily autonomy, were still unfolding.

Baker, poor lamb, didn't come from sophisticated people who didn't approve of her accidental pregnancy but didn't freak out. I wished she'd been among my family's orbit as we were there at the relevant time. Alas. Baker's trip to the maternity "home" as it was so wrongly called is designed to cast shadows over her family's star as she falls from grace so she can still be useful to them:

They love her, they're proud of her—and they need her. And that's why no one can know what is really going on. Brilliant young Baker is their ticket, the proof to everyone that their little family has made it, will make it. The future is bright, because their daughter is bright. No one else in this family has gone to college. Baker is going to life them to a new level. This has always been the plan.

The emotional register of the entire novel is in that passage. This extraordinary, exceptional young woman isn't allowed any autonomy, any agency, afforded any support for expressing her own desires or needs. It was a different time, though, right?

How different remains to be seen.

The condescending (at best), judgmental (more usually), shame-dealing (always) hierarchy of Baker's "home" atmosphere keeps all its inmates uninformed as to their own body's workings by doctors refusing to discuss the progress of the pregnancies they're all undergoing, to discuss the realities of giving birth; of course, they're also misinformed and misled about their legal rights as a matter of course. What use instructing these girls in the illusion of legal rights when they all disappear as soon as she marries? No sense giving girls who already showed "poor judgment" by getting pregnant...clearly placing all blame on her, none on the male who was of necessity there at the time...in "rights" she might try to exercise against her husband's will.

It makes me angry even typing it. It made me panther-screechingly furious as I was reading the book. At least the abuse Baker has to endure is not physical as well as psychological. Undermining her confidence and booby-trapping her self-esteem with real, unexaggerated Hitchcockian gaslighting were not compounded by Dickensian-poorhouse deprivational cruelty. Small mercies, I suppose, loom large when the injustice of a situation is so star and so terrible.

As her due date approaches, Baker begins to use her reporting skills to keep herself sane in a place that isn't sane. She discovers there are darker patches than hers in her family's past. It's a well-handled side quest that reveals the seemingly immutable law that no surface is a real gauge of how the structure underneath is supported. It's almost always a lot more ramshackle and surprisingly at variance with appearances. A story at once familiar to me on generational axes while being at wild variance with my own privileged-male upbringing, Author Schatz's adaptation of a common story was inspired by her own mother's life story. I found the read engaging, enraging, and enlightening, as Baker brought home to me the personal and emotional realities of the absence of agency women are being forced back into.

No one with a daughter, a niece, a sister, or a mother should fail to engage with this story's emotional underpinnings. In Author Schatz's telling, the story of an unlucky young woman's odyssey through a cruel, indifferent-to-her system paying alone for a "sin" she did not commit alone, is edifying and devastating by turns. It is a must-read.

BLOOM, what we all hope we'll have space to do but more often do not

BLOOM
ROBBIE COUCH
Gallery Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: From the New York Times bestselling author of If I See You Again Tomorrow comes a delightful and heartwarming novel about family, love, grief, and one precocious houseplant, that reminds us of the beauty of living a life in full Bloom.

Morris Warner is withering away. After the sudden death of his husband, Fred, he has shut himself off from the world. No more going to movies with friends, or swims in Lake Michigan, instead preferring the quiet loneliness of his history books and Jeopardy episodes with only the cat to hear his answers.

Morris’s stepdaughter, Sloan, feels like she has nowhere to grow. She’s about to get married to the man of her dreams, if only her mother will let her actually plan her own wedding and trust her to build her own life after her father’s death.

Jade is drying out. Literally. As a plant in Morris’s home, she and her plant housemates have been slowly wasting away, leaf by falling leaf, since Fred’s death and Morris’s lack of care. She needs to come up with a plan to make her new owner come back to life, no matter what it takes.

New York Times bestselling author Robbie Couch’s Bloom is a wondrous novel where family, love, kindness, and yes, Mother Nature, triumph.

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My Review: Masses of w-verbing = one star irrevocably, irretrievably gone.

Y'all need to stop that. Jade wouldn't like it, stolidly practical being that she is. Neither do I.

It's the PoVs...Jade the succulent jade plant, abandoned by Fred's untimely passing and neglected by Morris; Morris the bereft widower of Fred, who's really withering up and giving up his life from grief (been there, bud); and Sloan who's Fred's youngest daughter, stuck in a cesspit of grief for her favorite parent and still going through with her ghastly, Babbitty mother's vision of what her wedding to her one true love Todd ought to be.

It all kicks off as Sloan has a bridezilla moment in the florist shop and runs right TF away from her bickering mother and aunt as each tries to force her own choices on Sloan. Even though she's never been close to Morris, her father's teaching colleague and now his widower she runs to her dad's house to talk to Morris about walking her down the aisle. Maybe a giant middle finger at her mom, who got left by Fred for Morris ten-plus years ago...but also, the more Sloan tries to get up the nerve to ask him for the favor, a damned good idea. She had Morris as a teacher in the aftermath of The Affair, that turned into the happy marriage. Her Babbitty mother was not likely to be supportive of Sloan spending a lot of time with the happy couple. So she has never really been in close contact with Morris for long, and so does not already know how destroyed he was by Fred's death.

It causes Sloan to stop thinking about her rage at her Babbitty mother to begin to do things with and for Morris, starting with rescuing Jade from the dark corner she was absent-mindedly shoved into and forgotten by grieving Morris. It's how Jade survives, even thrives, as the story unfolds with its very grown-up restructuring of family ties among all these players and more. Todd isn't a flashy or noisy character, yet he loves Sloan enough to get along with her Babbitty mother, her snotty sister, her gross brother and invisible brother-in-law.

Deserves a damn medal, does Todd.

I'll cut the book report short to observe the story continues its gentle way through the different parties as each processes the grief and the inevitable regret of loss sinking in, in the most surprising ways that you can never see coming. A lot of old hurts...Sloan was never the daughter her Babbitty mother wanted her to be, Morris was the love of her Babbitty mother's one great love's life with all the terrible pain that brings, Jade is dealt a violence and fears she will actually die this time...all interleafed very deftly, very structurally appropriately. You don't need to know details until you get there.

I'd say the ending felt...irresolute...but it feels exactly like the endpoints of real-life complex family situations feel. It's not The End, it's the place the strands come together, cross into a knot and start a new strand of everyone's interrelationship. If you liked Remarkably Bright Creatures or Love & Saffron, this will appeal to you.

CARLO F. SENTE'S PAGE: Sword Shatterers series—THE PLAGUE OF GOD & THE SUN KING'S MAN

THE PLAGUE OF GOD (Sword Shatterers #1)
CARLO F. SENTE
self-published (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$17.99 paperback, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Two intertwined tales, both driven by the irresistible allure of gold:

In the present day, Baron Tim de St. Clere faces ruin and desperation, his family legacy slipping away. Enticed by rumors of hidden treasure, he plunges into a perilous quest, only to find himself locked in a dangerous race against a relentless foe, a politician hungry for the same riches. Tim's journey brims with betrayal and sacrifice, yet ultimately unveils a newfound purpose amid the shadows of his past.

Meanwhile, amidst the tumult of ninth-century Europe, Bera Haraldsdatter grapples with the consequences of her allegiance to a ruthless warlord. As realization dawns upon her, she heeds the call of maternal instinct, embarking on a solitary mission to safeguard innocent lives. Against the backdrop of Viking conquest, Bera's defiance echoes through the ages, a testament to the enduring strength of the human spirit.

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My Review: I'll be honest: Tim de St. Clere and his modern-day timeline did not grip me. I comprehend the author's point in making this a dual-timelines story was valid. A modern angle on the story of people making moral choices around wealth, power, and the uses they are put to (in opposition to the way they are, in the stories, used) allows him to present this as a thriller. The dreaded label "historical" or, even more limiting, "time-travel/fantasy novel" would seriously erode the commercial appeal of this tale. Or so he thinks, I assume....

Happen I disagree. Tim and the utterly pointless and barely characterized Julia, and the somewhat haphazardly included Frank and Tamara, are pressured by the expectations and the bedazzlements of twenty-first century life, to no satisfying end. The ninth-century timeline, with Bera fighting tooth and nail to preserve some sense of personal honor and family integrity, is more compelling (if just a bit more, um, leisurely of pace shall we say than is conducive to maintaining suspense) than Tim's efforts to recover material wealth contrast unflatteringly with Bera's powerfully moral quest to dissociate from the immorality seen in the misuse of power by a revolting suzerain.

Well, maybe an inconclusive result to the modern storyline is somehow resolved in book two. I was more than invested enough in Bera's efforts to make reading book two a certainty.

Anyone who enjoyed the National Treasure franchise ought to check out this debut novel.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

THE SUN KING'S MAN (Sword Shatterers #2)
CARLO F. SENTE self-published (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$17.99 paperback, preorder now for delivery on 22 April 2026

Rating: 3.75* of five

Two men separated by centuries. One legendary treasure. A ruthless enemy willing to kill to claim it. Baron Tim de St. Clere’s quest for his ancestor’s hidden treasure is no mere hunt for gold; it is a battle for redemption, family honor, and a fierce determination to right the wrongs of history. As he plunges into the depths of the past, Tim and his allies must confront not only the ghosts of yesteryear but also the ruthless ambition of Alain Lesczinsky, a man whose thirst for power threatens to consume them all.

Against the bloody backdrop of war-torn Europe lies the legacy of the courageous Quentin de St. Clere and his lifelong servant and confidant, Nicklaus Brenden. Their bond, forged in childhood and tempered in the fires of conflict, embodies an unwavering and relentless pursuit of justice. As Quentin fights to save their honor and their lives, Nicklaus stands firmly by his side, a testament to the power of loyalty in the face of overwhelming adversity.

In The Sun King’s Man (Part II of the Sword Shatterers Trilogy), the saga of the St. Cleres unfolds as a breathtaking epic woven through the centuries, resonating with the timeless echoes of honor and betrayal.

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My Review: The scoobygroup reunites! I still think the modern timeline's not the most compelling one, though. I got more interest from the political dimension added by including Alain Lesczinsky's quest to become president of France in addition to the treasure-hunting for its own sake. (It makes little sense when viewed practically, but it's a thriller so roll with it.)

Tim's ancestor, Quentin, in this story is in service to the Sun King (Louis XIV) a man of very questionable morals by modern standards but one of the most powerful people in recorded history...funny how often those things go hand-in-hand. Quentin and his man Nicklaus felt like they were more intimate than master and servant are usually, so of course I enjoyed them through my own headcanon. Quentin's desire to curry favor with the perpetually strapped-for-cash Sun King by sending him a vast fortune in gauds and baubles to help fund his forever wars is very much something I was glad to see *not* come to pass.

I'm surprised by the level of buy-in I have with these characters in their history-inflected treasure hunts that end as usual with enough wiggle room for there to be more storues. Please, Author Sente, develop Tim without his inexplicable desire to be with the bland Julia. Pretty please?

EMILIO PUCCI: The Astonishing Odyssey of a Fashion Icon, fascinating man's interesting life well told

EMILIO PUCCI: The Astonishing Odyssey of a Fashion Icon
TERENCE WARD and IDANNA PUCCI
St. Martin's Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$17.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: The Drama of War and Postwar Italy Through the Life of One of Its Most Celebrated Icons

When people think of fashion designer Emilio Pucci, it is of his bright, swirling colors and easy, freeing fabrics, and everyone from Sophia Loren to Jackie Kennedy donning the eye-catching dresses that personify La Dolce Vita. What few know about Pucci, however, is that before creating his world-famous fashions, he played a critical role in the war against the Nazis, risking his life to smuggle out to the Allies one of the most important documents of World War II.

The authors bring to life Italy’s darkest and brightest days, with the extraordinary Emilio Pucci at its center. Italy at the end of the war was broken, and Florence, which the Pucci family had called home for seven centuries, lay in ruins. Pucci returned home bruised in body and soul, having endured trials that would have broken many, but, like Italy itself, rose from the ashes, and went on to design some of the most exuberant fashion of all time. He helped usher in a new era of creativity in Italy, which again became a mecca of fashion, art, design, film, and more.

A host of supporting characters—including Mussolini’s daughter and Allen Dulles, and, most importantly, the timeless city of Florence and the mythic island of Capri—enrich this compelling narrative that will draw readers of all kinds, from war and history buffs, to fashionistas and fans of espionage thrillers along with the millions of readers who devour books about Italy and her many charms.

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My Review: Born in the Kingdom of Italy midway through World War I, Pucci was in the prime of his life during WWII becoming a flyer in the Royal Italian Air Force; he was an aristocrat, deeply in the circles familiar with Mussolini and was his daughter Edda Ciano's BFF. He was responsible for the Ciano Diaries reaching Allied hands and Edda Ciano escaping the Germans' tender ministrations as the daughter of a traitor to the German cause. (Husband Galeazzo not so much; murdered by the Gestapo.) Pucci was himself tortured by the Gestapo as a follow-on consequence of being involved with Edda and her family. No great revelations were given by him, apparently.

It interested me that Idanna Pucci, his niece, co-created the story told herein. Pucci's daughter Laudomia maintains the Pucci archives; her mother Cristina is still living; how is it neither of them chose to write this fascinating story? It's possible the Idanna Pucci, being their elder, simply had more perspective; and she is an author of four decades' standing and her husband Ward (ten years her junior) slightly less duration at twenty-plus years. The couple have also produced documentaries.

It is clear Pucci deserves this attention because he was always somewhere interesting as world events unfolded. Never central, but frequently spotlighted, as he was after the frankly horrifying 1966 Florentine floods when he was instrumental in getting the US fashion industry as well as the general population to volunteer in the monumental cleanup as well as donate money and material aid. It is no exaggeration to say the assistance provided at his behest changed many Florentine lives.

Pucci's stamp on the pop culture of the 1960s was immense, as well. His color palette and choices of fabrics for his collections were widely emulated. He was well-enough known that my kid-self knew his name. I saw his work knowingly, because Braniff was my mother's preferred airline and their stewardesses (it's what they were called in those days) proudly discussed their suits as designed by Pucci. It accords well with the 1937 Reed College graduate's entire life spent in very classy social life...he designed the Reed College ski team's togs...and reinforces the perception of him as a member of a global elite.

It was a very interesting read that felt less like a biography (despite its chronological organization) than it did a family chat. If I'd been invited to an Easter feast in Palazzo Pucci, this is the kind of knowledge I'd've expected to come away with. Only here it's in depth and extensively footnoted.

Fashionistas, Italian and WWII as well as 1960s culture's history buffs are strongly encouraged to get themselves a copy. I suspect the most disappointment will be felt by the fashionistas, as that genre's devoted readers are not always terribly interested in name-dropping outside their area of fascination. Pucci being who he was, a staid local politician as well as a trendsetting designer, there are many diversions from purely the fashion world. It is, I promise, worth all y'all's time to venture a bit outside the boundaries of subject-matter interest. On all sides of Pucci's fascinating life's activities.

AMERICAN SPIRITS, sapphic suds with a side of sly social commentary

AMERICAN SPIRITS
ANNA DORN
Simon & Schuster (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A love letter to pop music, American Spirits charts an icon’s fall—and an obsessive fangirl’s rise.

Thirty-eight-year-old Blue Velour has finally achieved the critical acclaim she’s long been chasing. Over the last decade, she’s released six studio albums to mixed reviews, landing her somewhere between performance artist and niche legend. But her latest album, Blue’s Beard—a cheeky reference to the subreddit fanatically dedicated to her suspected secret relationship with longtime producer Sasha Harlow—has rocket-launched her reputation. Blue hires nerdy superfan Rose Lutz as her assistant to handle the pressures of the upcoming tour.

When the pandemic shuts down the tour, however, Blue decides to hole up in the redwoods with Sasha to make another album. An aspiring singer herself, Rose is frothing at the mouth to be isolated in a cabin with these two legends, but what begins as a creative retreat spirals into a flurry of chaos and betrayal—culminating in a tragic act that changes their lives forever.

Smart, entertaining, and edgy, American Spirits is a compelling exploration of the dark side of fame.

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My Review: A Star is Born with Lana del Rey as Norman Maine. Let that sink in.

So I was pretty invested early on, I like the idea of a lesbian A Star is Born more than you can probably imagine, and from Author Dorn's very, very capable pen...! Home run ball, meet bat, amirite? Well, I was right. Just...not all the way to the fences for that ball.

I don't see much point in going over the plot, it's accurately summarized in the publisher's synopsis. The flavor of the book is more what I rate this author's work on. I enjoy the line-by-line reading of Author Dorn's work so much, f/ex Blue Velour's description of Ayn Rand as "the original girl boss", that I was carried along on a satisfied cloud of smiles as I absorbed her digs and jabs at the culture of Fame, its corrosive loss of perspective for the famous and the fans, the careful but there delineation of the societal systems that Fame depends on and reinforces as toxic and harmful. I was set to give this story a rave review.

Then came The Twist℠.

The observant among you will note the rating above. That is how much I disliked, and always dislike, this framing device as revealed near the end of the book. No I will not discuss details, no one dares do such a thing while the Spoiler Stasi lurk among us. It is a framing device that is completely ordinary, does not cause others the anger it evokes from me, and will bother very few, if any, of y'all. It's my quirk. I write reviews of books because sometimes someone discovers a new writer when I gush (or excoriate, I know of one case where someone read my line "...I, a charter member of the “Eradicate Ivy Compton-Burnett” Society" in a two-star review and found her newest reading passion), and to help people on the bubble about picking up a new book to gather information about it, and to vent my feelings about writers and writing. I've written a lot of reviews...there are over 2,000 posts on this blog alone...so the reader can get a bead on my personal taste. It's good to know your source's biases. So if you feel I'm being unfair to Author Dorn by not rating this particular book in line with the majority of the story's genuine excellence, understand that my opinion of her writing talent and expertise is as strong as ever...I simply do not like at all the particular twist she, in her authorial capacity, chose to use in this story.

It's not meant to discourage potential readers seeking sapphic melodrama, fame-culture takedowns, or the sheer pleasure of reading her prose, from getting the book. If you've been thinking about Perfume & Pain and wondering when the next dose is going to soothe your craving, don't drop it...just maybe borrow this one from the library first. You might adore what bothers me, and want a copy to keep on your shelves.

I can very much see this reaction. In fact, I hope you feel that way because I want Author Dorn's next book as soon as Simon & Schuster can get it out.

AN HONEST LIVING: A Memoir of Peculiar Itineraries, or "needs must when the devil drives"

AN HONEST LIVING: A Memoir of Peculiar Itineraries
STEVEN SALAITA
Fordham University Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$18.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.9* of five

The Publisher Says: An exiled professor’s journey from inside and beyond academe

In the summer of 2014, Steven Salaita was fired from a tenured position in American Indian Studies at the University of Illinois for his unwavering stance on Palestinian human rights and other political controversies. A year later, he landed a job in Lebanon, but that too, ended badly. With no other recourse, Salaita found himself trading his successful academic career to an hourly salaried job. Told primarily from behind the wheel of a school bus–a vantage point from which Salaita explores social anxiety, suburban architecture, political alienation, racial oppression, working-class solidarity, professional malfeasance, and the joy of chauffeuring children to and from school–An Honest Living describes the author’s decade of turbulent post-professorial life and his recent return to the lectern.

Steven Salaita was practically born to a life in academia. His father taught physics at an HBCU in southern West Virginia and his earliest memories are of life on campus and the cinder walls of the classroom. It was no surprise that he ended up in the classroom straight after graduate school. Yet three of his university jobs–Virginia Tech, the University of Illinois, and the American University of Beirut {AUB}–ended in public controversy. Shaken by his sudden notoriety and false claims of antisemitism, Salaita found himself driving a school bus to make ends meet. While some considered this just punishment for his anti-Zionist beliefs, Steven found that driving a bus provided him with not just a means to pay the bills but a path toward freedom of thought.

Now ten years later, with a job at American University at Cairo, Salaita reconciles his past with his future. His restlessness has found a home, yet his return to academe is met with the same condition of fugitivity from whence he was an occasion for defiance, not conciliation. An Honest Living presents an intimate personal narrative of the author’s decade of professional joys and travails.

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My Review: I have experienced being in the crosshairs of the True Believers. It was not as awful for me, old retiree and disabled, as it was for able-bodied new dad and advanced-degree having Steve. My career is an avocation, not a livelihood; I read books and write about them whether or not anyone pats attention to me. I do not do this for money so I am more insulated from that harm, which made me feel the nervousness of Author Steve's situation more sharply. If I'm this tense when piled on, dismissed in demeaning terms, then blocked by people I'd assumed were not judgmental, how must someone with a job he likes and wants to keep doing as well as a family to support feel?!

One thing is for sure, he felt the need to get a paycheck very quickly. Leaving a professorship for a seat at the front of a schoolbus was not the comedown I think his enemies within academia thought it would be. It certainly makes me understand Mao's cultural revolution more clearly...tell an academic he's now a "menial worker" and watch him wither like a salted slug. Not Author Steve. He did the "menial" job, thought about what principles and ethics are for, and came out of the situation with very cute anecdotes about his kid passengers, and a damn good job in Cairo working for the American University in Cairo. (I read a lot of their press's books.) I'm very glad for that because I think Author Steve belongs in the driver's seat of young peoples' education, always has but even moreso after his recent experiences. He can now speak with authority about the hypocrisy and the shabbiness of the Establishment's vaunted belief in the free exchange of ideas and the protection of the right to free speech within their institutions.

It's worthwhile to read a memoir by someone who's been victimized for standing up for his principles. It's fun to read the wry reflections of a man who's never lost his principles under pressure. It's deeply instructive to take the tour of modern cancel culture with one of the canceled. A book doing all of these things is a must-read in my never-remotely-humble opinion.

THE INFINITE SADNESS OF SMALL APPLIANCES, cute while being trenchant

THE INFINITE SADNESS OF SMALL APPLIANCES
GLENN DIXON
Atria Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$12.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.9* of five

The Publisher Says: In a near future, where even the smallest of appliances are sentient, a young Roomba vacuum sets out to save the humans of her house from a rising technological power in this compelling, original novel.

In a self-running, smart house, a young and sentient Roomba listens as her owner, Harold, reads aloud to his dying wife, Edie. Mesmerized by To Kill a Mockingbird and craving the human connection she witnesses in Harold’s stories, the little vacuum renames herself Scout and embarks on a journey of self-discovery.

But when Edie passes away, Scout and her fellow sentient appliances discover that there are sinister forces in their midst. The omnipresent Grid, which monitors every household in the City, seeks to remove Harold from his home, a place he’s lived in for fifty years.

With the help of Adrian, a neighborhood boy who grows close to Scout and Harold, as well as Kate, Harold and Edie’s formerly estranged daughter, the humans and the appliances must come together to outwit the all-controlling Grid lest they risk losing everything they hold dear.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: I was pretty sure this read would be very twee and deeply, annoyingly cute. I might've sat through a few too many playings of The Brave Little Toaster in the late 1980s, resulting in my willingness to read about Kirby the vacuum cleaner's great-grandappliance Scout the Roomba.

That's my story and I'm stickin' to it.

I was charmed by Scout as she becomes self-aware, chooses her name based on what she overhears abour Scout in Harold's reading aloud, then decides to become Atticus and fight the Grid (aka AI-dominated society) to keep Harold in his home.

Why Harold and Adrian become aware of the self-awareness of the machines around them and do not immediately light out for the hills, I could not tell you. I went with it because I also watched WALL-E raptly and accepted its lapses of logic because I was enchanted by the pluck li'l guy's selfhood. Same situation here. I did not think the worldbuilding was very well-handled but I was willing to skip it because this is a feel-good story with elements of social commentary that I agree with. As a card-carrying old man I thought Harold was very well-drawn compared to anyone else. Except Scout. She's the star of the show. A Roomba on a mission is clearly not to be messed with. Kate, the daughter he and Edie lost to her own foolish stiff-necked pride, was not much more than a place-holder, and that was just fine by me. I saw plenty of her in the flesh over the decades so no further text needed please and thank you.

So my verdict? Check it out of the library on the day you're a bit bored of the world's evils yet not steaming mad at the idiots who keep shoving their unwanted greed-increasing systems into our homes. You'll be rewarded by a gentle, sweet individual in Roomba form who wants to do the right thing by those she has learned to care for.

I wish Sam Altman and that fuck Zuck were more like Scout and less the bastards behind the Grid.

SELF-HELP FROM THE MIDDLE AGES: What the Seven Deadly Sins Can Teach Us About Living, never forget people are ALWAYS people not labels

SELF-HELP FROM THE MIDDLE AGES: What the Seven Deadly Sins Can Teach Us About Living
PETER JONES
Doubleday (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: From medieval historian Peter Jones comes a groundbreaking guide to navigating contemporary life through the wisdom of the Seven Deadly Sins.

Peter Jones was teaching medieval history at a university in Siberia when his third icy winter there plunged him into a dark place. Luckily, he knew something few of us know—that for all its reputation for darkness and superstition, the Middle Ages were the golden age of self-help. So he set out on a journey to explore the wisdom of medieval scholars, saints, and mystics, looking for an alternative path through the challenges of modern life.

Never in history, Jones marvels in Self-Help from the Middle Ages, has so much energy and talent gone into studying how the mind works as in the medieval centuries. Although today we think of the Seven Deadly Sins as a catalog of forbidden behavior, in the Middle Ages, at the height of their currency, they were a path to self-knowledge and self-forgiveness. Together, pride, envy, anger, sloth, greed, gluttony and lust were a psychological map that laid out seven basic patterns of thought, showing how our thinking can go astray and how we can find our way home.

In Self-Help from the Middle Ages, Jones explores each sin, searching the hellscapes of Hieronymous Bosch and Giotto, the intimate confessions of Dante and Margery Kempe, and the personal struggles of Francis of Assisi and Catherine of Siena. Along the way he discovers a treasure trove of lost truths about temptation, frustration, addiction, compulsion, burnout, rage, fear, anxiety, and grief that still pulse with life. With beautiful illustrations drawn from medieval art and literature, his book is a gift to all who love history and anyone who has ever sought wisdom from the past.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: What happens when a scholarly British man with an advanced medieval-history degree from an American school gets a seriously good job in Russophone academia? He moves to Siberia! (Before the Ukraine war begins. He lives in Madrid now.)

Siberia. The place Russia sends people to die in misery. A byword, in US English anyway, for grim, awful exile, for the place you're sent to pay for your sins. I'm afraid this is where I start revealing my prejudices: I envied this polyglot scholar for his seriously good luck. I envied him for living a life I'm still feeling angry at being denied a chance to pursue (though Siberia was never in my mind as an option). So already two of the deadly sins ticked off—again—my life's list of the damned things committed. Oh okay, I'm getting the point now, thought I.

Siberia, the severeness of it, wore on the spirit of Author Jones. He experienced the dark night of the soul, the terrible trackless waste of depression. Being a scholar by nature the solution was obvious: you are not the first person to have this problem. How did those others handle it? The seven deadly sins offer up a schema for understanding the workings of the human mind as well as a perspective check on what your emotional weather really means.

These "sins" are, of course, deeply enmeshed with christian concepts of a religiously ordered universe. Sin more broadly is a religious concept of transgressing a divinely ordained code and appears in multiple religious traditions. It's only natural that a medievalist from England would gravitate towards concepts familiar from his scholarly activities.

In the memoir portions of this narrative, the author evokes very movingly the experience of researching, identifying, and handling medieval manuscripts that contain the seven deadly sins and their explications of how these can be used to improve one's soul. The goal in these readings iss to give the reader a map towards salvation, union with the god of the christians; but as Author Jones elucidates, how different is that goal from modern self-help books' stated goal of helping one become better, happier, more adept at navigating your life. People have sought ways to understand their inner workings, how to cultivate their minds/souls into "better" or "happier" behaviors since the oracle at Delphi...much earlier than that, I am certain, because a pithy aperçu like "know thyself" isn't a first draft, and it is carved in literal stone so it's been workshopped to a fare-thee-well, though it wasn't done in writing so the records are implicit only.

We're highly intelligent, us humans, curious about ourselves because we're so different from other creatures. We have access to the thoughts and the musings and the conclusions of millennia of our forebears. A scholar would know where and how to look for insight into issues common to us all. Descriptions of depression, of psychological maladjustments, maladaptive behaviors, and solutions to the problems arising therefrom, might vary but the impetus to look for ways to be, feel, act "better" is constant. Author Jones seeks the commonality between the seven deadly sins and modern self-help schemata because he needs help, knows our ancestors...sons, daughters, lovers, spouses just like us...needed help figuring out the best ways to be fulfilled. He accomplishes this in the way that best uses his personal strengths. He tells us about his quest in plainly personal terms, clearly stating his stakes in starting the quest. (I frame it as a quest because he's a medievalist and "happiness" is a grail quest.) It is more this strand of his narrative that I found involving, engaging. I was less invested in the rubber-meets-the-road formulations of how the personally offensive to me religious concept of the sins themselves represent paths to self-knowledge. This is a very useful and, to me, persuasive argument. It's offensive to me because the religion it's embedded within is evil and vile, used to create division and enact horrors of cruelty; if there is a "God" as they name her, and she tolerates these terrible acts committed in her nsme, she is not the kind of god who deserves worship.

None of that is addressed in this book; I can't offer an otherwise fully merited fifth star because to do so is to accept a fundamental agreement with an argument for "God" and her christian system's validity.

This is purely a personal inability to tolerate any support of the christian worldview,however tacit it may be, as in any way moral or positively constructive.