THE MYSTERY OF HENRI PICK, clever and fun, entertaining and sly

THE MYSTERY OF HENRI PICK
DAVID FOENKINOS (tr. Sam Taylor)
Pushkin Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$13.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: The delightful first title in a new collaboration with Channel 4's Walter Presents: a fast-paced comic mystery enriched by a deep love of books

In the small town of Crozon in Brittany, a library houses manuscripts that were rejected for publication: the faded dreams of aspiring writers. Visiting while on holiday, young editor Delphine Despero is thrilled to discover a novel so powerful that she feels compelled to bring it back to Paris to publish it. The book is a sensation, prompting fevered interest in the identity of its author—apparently one Henri Pick, a now-deceased pizza chef from Crozon. Sceptics cry that the whole thing is a hoax: how could this man have written such a masterpiece? An obstinate journalist, Jean-Michel Rouche, heads to Brittany to investigate.

By turns farcical and moving, The Mystery of Henri Pick is a fast-paced comic mystery enriched by a deep love of books—and of the authors who write them.

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My Review: I'm guessin' a majority of y'all don't know about Walter Presents (link above). It's presented on PBS in the US, which means it's hidden from most people most of the time. Hard to create a breakout hit in the media landscape we have; harder still to do it with subtitles.

Damn shame, that. I haven't seen the film of this story...ain't paying for Prime Video when they shove ads at me (now it's the US streamer as of 2025)...but as a very French story that isn't overtly snobby or très precieuse in its roots and branches, I'd like to see it have success commensurate with its quality.

Plus it's set in Brittany, one of the more anti-Parisian-hegemony parts of France. Imagine Oregon versus California, or upstate New York versus NYC. That kind of underdog struggle ethos suffuses this entire story.

It's really a fascinating story about books that only exist as created by their authors...much in the spirit of The Brautigan Library, follow the link for their introduction and mission statement...and housed in a special collection located as far from the cultural hegemon that is Publishing in France. That alone would've made my ears prick up. Author Foenkinos has a couple books coming out at the end of October 2025 which I've written happy reviews for; this book has, I'm sad to say, languished unread and unreviewed because Reasons. Not good ones, but Reasons.

Fixing it now has been a real pleasure. Author Foenkinos via translator Sam Taylor has built a good take-down machine, skewering our need to see behind the scenes and dig up the dirt on every single damn thing in the world...no sense of "happy to have {thing}" survives the compulsion to find out what's wrong with it. When nothing's wrong with it, something wrong with that. Being pathologically in the know is not entirely new but has hit the gas hard this decade. As our journalist character Jean-Michel Rouche exemplifies, we want the stones turned and the tea spilled, and we want it NOW.

Using all of literary culture as his sources, Author Foenkinos has probably made a lot of us more aware than ever that the world of publishing, the world of literature, and the world of us readers who lap it all up aren't the same, but are all chock-a-block with the best, the most fun, the most amusing stories, and they're all served up on demand...what a glorious time to be alive! That is the light side to the darker one enumerated above. One necessitates the other at this moment in technological societal development.

The knowing nudges and the sly side-eye moments are all well thought out. I appreciated The author's explicit acknowledgment of midcentury monadnock Brautigan, whose work has maybe not aged that well; thinking of In Watermelon Sugar in particular. Nothing ages faster than Utopia...though it would've been nicer than the world we got. (Nineteen sixty-four, the one in that book, never felt as far away as it does now.) Reminders of the very French attitude of affection and respect for literature in A Novel Bookstore by Laurence Cossé abounded for me. It's the same playfully exaggerated attitude of piss-taking that unites them.

Plot developments aren't going to surprise anyone. You're reading this story to savor the soufflé not fill up on the steak. Everyone, Delphine the editor, Frédéric the novelist manqué, Jean-Michel mentioned above...all raise their piece of the froth high for you to delight in. It's light on suspense and filled with thousands of bubbles effervescing from the sense of fun underlying the project.

You know your own humor best. read a sample; if it doesn't hit, don't commit. It hit me just right, and right when I could use it most.

THE GENIUS BAT: The Secret Life of the Only Flying Mammal, one of the most fascinating creatures gets its literary due

THE GENIUS BAT: The Secret Life of the Only Flying Mammal
YOSSI YOVEL
St. Martin's Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$16.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: An awe-inspiring tour of bat world by the world’s leading expert

With nearly 1500 species, bats account for more than twenty percent of mammalian species. The most successful and most diverse group of mammals, bats come in different sizes, shapes, and colors, from the tiny bumblebee bat to the giant golden-crowned flying fox. Some bats eat fruit and nectar; others eat frogs, scorpions or fish. Vampire bats feed on blood. Bats are the only mammals that can fly; their fingers have elongated through evolution to become wings with a unique super-flexible skin membrane stretched between them. Their robust immune system is one of the reasons for their extreme longevity. A tiny bat can live for forty years.

Yossi Yovel, an ecologist and a neurobiologist, is passionate about deciphering the secrets of bats, including using AI to decipher their communication. In The Genius Bat he brings to vivid life these amazing creatures as well as the obsessive and sometime eccentric people who study them–bat scientists. From muddy rainforests, to star-covered night deserts, from guest houses in Thailand, to museum drawers full of fossils in New York, this is an eye-opening and entertaining account of a mighty mammal.

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

My Review: My homeplace of Austin, Texas, has a huge population of Mexican free-tailed bats that live in the Congress Avenue Bridge; that's the way I've thought of bats as a result. Cultural icons, things to put up special habitats for, little mosquito-munching guano factories...there are caves in and around my old part of Central Texas that house colonies of the skeeter-eaters and welcome to 'em, y'all.

One of the main strands in this read was about the intense social nature of the bat as a genus. I am fascinated by their lives, so similar to ours as humans packed in together, so full of care and altruism to balance out the conflict and crowding. A neurobiologist is very much able to bring the reality of bat sociality to its most advantageous light. Author Yossi's clear fascination with and sympathy for the bat makes me feel some hope for these persecuted, threatened members of our world.

Habitat loss is a main threat to bats worldwide. These are beings with simple enough needs that humans, with our tremendous cognitive abilities, ought to be able to come up with better solutions than "watch and hope" to the issues of their protection. The book's structure, starting chapters with Author Yossi's personable, warm voice telling his own tales of events and incidents, then moving as seamlessly as I could hope for to the researches and results of others, kept me in the flow of this read.

While it is non-fiction with an advocate for the subject's point-of-view, it does not read as a hectoring or pleading or accusatory polemic. It felt to me as though a charming guest came to my living room to enjoy himself, and to express that pleasure by sharing his own experiences. It is a welcome feeling, a relaxed and...to my bat-friendly self...relaxing way to learn some really surprising new-to-me information.

I took a half-star off for some of the author's possibly-meant-as-humor slaps at people not like him.

SIDDHARTH KARA'S PAGE: THE ZORG: A Tale of Greed and Murder That Inspired the Abolition of Slavery; & COBALT RED: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives

COBALT RED: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives
SIDDHARTH KARA
St. Martin's Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$11.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: The revelatory New York Times and Publishers Weekly bestseller, shortlisted for the Financial Times Best Business Book of the Year Award.

An unflinching investigation reveals the human rights abuses behind the Congo’s cobalt mining operation―and the moral implications that affect us all.

Cobalt Red is the searing, first-ever exposé of the immense toll taken on the people and environment of the Democratic Republic of the Congo by cobalt mining, as told through the testimonies of the Congolese people themselves. Activist and researcher Siddharth Kara has traveled deep into cobalt territory to document the testimonies of the people living, working, and dying for cobalt. To uncover the truth about brutal mining practices, Kara investigated militia-controlled mining areas, traced the supply chain of child-mined cobalt from toxic pit to consumer-facing tech giants, and gathered shocking testimonies of people who endure immense suffering and even die mining cobalt.

Cobalt is an essential component to every lithium-ion rechargeable battery made today, the batteries that power our smartphones, tablets, laptops, and electric vehicles. Roughly 75 percent of the world’s supply of cobalt is mined in the Congo, often by peasants and children in sub-human conditions. Billions of people in the world cannot conduct their daily lives without participating in a human rights and environmental catastrophe in the Congo. In this stark and crucial book, Kara argues that we must all care about what is happening in the Congo―because we are all implicated.

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

My Review: Remember King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa? More than a quarter-century later, that story of exploitation and abuse of human beings from the vilest era of European colonialism had no effect on the world. Handwringing and smug self-assurance that we would never, it can't happen again, are herewith disproved. We did; it did.

And not many of "us" care, or act like we care, or say or do anything to indicate to our corporate masters that we disapprove. After reading this book, maybe a few will take some time to hunt up contact details for their pad/laptop/cellphone manufacturer and let them know...

...

...well, it's pretty much useless to finish that sentence. Siddharth Kara writes his fingers to the bone, he goes hot miserable places, and he comes and tells us the impassioned truth about how our "clean" energy devices depend on the slave labor of millions...so does every plateful of food you eat...and we go full Joker mode...

...and move on.

After reading Author Kara's interviewee who interrupts him to finish the sentence, "...you work in horrible conditions..." with

"No, we work in our graves."

And you and I sit here and stare at our cobalt-powered screens.

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

THE ZORG: A Tale of Greed and Murder That Inspired the Abolition of Slavery
SIDDHARTH KARA
St. Martin's Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$15.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 5* of five

FINALIST for the 2026 PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction! Winner announced 31 March 2026.

Time's The 100 Must-Read Books of 2025 selection

A New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2025 selection

The Publisher Says: From Pulitzer finalist and New York Times bestselling author of Cobalt Red: A notorious slave ship incident that led to the abolition of slavery in the UK and sparked the US abolitionist movement

In late October 1780, a slave ship set sail from the Netherlands, bound for Africa’s Windward and Gold Coasts, where it would take on its human cargo. The Zorg (a Dutch word meaning “care”) was one of thousands of such ships, but the harrowing events that ensued on its doomed journey were unique.

After reaching Africa, the Zorg was captured by a privateer and came under British command. With a new captain and crew, the ship was crammed with 442 slaves and departed in 1781 for Jamaica. But a series of unpredictable weather events and mistakes in navigation left the ship drastically off course and running out of water. So a proposition was put forth: Save the crew and the most valuable of the slaves—by throwing dozens of people, starting with women and children, overboard.

What followed was a fascinating legal drama in England’s highest court that turned the brutal calculus of slavery into front-page news. The case of the Zorg catapulted the nascent anti-slavery movement from a minor evangelical cause to one of the most consequential moral campaigns in history—sparking the abolitionist movement in both England and the young United States.

Siddharth Kara utilizes primary-source research, gripping storytelling, and painstaking investigation to uncover the Zorg’s journey, the lives and fates of the slaves on board, and the mysterious identity of the abolitionist who finally revealed the truth of what happened on the ship.

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

My Review: Whistleblowers are reviled by the greedy capitalists because they interfere with the satiation of the actually evil levels of greed that propel acts like these in the book.

There is a reason y'all's religions, one and all, condemn greed. Not that it ever has the tiniest effect on most "religious" people's behavior, nor the behavior of those who claim they work for the common good, nor really any other human being I've ever known. Yes, before some annoying twidgee says it, I include myself.

Like Cobalt Red (q.v.), Author Kara knows exactly what will give you nightmares, and deploys that thing in search of your conscience. It's history, not current events, I hear you echoing my bleat of self-justification. Back to Cobalt Red you should go.

The relief from guilt is the sheer outrageousness of the court case fought over this murderous event. It's something that I definitely see making a huge splash in the press of the day. It would be a Frontline documentary today. In any event, it is historical record, so there is no escaping the ugly truth:
We have known the facts of slavery for generations and done the bare minimum to end it, more to ameliorate our feelings of greed and guilt than because we see the enslaved as real people.

Sleep tight.

THE FIGHT FOR FREE SPEECH: Ten Cases That Define Our First Amendment Freedoms, four years on yet could be about century-old norms

THE FIGHT FOR FREE SPEECH: Ten Cases That Define Our First Amendment Freedoms
IAN ROSENBERG
NYU Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$18.95 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A user’s guide to understanding contemporary free speech issues in the United States

Americans today are confronted by a barrage of questions relating to their free speech freedoms. What are libel laws, and do they need to be changed to stop the press from lying? Does Colin Kaepernick have the right to take a knee? Can Saturday Night Live be punished for parody? While citizens are grappling with these questions, they generally have nowhere to turn to learn about the extent of their First Amendment rights.

The Fight for Free Speech answers this call with an accessible, engaging user’s guide to free speech. Media lawyer Ian Rosenberg distills the spectrum of free speech law down to ten critical issues. Each chapter in this book focuses on a contemporary free speech question―from student walkouts for gun safety to Samantha Bee’s expletives, from Nazis marching in Charlottesville to the muting of adult film star Stormy Daniels― and then identifies, unpacks, and explains the key Supreme Court case that provides the answers. Together these fascinating stories create a practical framework for understanding where our free speech protections originated and how they can develop in the future. As people on all sides of the political spectrum are demanding their right to speak and be heard, The Fight for Free Speech is a handbook for combating authoritarianism, protecting our democracy, and bringing an understanding of free speech law to all.

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

My Review: A book from 2021 that enumerates the right to free speech busily being attacked, restricted, breached, and ignored in 2025.

Never in my lifetime have I seen such a rapid destruction of a Constitutional right. Read this to understand, in meticulously stated detail, what it is that we are seeing ripped away from us. It should not feel, as it is meant to be a warning, as though it is discussing a Golden Age now dimmed by having cartloads of ordure heaped all over it.

The twenty examples of the defense and delineation chosen by Author Rosenberg demonstrate in accessible non-weapons-grade prose show the flexibility of and the necessity for its existence. We allow further erosions and floutings at our greatest, personal peril.
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A SILENT FURY: The El Bordo Mine Fire, in case you wondered why Mexicans do not love the US

A SILENT FURY: The El Bordo Mine Fire
YURI HERRERA (tr. Lisa Dillman)
And Other Stories (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$13.95 paperback, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: On March 10, 1920, in Pachuca, Mexico, the United States Smelting, Refining and Mining Company―the largest employer in the region, and known simply as the Company―may have been guilty of murder.

The alert was first raised at six in the morning: a fire was tearing through the El Bordo mine. After a short evacuation, the mouths of the shafts were sealed. Company representatives hastened to assert that “no more than ten” men remained in the shafts at the time of their closure, and Company doctors hastened to proclaim them dead. The El Bordo stayed shut for six days.

When the mine was opened there was a sea of charred bodies―men who had made it as far as the exit, only to find it shut. The final death toll was not ten, but eighty-seven. And there were seven survivors.

Now, a century later, acclaimed novelist Yuri Herrera has carefully reconstructed a worker’s tragedy at once globally resonant and deeply personal: Pachuca is his hometown. His sensitive and deeply humanizing work is an act of restitution for the victims and their families, bringing his full force of evocation to bear on the injustices that suffocated this horrific event into silence.

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

My Review: Short, sharp bark of outrage at a century's remove. Corporate personhood was taking shape as this nightmarish dereliction of responsibility and duty of care took place; no punishment, no justice, not even the cold, uncaring offer of cash recompense was ever levied. Certainly none was offered.

Yuri Herrera's emotional recounting of these events is short, never easy to read, and quite possibly better in theory than practice. I agree with his points, and yet was feeling hectored by the read. Might better've been a novel, with the incandescent outrage presented from multiple PoVs.

As it is, this is an anticapitalist screed for those of us already on the pews.

FUCK NEOLIBERALISM: Translating Resistance, ignore the "worty dirds" to focus on what needs resisting

FUCK NEOLIBERALISM: Translating Resistance
SIMON SPRINGER
PM Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$9.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: In a long history of ruination and destruction, neoliberalism is the most recent and virulent form of capitalism. This book is a call to action against the most persistent and pestilent disease of our time. Translated into over twenty different languages, the book offers a call to action that transcends local contexts and speaks to the violent global conditions of our neoliberal age.

Fuck Neoliberalism: Translating Resistance is a worldwide middle finger to the all-encompassing ideology of our era.

With translations into languages from across the globe, including Mandarin, German, Indonesian, Spanish, Hindi, Italian, Korean, and many more, this book brings those translations together, accompanied with short essays from each translator that explain the reasons why they translated the text and describes the struggles against neoliberalism in their regions. With these translations, this book highlights the international nature of resistance to the totalitarian ideology of neoliberalism.

Featuring a cover produced by renowned artist Ed Repka (a.k.a. the King of Thrash Metal Art), this internationalized, heavy-metal rant against the all-powerful ideology highlights a chink in its armor. When people across the world find a way to communicate a shared message and stand together, resistance can be both beautiful and inspiring.

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

My Review: You're on board with the sentiment or you're not; but on or off, it would do all y'all a power of good to read words from those who've chosen to translate this (surprisingly mild, given its épater-la-bourgeoisie title) essay into their languages of choice, usually of their homelands.

Understand that book-banning, speech-squelching, and thought-controlling has gone on forever and becomes the default when too many "nice" people do not make the affirmative effort to resist it. Yes, even when it bothers you, even when it...gasp...offends you. Unless the speech is advocating violence, hate crimes, or censorship of those disliked by the powerful, it is in your personal interest to actively support free speech.

Worty dirds are not grounds for censorship. Rude gestures are not grounds for censorship. Demands for brown-skinned people to "go home" are. Demands for personal enemies to be persecuted by state power are. Let's stay clear about this.

Even if you never read a word of this loudmouthed little book, buy one to support firebrand publishers in their mission to save us from the worst consequences of our lazy, "nice" conformity.

A GUARDIAN AND A THIEF, FINALIST FOR THE 2025 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD

A GUARDIAN AND A THIEF
MEGHA MAJUMDAR
Alfred A. Knopf (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

The Carol Shields Prize for Fiction’s SHORTLIST nominee! Winner announced 2 June 2026.

LONGLISTED for the 2026 Women’s Prize for Fiction. Shortlist coming on 22 April 2026.

Time's The 100 Must-Read Books of 2025 selection

One of Lit Hub’s 43 Favorite Books of 2025!

A New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2025 selection

On the ALA's 2026 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence longlist.

Rating: 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: FINALIST FOR THE 2025 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD (Winner announced 19 November 2025) • FINALIST FOR THE KIRKUS PRIZE • Megha Majumdar’s electrifying new novel, following her acclaimed New York Times bestseller A Burning—longlisted for the National Book Award—is a piercing and propulsive tour de force.

In a near-future Kolkata beset by flooding and famine, Ma, her two-year-old daughter, and her elderly father are just days from leaving the collapsing city behind to join Ma’s husband in Ann Arbor, Michigan. After procuring long-awaited visas from the consulate, they pack their bags for the flight to America. But in the morning they awaken to discover that Ma’s purse, containing their treasured immigration documents, has been stolen.

Set over the course of one week, A Guardian and a Thief tells two stories: the story of Ma’s frantic search for the thief while keeping hunger at bay during a worsening food shortage; and the story of Boomba, the thief, whose desperation to care for his family drives him to commit a series of escalating crimes whose consequences he cannot fathom. With stunning control and command, Megha Majumdar paints a kaleidoscopic portrait of two families, each operating from a place of ferocious love and undefeated hope, each discovering how far they will go to secure their children’s future as they stave off encroaching catastrophe.

A masterful new work from one of the most exciting voices of her generation.

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

My Review: No better way to explain the world to itself exists than the telling of stories. We do not all create for ourselves stories of consequences and of forces that exact consequences absent any input from ourselves. It's why we have writers, they do this heavy lifting for us.

Author Majumdar does the lifting with a careful design and a powerful effort. Boomba, Ma, Dadu, and Mishti are all very much people in my story-eye. I know why Boomba did what he did; I know why Ma does what she does; I am in each place seeing each reality, feeling the desperation in each action.

Choosing the best of your very bad options is an evergreen storytelling plot. Being a guardian, a thief, a human, is always a moving spot on a spectrum, and highly dependent on the point of view of the observer. Nothing in life is fixed, or at least not for very long; Boomba exemplifies the observer-makes-the-interpretation paradox. No one in this story is going to end up happy. "HappiER" is even a stretch. Yet they all strive, they all do something, no matter how weird to our twice-removed eyes.

It can never, ever be more obvious that the drive to live, the will to go on because on is the only way to go, is the proper material of storytelling. We are creatures of story who require heartening to go on, even though it is the only way To Go. Hearten yourselves. Go on.

It was her duty, as a guardian, to put into action the beautiful ideal of hope. Ma thought harshly: This was what it looked like. Hope for the future was no shy bloom but a blood-maddened creature, fanged and toothed, with its own knowledge of history’s hostilities and the cages of the present. Hope wasn’t soft or tender. It was mean. It snarled. It fought. It deceived. On this day, hope lived in the delivery of gold to a man who might be a scammer, and, perhaps, hope lived also in opening the doors to a thief.