In busy Beijing, everyone is connected. So a writer discovers when he’s tasked with telling the billionaire Qin’s enmeshed story in Jonathan Tel’s deliciously tangled Scratching the Head of Chairman Mao. In the book’s opening... Read More

Death has never been quite so uplifting as it is in "Welcome to the Pine Away Motel and Cabins", Katarina Bivald’s feel-good novel about a friendly ghost who’s determined to repair relationships from the not-far beyond. Henny always... Read More

The winkingly endearing stories of Nancy McKinley’s "St. Christopher on Pluto" function like a scrapbook, capturing life in a small Pennsylvania town through connected anecdotes that span decades. Before their neighborhood Halloween... Read More

For the handful of centuries that Japan has been on the minds of westerners, the country has exemplified the mysteries of the East. The island nation’s unique geology, climate, rich waters, and isolation led to a culture, a... Read More

If change is the primary law of the universe, why is it so difficult to make lasting changes to our own personal habits and routines? Why does our body/mind vigorously rebel when we set out to cut down on our sugar intake, commit to... Read More

North Korea fascinates a world bored with so many bland, decent-enough democracies. Cowered by the tubby tyrant Kim Jong-un, the nation’s 25 million citizens struggle to make do in a system that’s so handcuffed by sanctions, so... Read More

That the greatest poets receive sudden flashes of inspiration is demoralizing to mere mortals. Already so rich in talent, such poets don’t need—or deserve—the metaphorical lightning strike to the ink-filled rods that they wield to... Read More

Stalin: if you’re Russian and of a certain age, his name causes your blood to run Siberian cold. It’s not for nothing that Uncle Joe’s twenty-four-year reign (1929–1953) is frequently called the “other Holocaust”—upwards of... Read More