A chance encounter alters the course of a man’s life in Gustave Flaubert’s freshly translated novel "Sentimental Education". Weak-willed, self-centered Frédéric has just graduated from school. On the boat ride home, the sight of a... Read More

In Balsam Karam’s timely novel "The Singularity", the lives of two refugee women intersect with anonymous resonance. In an unnamed coastal city, a mother searches for her seventeen-year-old daughter, handing out flyers and begging for... Read More

C. D. Rose’s "Walter Benjamin Stares at the Sea" is a collection of short stories about how storytelling can help to face the terrors of the passage of time. Scenes of creative inspiration mingle with violence, tension, and grief... Read More

Darius Stewart’s memoir "Be Not Afraid of My Body" is a searing account of life as a gay Black man, along with struggles with substance abuse and HIV. Born in 1979, Stewart first realized that he was gay when he was eleven. With quiet... Read More

Yalie Saweda Kamara’s lucent poetry collection "Besaydoo" encircles matters of race, heritage, boundaries, and exchanging “worry for hope.” California-born poet Kamara challenges the description of Oakland as a “killing field.”... Read More

In "The Celestial Garden", Jane Hawley Stevens reveals how gardening timed to the rhythms of the celestial bodies helps plants, and gardeners, to thrive. Stevens’s inspiring, practical book uses a potent mix of ancient wisdom, modern... Read More

Julia Ridley Smith’s "Sex Romp Gone Wrong" is a collection of twelve provocative short stories that delve into the murky terrain of motherhood, sexuality, loss, and family in contemporary America. Funny, mournful, and alluring, the... Read More

Memorializing the unsung space travelers whom the US first launched into orbit, Dawn Cusick’s charming history book "The Astrochimps" zooms in on peculiar and enlightening moments in the race to put a person on the moon. In the wake of... Read More