In Elvira Navarro’s story collection "Rabbit Island", dreams and reality blur. The stories are surreal and disorienting, exploring dark and strange corners of the mind. Of the collection’s eleven stories, the first fits in a... Read More
The story of how the Jesuits began usually focuses on Ignatius of Loyola and Francis Xavier, but Jon Sweeney’s fascinating biography adds a third name: Peter Faber. Faber was born in 1506 and grew up in a French hamlet as the child of... Read More
The seven mini-biographies of Diana Gruver’s "Companions in the Darkness" cover historical Christians, from Martin Luther to Martin Luther King, Jr., who wrestled with their mental health. Gruver’s depression was diagnosed during her... Read More
Garments as holy relics, crime scene evidence, and archives that signal absent bodies: in Laura Levitt’s eloquent, moving, meditative book "The Objects That Remain", things stand in for human witnesses to trauma. Years after being... Read More
Biologist Lynne Quarmby sailed on a two-week Arctic Circle expedition to document global warming, and "Watermelon Snow" juxtaposes descriptions of that voyage with reflections on her career, her climate change activism, politics, and the... Read More
Naturalist Jill Sisson Quinn’s essay collection "Sign Here If You Exist" concerns connection and change in relation to both the self and the world at large. As an environmental educator in Wisconsin, Quinn taught that everything is... Read More
"Recipes from the President’s Ranch" is a warm gathering of the recipes that helped to nourish the Bush family during their years at the White House. Matthew Wendel learned how to cook in his mother’s kitchen, and his love of the... Read More
Tracing a former casino worker’s struggles, "Casino Chronicle" includes advice for others who were taken advantage of by their employers, too. Pascale Batieufaye’s memoir "Casino Chronicle" concerns the perils and pitfalls of working... Read More