Matéi Visniec’s "Mr. K Released" is a delightfully absurd and surreal novel about the disorienting qualities of freedom. Mr. K, called Kosef J in a nod to Kafka, finds himself released from prison. He is jubilant but also confused by... Read More

In "Busara Road", eleven-year-old Mark Morgan follows his widowed father, a Quaker missionary, to newly independent Kenya. David Hallock Sanders’s atmospheric debut sets a mid-1960s coming-of-age tale against a community marred by... Read More

The past is the present is the future in "Flashback Hotel", the masterful new short story collection by Ivan Vladislavić. Alternately whimsical and deeply affecting, the collection explores South African culture and the impact of belief... Read More

Jessica Handler’s based-in-truth historical novel "The Magnetic Girl" is all atmosphere and electricity. It centers on Lulu, the daughter of a Civil War defector and the sister of Leo, whose developmental challenges she feels... Read More

Kathleen Fitzpatrick’s Generous Thinking: A Radical Approach to Saving the University is an inspiring and convincing look at how anyone involved in higher education can nurture generosity and help integrate their institutions into... Read More

People live as singles in mounting numbers, even in tradition-oriented countries. In "Happy Singlehood", Elyakim Kislev brings a researcher’s eye to bear on this world-shifting trend. Defining happiness as the degree to which people... Read More

In scientist Bradley G. Stevens’s "The Ship, the Saint, and the Sailor", a 143-year-old shipwreck is recovered; the narrative tracks its discovery and preservation. The Kad’yak sank in an Alaskan harbor almost a century and a half... Read More

Most of the ten essays collected in "Inevitably Toxic" are based on papers presented at Claremont College’s “Contested Expertise, Toxic Environments” workshop in Fall 2015. Reading them is like attending an academic conference and... Read More