In Jess Taylor’s unfiltered novel "Play", guilt and memories overshadow a woman’s strength and resilience. As a child, Paul had an unbreakable bond with her cousin Adrian. Together, they imagined into existence The Lighted City, a... Read More

Modest generosity is used to combat multigenerational poverty and racial prejudice in the rural South in Jeffrey Blount’s novel "Mr. Jimmy from Around the Way". “No good deed goes unpunished,” thinks Jimmy, a disgraced billionaire... Read More

In "Punk Art History", Danish art historian Marie Arleth Skov explores punk culture’s influence on the art of the 1970s. The book crystallizes the troubled social climate behind the punk movement—a malaise of urban decay and stagnant... Read More

Nuanced and complex, "Twilight of the Godlings" is Francis Young’s history of pagan deities and supernatural creatures in Britain, where ancient British, ancient Roman, and medieval Christian beliefs melded and took on numerous forms.... Read More

In his excellent and informative book Five Times Faster, Simon Sharpe proposes solutions to climate change challenges on three fronts: science, economics, and policy. Sharpe argues that the biggest problem with current approaches to... Read More

A girl raised by Russian immigrants in an Appalachian mining community encounters hardships and love in Mary Kay Zuravleff’s evocative historical novel "American Ending". In a western Pennsylvania coal mining town in the early 1900s,... Read More

Juxtaposing whimsy and seriousness to innovative effect, "Once upon a Wonderland" refreshes classic tales and seeks untold stories. Fairy-tale characters infiltrate Lewis Carroll’s fantasy realm in DJ Stoneham’s novel "Once upon a... Read More

Philip C. Almond’s fascinating and comprehensive cultural study of Mary Magdalene reviews hundreds of interpretations of the revered saint and explores the creative tension between her complex tradition and the history of religious... Read More