Rich with memorable characters and moments, the story has a beautiful, sensual flow of language. Spanning from the late nineteenth century to the 1970s, S. Shankar’s "Ghost in the Tamarind" presents a portrait of a changing India, with... Read More

"A Murder in Music City" imparts a great sense of 1960s Nashville as it unfolds an old crime in the present day. Eighteen-year-old college student Paula Herring was shot dead at her mother’s Nashville home in 1964, with her young... Read More

There is no shortage of radical food books on the publishing landscape, but "Eating Promiscuously" seeks to put all others to shame. In its introduction, the author boldly states that all agriculture is a mistake, farming as an idyllic... Read More

Investigator Mumtaz Hakim is not sure how she feels about Allah’s plan. As a strong Muslim woman negotiating the hostile world of modern London, she’s well aware of the prejudices and shortcomings of her community: “Good... Read More

A ragtag cast of supporting characters, human and otherwise, shines. In Debbie Burns’s "A New Leash on Love", Megan runs an animal shelter outside St. Louis. The temperamental beauty gives a handsome stranger a piece of her mind when... Read More

What is American history other than a record of stuff that happened somehow related to the people and places of this country. Everything in the past is history, and no matter how insignificant, it factors into the character and identity... Read More

In the first few years of the sixteenth century, in Orvieto’s splendid medieval cathedral, Luca Signorelli painted The Last Judgment, a sprawling, shocking fresco of muscled nude men, bared buttocks, horrific violence, antichrists,... Read More

Bullfighting’s place in the world of performative art, as well as its morality, are discussed intelligently. A young woman with a passion for bullfighting navigates the prejudiced world of the 1950s in this novel of growing up.... Read More