"Delaware Behaving Badly" is a fresh compendium of essays about a state’s true crime cases. Dave Tabler’s piquing regional true crime book sums up Delaware’s headline-stealing cases. Treating particular crimes as “windows into... Read More

The notion that all creatures have the capacity to do either harm or good is exemplified in the ecoconscious novel "Uplift". In Jessica Mann’s delicate allegorical novel "Uplift", a bird living in the Anthropocene comes of age and... Read More

In Karen Barnett’s arresting historical novel "Through Water and Stone", a Christian family’s adoption leads to a deeper perspective on God’s provisions. In the 1940s, Henry, a Zion National Park ranger, is married to Alma. There... Read More

Jerome Charyn’s bracing biographical novel is about Maria Callas’s transformation from a New York daughter of Greek immigrants to a world-famous opera soprano. When she’s a teenager, Maria’s ambitious mother brings her to Athens.... Read More

One of Europe’s most visited centers is illuminated in Cynthia Paces’s erudite history book "Prague". Prague, Franz Kafka’s birthplace, has been called “the mistress of all Bohemia.” Here, this riverside site of political... Read More

A work of unusual wisdom, Yorick Goldewijk’s story collection "The Tree That Was a World" introduces a tree and the creatures surrounding it. In these pithy fables, a spider resists consuming flies, dismayed that its perfect webs never... Read More

Chronic pain and psychosomatic maladies jar a reporter in Samantha Kimmey’s brooding novel "The Extremities!" While Kim, a journalist, reports on a wildfire whose smoke permeates her coastal town, her hands throb with pain, limiting... Read More

A Black family’s traumas are the focus of Carolivia Herron’s rending novel "Thereafter Johnnie", in which a bereaved daughter examines her origins. At first, Johnnie is a solitary “light,” condemned to haunt a former Carnegie... Read More