In Benjamin Markovits’s novel "Christmas in Austin", the Essinger family gathers for the holidays, its siblings traveling from England and the East Coast back to Texas, where festive lights twinkle amid agave plants and the air smells... Read More

Dovey Johnson Roundtree’s powerful memoir "Mighty Justice" covers her devotion to legal, racial, and gender equality. Roundtree was born in 1914, and in her 104 years worked as both an attorney and a minister to fight for the rights of... Read More

Jack El-Hai’s true crime story "The Lost Brothers" focuses on the disappearance of three young Minneapolis boys in November of 1951. Kenneth, David, and Danny Klein went to play at a park mere blocks from their home, but they never... Read More

In Brenda Brooks’s "Honey", two friends reunite following nearly a decade of separation, resuming their relationship with a familiar, sisterly closeness that broadens into erotic intensity. When Nicole’s father is killed in an auto... Read More

In João Reis’s melancholy yet comic The Translator’s Bride, a nameless translator in a nameless city struggles to interpret his own life, wandering through a frustrating maze of streetcars, chilling rain, and moldy interiors. His... Read More

In Anthony Varallo’s evocative and taut "The Lines", the end of a marriage brings about an unsettling beginning for a family. Set during the 1970s and amid oil and gasoline shortages, the US’s scarcity of fuel and the public’s... Read More

Ellen Evert Hopman’s "The Sacred Herbs of Samhain" is a fascinating sourcebook of lore, history, magical methods, and practical information regarding plants sacred to the festival of Samhain. Samhain, observed at the end of the Celtic... Read More

Set in Gilded Age New York, Norman Lock’s "Feast Day of the Cannibals" is the sixth standalone book in the American Novel series. At the cusp of the nineteenth century, fictional and real life characters intersect in a setting that’s... Read More