Teetering somewhere between uncanny and debaucherous, Audrée Wilhelmy’s eerie novel "The Body of the Beasts" focuses on a lighthouse-keeping family subsisting at the edge of civilization. In the Borya family, desire is voyeuristic,... Read More

With the confidence that Mexico’s respect for people of retirement age would ferry him safely through the dangers hinted at by the state department, Paul Theroux set out to drive across Mexico, a trip recorded in "On the Plain of... Read More

Most human beings live with light pollution; in the US, 99 percent of people exist under blank skies, drenched in artificial light. But when you travel to dark sites, you “fill that blankness with the entire universe above you.” If... Read More

California—land of golden dreams, proud melting pot, home to both the poor and the unimaginably rich—is an amalgam. Her complexities are captured in the essays of Freeman’s: California, which reaches across time and cultures to... Read More

Simon Bajada’s enticing and inspiring cookbook "Baltic" is an ode to a region that, though influenced by outsiders, remains all its own. Bajada presents the post-Soviet cuisines of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania as diverse and... Read More

Nina Allan’s "The Silver Wind" is a twisting, haunting work of speculative fantasy, pulsing with the dull ache of a fading dream and intoxicating its audience with disorienting what-ifs. When Owen, a clockmaker’s apprentice, is... Read More

Nina Allan’s exquisite and strange "The Dollmaker" is a postmodern fairy tale, both whimsical and aching in its appeal. Andrew felt lost among his contemporaries until he discovered that he had a gift for fashioning discarded and... Read More

Beginning from the beginning—the Big Bang, to be precise—this gorgeous exploration of our solar system is replete with informative flaps, flip-up factoids, and beautiful collages depicting the colorful night sky and life planetside.... Read More