Chad Orzel traces how human concepts of time have changed over millennia in "A Brief History of Timekeeping". Today, “what time is it?” is a basic question with an accessible answer: all one has to do is look at a clock. But the... Read More

Set in a futuristic, dystopian world reshaped by climate change, Yoko Tawada’s "Scattered All Over the Earth" celebrates cross-cultural, crosslinguistic friendships. An unnamed country, presumably Japan, has disappeared. Knut, a Danish... Read More

Ora North’s "Mood Magick" introduces easy, evocative exercises and spells for dealing with the stress and anxiety of modern life. Defining witches as those who work with the energies of nature to create change, this book discusses... Read More

Rebekah Iliff’s "Champagne for One" turns myths about solitude on their head. A lighthearted miscellany of stories, poems, and satire, it paints aloneness as something to be prized, rather than pitied. Iliff sets out to banish the... Read More

In Mónica Ojeda’s sinuous novel "Jawbone", six wealthy private school girls form a dangerous clique. The six girls share obsessions with Instagram, crocodiles, La Llorona, Slender Man, and the cropped chic of... Read More

The incredible merges with the everyday in Kim Fu’s short story collection "Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century". Puberty takes a fantastical turn for a group of teenage girls. Neighborhood children obsess over the accidental... Read More

A man grapples with his past and his racial identity in Paulo Scott’s novel "Phenotypes". Federico and his brother Lourenço are both Black. But Federico, being light-skinned, escapes much of the prejudice that Lourenço faces. These... Read More

Fade Away, or The Artist is a literary novel about ennui, loneliness, and finding one’s place in the world. In Jeremy Rider’s literary novel Fade Away, or The Artist, a young man navigates new adulthood. Jimmy, who grew up in a... Read More