Laura Bernstein-Machlay is a native of Detroit who, after decades away, returned to her home to find it hovering on the brink of massive change. The city, past and present, is the backdrop for her essays. Most of the essays are personal... Read More

Vigorously potent, "Little Beast" haunts the intersection of fairy tales with gritty realism. When a full beard emerges on a nameless eleven-year-old girl’s face, she and her mother conceal the development from judgment in their tiny... Read More

"Small Moving Parts" is an emotive, atmospheric, and memorable tour de force. Not to be missed. In 1958, on a summer’s night in Bufort, Texas, two strangers’ destinies collide. Harley Cain, an ill WWI veteran and rancher, and Dodger... Read More

Johann Chapoutot’s "The Law of Blood" is a meticulously researched, chilling history of Nazism’s roots and doctrines that clarifies why the ideology was widely accepted for so long. The book is a comprehensive study of the cultural,... Read More

This colorful and complex portrait of a 1950s Jewish family is warm and nostalgic, yet grounded by deep history. David Hirshberg’s My Mother’s Son centers on a vibrant postwar Boston neighborhood that is a veritable melting pot. Its... Read More

This troubling, complicated literary novel delves into the experiences of mental illness, questioning some of our most basic beliefs about what it means to be insane. "Insane" by Rainald Goetz is a complex, multivoiced, experimental look... Read More

Michael Smerconish’s collection is compelling and entertaining—not as a filtering of daily news through a predictable ideological lens, but as a group of insightful entries into conversations about current events and issues. Although... Read More

In her graphic novel memoir "Algeria is Beautiful Like America", Olivia Burton travels to her family’s former homeland, only to find that many of her beliefs about her family’s past, and Algeria as a whole, are wrong. Burton begins... Read More