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BRIGHT STARS OF BLACK BRITISH HISTORY

The author notes that from the first century, when the Romans conquered Britain, Black people have fought to create better lives for themselves and the world around them, their collective efforts making space for future generations to thrive. John Blanke was a royal trumpeter in the Tudor court who negotiated his salary by boldly petitioning Henry VIII. Olaudah Equiano, a formerly enslaved man who eventually bought his freedom, “practically invented the book tour” after publishing his autobiogr

HOW DOES OUR FOOD GROW?

Widdowson’s lively scenes of smiling, racially diverse people cultivating or shopping for brightly colored foodstuffs create a positive mood for this international survey, but the written portions are lacking. Not only does Jorden dangerously assert that “All berries are yummy AND good for your brain” and, nonsensically, that “Corn has ‘ears’ but it can’t talk,” her unrhymed side notes include hard-to-answer questions like “How many different kinds [of apples] have you tried?” (no examples are

PERCEPTION

In the opening pages, Minda Blake, a psychic known as a “remote viewer” for a black ops government contractor, uses her ability to dig up a mysterious gold artifact in the deeply religious Dutch Reformed part of Michigan. Almost immediately afterward, she passes out, later realizing that a colleague wanted the fragment and tried to kill her. After recovering, she resolves to find the golden object and take it to the media, even if her employer will hunt her down and, in the best-case scenario,

EVIDENCE!

Behind every great scientist is evidence. When cholera broke out in London in 1854, most people blamed the “bad, smelly air” for the rapid spread of the disease. The English physician Dr. John Snow had a “bold hypothesis.” He had noticed that cholera’s symptoms included vomiting and diarrhea, so the cause was likely what the victims had ingested rather than something airborne. All he needed was evidence! With expert pacing, Hopkinson sets up Snow’s story as a medical mystery and a race against

A VILE SEASON

After Count Lucian Cross is driven from his castle by vampire hunters, Vrykolakas, the god of vampires, turns him back into a human as part of a revenge plot. In his mortal form, Lucian, who’s cued white, can compete in the “marriage games” and court the future duke, all the while secretly sussing out which of the noteworthy families of the men and women also in the competition have connections to the monster hunters. If he’s successful in his tasks, Lucian will be rewarded with the return of h

A BOOK OF NOISES

An inelegant, if precise, title does little justice to a book packed with inestimable beauties, piquant facts, cacophonous din, startling conjecture, and unexpected connections among the human, animal, and inanimate worlds. Henderson, the author of The Book of Barely Imagined Beings and A New Map of Wonders, does not refer to “noise” as disagreeable sound alone. Far from it. He presents a series of fascinating entries across four harmonious categories: “geophony” (sounds of the earth), “biophon

TWO NOVEMBERS

How might the speakers of Shakespeare’s poems have dealt with the advent of antidepressants amidst their romantic tribulations? What planes of desire and yearning might Twitter or dating apps supplant for John Keats? For the author, a poetic form “forgot by all not taking English Lit” becomes a 21st century catharsis, diary, and confession. In these sonnets, Achilles records a year of emotional turbulence stemming from a romantic and sexual attachment to her physical therapist that ended poorly

THE KINGDOM OF HATCH

Arlo Hatch is a lawyer specializing in business litigation. Though his love for Stella, the daughter of one of his clients, is a bright spot in his life, Arlo is disenchanted with his career and yearns for a change. After Arlo is unsuccessfully mugged, Kostya Kozlov—a former client who was recently released from prison—benevolently takes the mugger (named Mikey) under his wing and tasks him with serving his wife, Elena, divorce papers. Both Arlo and Kozlov are in the employ of Pasha Pavlov, a R

WEST HEART KILL

Young private detective Adam McAnnis, a Vietnam veteran through whose "sad and wary" but amused eyes the story is told, has been hired by one of the guests at the club's annual Fourth of July gathering to investigate a possible plot against that guest. Until a female guest is found dead in the lake, an apparent suicide, there's no indication of anything untoward going on, except for some pot smoking and the adulterous couplings in two designated rooms in the clubhouse (in one of which McAnnis i

A SONG FOR AUGUST

August Wilson (1945-2005) was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, just as World War II was ending. His father, a German immigrant, abandoned the family; his mother, a Black woman, earned a living by cleaning houses. August learned to read at an early age; he loved words and their musical sounds but struggled in school, where racist white students bullied him. He worked tirelessly on a history report on Napoleon, but when the teacher refused to believe August had written the paper, he stopped goin

PATTERNS OF THE HEART

“When would the day arrive when he didn’t feel like howling in sadness?” That’s the bleak situation facing Sangjin, a writer who’s fled to the Korean countryside to wait out the end of World War II in Ch’oe’s luminous collection of stories. In the war’s final months, Japan’s defeat is expected, but what will happen after Japan’s 35-year-long occupation of Korea is over? Sangjin ponders the future and “could no longer see through the darkness to the next moment even,” Ch’oe writes in “The Barley

LOST BELIEVERS

The Kol family has lived alone in southern Siberia for decades. They belong to an ultratraditional sect of Christianity known as the Old Believers, and persecution by the Russian Orthodox Church and the Soviets has driven them into the wilderness. Agafia, now in her 30s, has never met anyone outside her family, though she's sometimes visited by visions of Peter the Great. The Kols’ isolation ends when a helicopter delivers Galina, a successful geologist, and her pilot, Snow Crane, who are surve

WAITING TO WELCOME

Andani is excited to have a new cousin, but in her culture, newborns aren’t given a name or brought outside the home until seven days have passed. The baby has a week to decide whether to stay in the human world or return to the spirit world. Until then, Andani must await “the stranger,” a placeholder used to refer to a baby before the “outdooring” naming celebration occurs. Waiting isn’t easy for Andani, though she and her relatives keep busy. Cassava needs to be prepared, corn needs to be mil

THE POSTCARD

The arrival in 2003 of an unsigned postcard, delivered to her mother Lélia’s postbox in Paris, bearing the names of four family ancestors murdered at Auschwitz, forces Anne Berest properly to consider her Jewish heritage. The result is this autofiction sharing the tragic saga of one branch of her forbears, the Rabinovitches, seeking peace and a safe home in the shifting European landscape of the 20th century. Lélia, who has methodically pieced together the story of her grandparents, now shares

THE CLIFFS OF SCHIZOPHRENIA

While in preschool, at only 4 years old, Jake McCook displayed such remarkable focus his teacher noticed and recommended, to his parents’ dismay, that he be put on medication. Laurette McCook saw her son as quirkily eccentric and impressively creative, not the bearer of some treatable dysfunction. As he grew older, though, he showed more troubling signs: “Crippling social anxiety,” paranoia, and panic attacks became increasingly common. Sometimes, he was afraid to eat food he was convinced was

MISSING WHITE WOMAN

Baltimore-based Breanna Wright is at the “let’s take a trip” stage in her budding relationship with Ty Franklin, her first serious boyfriend in more than a decade. When he invites her to spend a long weekend with him at a luxurious Airbnb townhouse in Jersey City, where his company is based, Bree jumps at the chance. But her romantic getaway turns into a nightmare when Bree descends the stairs on her final morning to discover the bloodied body of a white woman in the foyer and Ty gone. Could th

LIVING THE ASIAN CENTURY

A descendant of Hindu Sindhi people who left what became Pakistan during Partition, Mahbubani (b. 1948), author of The Great Convergence, was born in Singapore, where his father worked as a laborer. Often drunk and mired in gambling debts, his father was not a stable provider, and the author, his mother, and his sisters struggled to make ends meet. At the same time, they lived amicably among Malay, Chinese, and Muslim neighbors, as Singapore was an entrepreneurial hub fighting for independence

THE FUTURE LIES

After her father’s death, Juniper sets out for Denver. She arrives injured, repressing the traumatic events that claimed her sister and left Juniper pregnant. Her entry into the city disrupts the Network, the all-pervasive artificial intelligence that oversees humanity’s degradation. The disruption allows Calvin (avatar name: Doc) to abscond from the deadly, immersive video game that he and others play for extra privileges and the entertainment of the masses. Freed from his gritty gilded cage,

EXTINCTION

What a glorious way to spend a honeymoon: Mark and Olivia Gunnerson go backpacking through the vast Erebus Resort in the mountains of Colorado, where scientists have “de-extincted” species like the woolly mammoth and other Pleistocene megafauna. Just watch the peaceful beasts at their watering holes. Behold the giant armadillos, and the indricothere that make mammoths look like dwarfs. The scientists have removed genes for aggression in these re-creations, so humans will be safe unless they’re

LOOK

The premise of this book is that contemporary people have lost the capacity for mindful observation of the world around them. As an entrepreneur, corporate consultant, and instructor at the New School, Madsbjerg teaches people how to take note of phenomena that we often fail to recognize as important—if we even see them at all. Using Wittgenstein as his guide, the author argues that it’s only through paying attention to what happens in the background that we fully understand what’s happening in