In The Night Fire, Michael Connelly is still adjusting his audience to the fact that retired detective Harry Bosch is old (much older than he is portrayed in the delightful TV series) and there are only so many fences he can gambol over before he breaks his hip. A few books back, Connelly cleverly introduced Renée Ballard, …
In Strange Harvests: the Hidden Histories of Seven Natural Objects, Edward Posnett disappears into the world in pursuit of the histories, traditions, myths, and wild-ass stories behind the commodification of specific objects in the natural world. It’s the sort of book that is probably the result of Posnett’s mother asking: “Modern financial trends and historical …
… Chuck Wendig goes full Stephen King with Wanderers, where he channels The Stand as he delivers a full-tilt deconstruction of our current technological malaise. Kirkus Reviews notes that Wendig “is clearly wrestling with some of the demons of our time,” and to that we say: “It’s about time that someone did.” This one sprawls …
Lisa Congdon has a guide to harnessing that inner wildness. Find Your Artistic Voice not only has a picture of a tiger on the front, but it also has a whole bunch of insightful commentary and ideas about how to discover, shape, and realize that unique voice that is you. Sure, being an artist is …
It’s a commonplace (at least with me) to say that sometimes the best way to describe reality is to distort, enhance, or otherwise defamiliarize it through fantasy and speculation. Helen Phillips seems to agree with me, at least to judge by her intense, somewhat surrealistic fiction. The Need, a thriller about the anxieties of parenthood …
Andrew Shaffer is back with Hope Rides Again, starring your favorite detective duo Barack Obama and Joseph R. Biden. Obama loses his cell phone, Biden tries to do some sleuthing. There is an attempted kidnapping (or two), and Biden comes off as trying to work out lines for his campaign speeches, which is probably done …
Michelle Ruiz Keil’s All of Us With Wings is a magical realist ode to punk rock magic. Set in a San Francisco that looks a lot like ours, All of Us With Wings follows Xochi, a struggling runaway who eagerly joins an interesting family as the governess to the family’s headstrong daughter. Naturally, things get …
You might like Glen Erik Hamilton’s Van Shaw series. Van was raised as a thief, but got out of that life once upon a time and went into the military. Now he’s out, and he’s got old family history to settle. The first book, Past Crimes, starts fast and runs faster. Plus it’s set in …
Some humor from A Good Book in Sumner, WA: Overheard at The Store NADIA: Hello, welcome to the bookstore. Can I help you—oh, you’re that street artist fellow. I didn’t recognize you without all the gold paint. MIME: . . . NADIA: You’re looking for a book? . . . A big book? . . …
[Here’s an example] of quirky illustrations and marvelous set pieces. Torben Kuhlmann has been consistently putting out stunningly illustrated books about small creatures doing great feats of aeronautics and engineering. Most recently, it’s Edison, the story of two mice who create a to-scale submersible in order to search for a sunken treasure. That’s right. A mouse-driven …
