New Books

To preface, this is the fourth glowing review of an Emily Austin novel I've had the pleasure of writing in the past five years. Yes, I'm a fan. Yes, she's a favorite. In this one, our protagonist Darc... (Anika)

The American perception of the Iranian Revolution started, for many, with the seizing of the American embassy in Tehran in November 1979. That's where this book ends. The apparently sudden collapse of... (Tom)

The first book I finished this year—published in Germany in 1951 but recently translated into English by NYRB Classics—does two things at once. It immersed me so deeply in pre-WWII, bourgeois Jewish B... (Liz)

This imaginative picture book is set in a small village where the legend of a "night giant" causes speculation and rumors among the residents. Is it the mischievous giant who stacks the park benches l... (Haley)

On one hand, this is, like many memoirs, the story of a curious, ambitious child and a flawed, fascinating parent. The son of a white American mother and a father—a brilliant, larger-than-life, and of... (Tom)

Shanbhag's debut here, Ghachar Ghochar, was one of the first novels written in Kannada, a language spoken by tens of millions in southwestern India, to be translated into English. His second, also tra... (Tom)

I was charmed into reading this novel by its first pages, in which a self-sabotaging former ad exec revels in the slushy city beauty of a Minnesota December as he trudges to his weekly group therapy a... (Tom)

The arrival of full shelves of Persephone Books was one of the highlights of our year, so it seemed appropriate to close 2025 by choosing a Persephone book—in one of their slightly less expensive but... (Tom)

"If you make a call on a banana phone, who will answer?" The boy in this picture book finds out when he strikes up a long-distance friendship with a gorilla. Emily Hughes's soft-looking illustrations... (Haley)

Emily Jane’s first novel was about aliens, her second about sea monsters, and her third is about, as the title makes clear, werewolves. In each of her books, Jane uses supernatural beings to fully plu... (Doree)

I read this twice in two weeks. As soon as I finished the audiobook version, I knew I had to get my hands on a physical copy. The second reading demanded that I underline sentences, paragraphs, and so... (Anika)

Local newspapers, retail chains like Toys R Us, rural hospitals, affordable housing: all things that are being driven from our landscape by impersonal but inevitable market forces, right? The winds ma... (Tom)

Thank goodness for strange, little books. This one, almost 25 years old already (!) [Ed.: now almost 35], may not be for everyone, but if you have the smallest bit of fascination with how one writer t... (Tom)

The concept of Buzz! Boom! Bang! is simple: look at each page and make the noise you think the illustration would sound like. But once you start to "clip clop," "boink," and "hiss," you may find yours... (Haley)