In M.O. Walsh’s endearing new novel, a strange machine disrupts life in a small Southern town
…those of Spoon River. (Not coincidentally, an actual mosaic photograph of townspeople, commissioned for an upcoming festival celebrating Deerfield’s founding, becomes a central plot device.) From the opening line, the…
After three decades in children’s books, acclaimed author-illustrator David Wiesner is still eager to innovate
If you think making Caldecott history — being one of only two artists to win the Caldecott Medal three times, in addition to winning three Caldecott Honors — would have…
You Want More spans the career of one of the South’s most beloved storytellers
…a cast of what Sherwood Anderson and Flannery O’Connor called “grotesques”: misshapen people with wonderfully alliterative names like Mack Morris Murray, Libby Belcher, Paula Purgason, Mal Morris, and Hellbent Heidi…
Ayad Akhtar creates a powerful literary assemblage in Homeland Elegies
Autofiction is fictionalized autobiography that maneuvers around the rooms of the author’s life, arranging a vase here, imagining a divan there, relieved of the memoirist’s burden: Did I get it…
In Yaa Gyasi’s Transcendent Kingdom, a neuroscientist tries to makes sense of her family’s unraveling
Yaa Gyasi’s new novel Transcendent Kingdom confronts the venerable question of whether science or religion better reveals the truth about life’s enduring mysteries. Theological questions such as the origin of…
Erica Waters’ Ghost Wood Song is a suspenseful story about grief, bravery, and growing up
…reveal the real essence of the story: themes of healing and letting go and the connection between music, loss, and family. This gripping novel exemplifies how a mystery can be…
