High Tech

Few writers have seen their work reinterpreted as much as Jane Austen’s. “We all encounter Austen differently and from the position of where and when we read her,” writes the scholar Jennie Batchelor in the book’s introduction. “How we read her changes as the world changes around us.” This anthology, a melange of fiction, poetry, essays, and interviews, reflects the diversity of reactions to Austen’s work. Katherine Reay writes of the healing experience of reading the novelist while recovering from a severe injury, while Katie Lumsden discusses the pleasure of rereading Austen’s novels over and over at different stages in her life. Fiction pieces imagine the author and her characters in new, often revisionary arrangements; in Julia Miller’s “Georgiana Darcy—Pistols at Dawn,” Pride and Prejudice ’s Georgiana Darcy exacts satisfaction from the gold-digger George Wickham in the form of a duel, while in Charlie Lovett’s novel excerpt “First Impressions,” Austen defends herself against the...

It’s 1945 and World War II is effectively over in Europe. Two American GIs, Nick Genova and Joe Cohen, have fought their way up the Italian Peninsula and are now on leave in Milan. The two New Yorkers are so close that they’re known as a single unit called “Brooklyn.” Nick has heard about a local relic known as the Holy Nail—supposedly one of those used to nail Jesus Christ to the cross. The pair, with help of Maria Bravia, an antifascist and a stone-cold killer, steal it from the Duomo, the cathedral of Milan. Now the game is afoot. Do they sell it? Bargain with the Catholic Church to ransom it? Eventually the police, the Mafia (both in Naples and New York), and the Vatican are all drawn into the fray. Later, “Brooklyn” is repatriated to Brooklyn, where they’re still trying to get rid of the Nail, and hopefully profit from their crime. It does not go well, as dealings with the Mafia seldom do. However, there is a final, intriguing fillip to the tale, involving the Nail and one of Joe...

The story, framed by the 1949 funeral of 16-year-old Thad Butler, unfolds in the grief-stricken voice of his mother, Margaret, as she revisits the events that shaped her life—and ultimately, her son’s tragic fate. Told in a rich Southern vernacular, the novel stretches back to 1915, when Margaret was a 10-year-old girl growing up in New Harmony, South Carolina. As the daughter of Black sharecroppers, Margaret came of age amid stark racial hierarchies, grinding poverty, and gendered expectations. A pivotal moment arrived when she was invited to live in the “Big House” of the white Demmings family—a gesture of apparent kindness that concealed deeper power dynamics and exploitation. Through Margaret’s eyes, readers witness the tension between survival and dignity, love and injustice. Her friendship with White Candy, the plantation owner’s daughter, adds complexity to the novel’s portrayal of race and intimacy. As Margaret’s story winds through her adolescence, marriage, and motherhood, s...

In case there was any doubt that Joseph Cochrane Robin’s death by arrow was inspired by the fictional death of Cock Robin, a note makes the connection explicit and implies that the killer was Raymond Sperling, whose last name means “sparrow.” Who is THE BISHOP, the phantasm who signs this and later messages? Vance’s friend and amanuensis Van Dine, the most self-effacing narrator in the mystery genre, reveals in advance that this sobriquet has nothing to do with religion. Most of the leading suspects—Sperling, retired Prof. Bertrand Dillard, his adopted son Sigurd Arnesson, his niece Belle Dillard, and scientist Adolph Drukker—pass the time till the next fatal incarnation of a nursery rhyme chatting about mathematics and theoretical physics. It’s particularly helpful that Arnesson talks himself into an active role into the investigation along with Vance, Sgt. Ernest Heath, and D.A. John F.-X. Markham, who casually accept his participation. Arnesson takes the edge off detective fiction’...

These tales take place in a wide range of settings, from Hollywood’s Golden Age to the earliest days of the Covid-19 pandemic to 18th-century France and beyond. A woman embarks on a dangerous hike despite warnings of a storm in “Over the Mountain Steep.” In “A Baby of the Ganges,” a grieving mother, abroad and struggling to reconnect with her partner, regrets and reneges on a choice which might have helped her. In the collection’s title story, a retired university professor imagines seducing the man whom her niece has recently started dating while unveiling his own seedy history, while the opening tale, “To Lie Engulfed in the Waves of the Sea,” introduces a woman who, after a debilitating accident, is forced to lie in order to get a job, where she continues to lie in order to help someone with a secret wish. In another story, “Olympic Hopeful, 19, Dies After Winning U.S. Figure Skating Championships,” two adopted sisters must rely on each other, due to their mother’s neglect. Through...

Upon receiving newly shorn wool from his grandfather, the unnamed child (who narrates) declares that their rug will be the best ever, but Grandma gently tempers his lofty expectations. They wash, card, spin, and dye the wool with indigo, madder, and larkspur, then graph patterns that resemble tiles and palace gardens common to Isfahan, where they live. When the boy insists on flawless design, Grandma points to their current rug: It may be faded, but it’s long been a place where family gathers. At the loom, she tells him that all rugs—whether a king’s jeweled rug or one that's old and faded—reflect practicality and purpose. She deliberately pulls out one knot—the “Persian flaw”—explaining that nothing is perfect or should pretend to be. Understanding dawns as the boy takes their finished rug for washing and respectfully places the old one under the loom. Nayeri’s quietly meditative narrative about finding grace in life’s inherent flaws unfolds beautifully, speaking both to the peri...

Editor Meyer runs the Bowery Group, a collection of New York City restaurants that includes Cookshop and Rosie’s. After dropping out of college, Meyer found his way to the restaurant industry by trying out a series of recipes in an Italian cookbook and deciding, based on this experience, to move to New York to work in kitchens. In a preface, Meyer says that his is just one of a vast array of reasons why people flock to New York City’s restaurants. “There is no single explanation as to what has moved countless people to seek jobs in the restaurants of New York,” he writes. “Some of us were social misfits, ill-suited for the conformities of the corporate world. Others sought to escape dangerous social conditions. All of us had something that we needed to leave behind—a need to hide, to escape, to break the patterns of the past.” In the pages that follow, Meyer includes interviews with people from around the world, including Elena, a Colombian mother who journeyed to the United States to...

“As a full-time evolutionary biologist, part-time botanist, recreational user, and more than likely a future medicinal user, I find cannabis one of the most fascinating of all plants on our planet,” writes DeSalle, a curator of molecular systematics at the American Museum of Natural History. It’s fascinating indeed: A flowering plant, cannabis is a distant cousin of the grape (thus pairing nicely with a glass of wine) but is more closely related to hops (thus also pairing nicely with a pint of ale). The divergence from the latter took place about 28 million years ago, meaning that cannabis was known to early animal forms, including our ancestral primates, who, by DeSalle’s account, preferred the booze that they found in fallen fruit—thus becoming evolutionarily “preadapted” to getting high, a trait they passed along to their human kin. As the author notes, the earliest attested use of cannabis dates to about 12,000 years ago on the Tibetan Plateau, but soon after the plant spread all ...

Luminara is a world built on imagination. Each one of its people, the “Lumies,” has their own “Phanta,” a small, winged being that helps manifest their thoughts into reality. Young Ayla, however, is the exception. She was born without a Phanta, making her a target of ridicule by kids who claim she has no imagination. Her only recourse is a long shot: finding the legendary Phanta Tree, the place where Phantas are born. With her parents’ reluctant consent, Ayla heads into the forest. She encounters several otherworldly “guardians” (one with silvery, sapphire-blue fur) who take her to such fantastic sites as the River of Imagination. While she hopes to find her own Phanta at the fabled tree, Ayla herself may be a guide; a big change is coming for the Lumies, and this unique girl will use her foresight and whatever confidence she can muster to help them through it. Orlowski’s novella overflows with charm and emotion. Ayla unquestionably goes through a lot, but also learns inspiring lesson...

This familiar tale of a misplaced toy rediscovering love and purpose adds a clever twist: It’s based on the true story of the Owens family—the founders of Unclaimed Baggage, a company dedicated to rehoming “orphaned” luggage and its contents. Bear is never far from a young boy, Big Brother, whose parents save lost items from the dump. Together, the boy and bear play hide-and-seek, have imaginary adventures, and watch as books, jewelry, toys, and clothes are sorted, cleaned, and repaired. When Bear’s turn comes, the boy gently holds his paw. At a neighborhood yard sale, Bear sadly watches other items find loving homes until he realizes he already “belonged to a family who loved him.” The Owens family is portrayed with pale skin; other characters have a range of skin tones. Davis effectively uses short paragraphs and single sentences layered over Allison’s warm, full-page watercolor-style illustrations which, together, bring the story to life. The artist’s masterful use of contrast high...

Ghosh is one of the leading chroniclers of the post-colonial South Asian experience. He explores what it is like to be both privileged and displaced: educated in the canons of the West, but always seeing power from the viewpoint of the historically excluded. This collection of essays on environmental trauma and historical alienation, drawn from newspapers and journals from the past 20 years, brings together the author’s major interests: how climate change has disproportionately affected South Asia and has led to mass migrations across the globe; how traditionally oppressed peoples have sought a place at the tables of the great; and how Western history is changed when retold by the non-Western teller. Most revealing in these essays is the story of the lascars, groups of North Indian sailors who played a major role in the expansion of British sea power. Their otherwise unwritten lives animate the middle of this work. Readers new to Ghosh will find much to lead them to his major work, es...

Semi-retired Bennett, a man “accustomed to mild interest” in most things, embarks on a road trip to visit ex-girlfriend Jenn in Ann Arbor after she texts him out of the blue. He’s not expecting much but brings along lubricants and lotions just in case. Jenn, however, seems more interested in Bennett’s rental car than romance. Her teen daughter, Zoe, an MMA fighter, needs a ride to Utah for an important match. Zoe’s crusty trainer, Hector, tags along, coercing Bennett into stopping at a small Nebraskan town on the way to the fight. In Ogallala, Hector and his friend Hank continue treating Bennett as a chauffeur. They ask him to give them a ride to someone’s house, and he’s ordered to wait in a corn field. Sneaking to the house, he witnesses a murder. Involvement in the crime’s aftermath makes Bennett feel alive for once, but now he’s complicit. Still, he tries to be a positive influence for Zoe, whose perspective also shifts on this trip. Briefly staying with Hank’s kind sister-in-law ...

For her much-needed getaway at Tanzania’s Serengeti National Park, paramilitary officer Alex Martel plans to shoot with a camera rather than a rifle. Beloved father David, a retired general, is along for support and banter. When a series of distant shots alerts the duo, they rush to rescue a wounded man, rushing past a ranger who’s too slow to act because he’s bringing some poachers to account. A stimulating and rewarding day is spoiled for Alex by two developments. David’s announcement, with no explanation, that he has to leave in the morning, triggers her concern, and the unexpected arrival of CIA agent Caleb Copeland, with whom Alex has a long and abrasive history (seen in Out in the Cold , 2024), puts her in a foul mood. Caleb’s brash, headlong nature offends the meticulous, analytical Alex. Will opposites attract? Sensing danger, Alex is in no mood for a reunion. As if in confirmation of her instinct, a helicopter arrives the next morning, and a team led by Harley, of the State D...

Dr. Vikki Barnes is a paleontologist at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. She loves her work, but she’s stayed away from fieldwork ever since her mother died in a freak accident while on a dig. Recently, Vikki, along with millions of other viewers, watched a viral video of something that seems impossible: an enormous, flying, fire-breathing monster attacking a group of people on a small island off the coast of Puerto Rico. At the end of the video, a young girl stands in the monster’s path and seems to somehow communicate with it and calm it down. Vikki’s had to answer more questions about dragons during her museum tours, but she doesn’t think much of the video—until her father, an Army science advisor, pays her a surprise visit. He tells Vikki that the video is real, and that there are “some things that I think you need to see” on the island. On top of that, he’s gotten in touch with Vikki’s ex-boyfriend Matt, who’s a scientist, as well. Together, Vikki, Matt, and a cou...

The urge to get even runs like a thread through popular culture: Creators who successfully harness that primal drive in their fiction have often built successful careers around it, such as Clint Eastwood and Quentin Tarantino. However, the devil lies in revenge’s details, as author Epperson suggests in this technothriller, which is built around a simple yet hair-raising premise. On the popular and highly illegal KillStarter website, people can crowdfund and contract killings-for-hire at the click of a button: Dirty deeds done dirt cheap, with a high-tech twist. Users nominate potential targets, such as a drunken, bullying British lawyer or a racist, abusive American marketing consultant, and the murders are carried out, quickly and clinically, in return for bitcoin. For KillStarter’s creator—who, fittingly, remains anonymous for most of the book—the rewards lie in serving what they see as “the unseen hand shaping chaos, the mind orchestrating the unthinkable.” However, the game threat...

Tergit’s novel, hitherto unavailable in English, is in part a roman à clef, narrated in unadorned, matter-of-fact prose. The Effinger family is a blend of urban and rural, secular and religious, socialist and capitalist, its paterfamilias a watchmaker in a small German town, his children striving to find their places in the world as the 20th century nears. Benno, the oldest, works in a clothing factory; Karl is a bank apprentice in Berlin; Paul is a laborer who dreams of becoming an industrialist. Only Willy, the youngest son, has any interest in his father’s trade, while the older daughter, Helene, is engaged to be married. All find themselves in a Germany that is soon to be unrecognizable in changing times, with Benno taunting Paul, “You want German Romanticism, lilacs and half-timbered houses and strolls outside the city gates, and yet you want gas engines too.” Those gas engines will come along in the form of tanks on the frontlines of World War I, but well before then, the family...

“Prides are usually made up of lionesses, their cubs, and one to a few adult male lions,” the titular lioness explains. The savannah can be a dangerous place, and living together means “safety in numbers.” Our narrator is pregnant and knows her “babies need food to grow.” She dispatches prey with strength and skills she learned from her own mother, who was “a great hunter.” No matter how much prey the lions take down, the food is shared with the whole pride. Motherhood means the lionesses must work even more closely, raising the cubs together, sharing their milk, and hunting in turns. The lioness teaches her growing cubs “everything,” just as her mother taught her. Teamwork ensures survival: “We are mothers, we are hunters, we are protectors, we are teachers. And we are strong.” Kyung’s text, efficiently translated by Shin, provides an informative overview, complete with an appended page of further facts. The expansive spreads are what stand out, created in paint and pencil on traditi...

Middle-aged librarian Nelly finds escape from her solitary world in her love for (some might say obsession with) the life and work of author Laura Ingalls Wilder, who wrote the Little House on the Prairie books. Nelly’s fascination with the Little House books began early, partly as a means to escape a traumatic childhood that included a domineering mother and traumatic abuse. As the novel begins, she’s 45 and still enamored with Wilder’s literary world—so much so that after she loses her job, she retreats into Wilder’s books, chatting on fan sites and compiling a Laura Ingalls Wilder bible, an encyclopedia of everything she knows about Wilder. This leads to an impulsive, Wilder-themed pilgrimage to De Smet, South Dakota, the setting for some of the Little House books. There, with the help of a fellow Wilder aficionado named Al, Nelly begins to reckon with the loss, loneliness, and longing that have defined her life. Tracey takes readers on this journey with the help of footnotes th...

This fourth novel in this series unfolds in 1991 with the Greek American Jewish Covo clan settled in the New York City area and beset with ethical quandaries. Psychiatrist Nicky Covo faces a malpractice lawsuit alleging deliberate neglect of a patient who died by suicide—a charge that Nicky is almost certain is baseless. Meanwhile, his second wife, Helen, doesn’t want to face the fact that her daughter, Sarah, has terminal cancer, and Nicky’s daughter, Kayla, is dealing with schizophrenia, which derailed her career as a concert pianist, while raising her 7-year-old son, Jackie. She starts courting a man in her Hasidic congregation who seems like a straight arrow—until he proposes premarital sex to test their compatibility. Nicky’s son, Max, starts questioning his legal career while pursuing a nasty, thankless case. Nicky, Helen, Kayla, and Jackie also visit Nicky’s sister Kal, who’s now a Greek Orthodox nun known as Sister Theodora at a monastery in Greece, where she and Nicky grew up...

The book opens with an introduction that encourages readers to explore its contents however they wish rather than feeling constrained to read in order from beginning to end. Science writer Thomas divides the information into six sections: “Earth,” “Near-Earth Space, “Our Solar System,” “Stars,” “Galaxies,” and “The Universe.” Readers can tighten their Kuiper Belt and head through the Oort cloud to explore the thoughtfully laid-out topics, each covering a two-page spread. The clear writing is dense with information. Factoids about subjects such as tardigrades and exploding meteors will reel in younger readers, while information about topics like the cosmic web and measuring gravitational waves speak to a more sophisticated audience. The stylized font used for many headers can be difficult to decipher. Timelines, key facts, and text boxes accompany the entries, with succinct explanations arranged in colorful squares. Catchy subheadings (“Are We There Yet?,” “What Is It Made Of?”) and Gi...

In Chinook Shore, Oregon, Charise Tang’s life is at a standstill. Her stepfather has taken her savings, her white sort-of boyfriend persists in making microaggressive comments, and even Zach Torres, the valedictorian who escaped the town and its limited opportunities, has returned, on academic probation from Vanderbilt. After being accepted into an all-expenses-paid summer program at MIT for “the next generation of tech leaders,” Char tries to leave without telling her family. When she’s caught, her stepfather, a white Iraq War veteran, declares that she’s never allowed to return. In Cambridge, she has a quintessential meet-cute involving spilled coffee with Khoi Astor, a Vietnamese American boy who happens to be in the same program. Khoi and Char team up for the program’s hackathon, both hoping that the prize will provide Char with the financial safety net she desperately needs. Despite the sweet blossoming romance, the couple’s dynamic often feels imbalanced: Khoi feels overly perfe...

Charlie Wags may appear to be an average golden-brown puppy, but he has a very special trick: with a wag of his tail, he can travel the world. In a departure from previous titles, the most recent of which is The Tales of Charlie Wags: London (2025), the Christmas season inspires Charlie to visit several international locations, instead of just one. His first stop is snowy, cozy Amsterdam: “Canals, once flowing freely, are now frozen paths that gleam. / As Charlie skates upon them, he twirls through a Christmas dream!” He then dashes to Brussels to enjoy waffles and walk the Grand-Place before a ski trip in the Swiss Alps. Charlie visits Munich and then Vienna, where he enjoys hot cocoa before heading home. This sweet tale is light on action, but heavy on atmosphere. Sjöström ’s watercolors transport readers to a glowing wonderland of soft whites, reds, and greens. The protagonist makes for a charming companion for young readers who like just a touch of adventure. The magic is never e...

Although he hasn’t seen his spacefaring military father (who may or may not be dead) in years, Kael Vallen wants to follow in his footsteps—and does just that when he turns 18.As a recruit in the God Ruler’s forces, Kael dreams of sharing the transcendent light of the Starlit Covenant with what he sees as the ignorant masses. Unbeknownst to Vallen, his underage brother, Auctor, secretly enlists, as well, and follows his sibling into space. After traveling to the planet Xalthryn to “provide support” to the God Ruler’s forces already on the surface, Kael and his overzealous brother are shocked to find themselves thrown into a full-fledged war, where their forces may be the fanatical aggressors. Ostrom’s novel is powered by palpable emotional intensity, and its deep development of its central characters and unapologetically graphic depiction of war pack an undeniable punch: “Kael peeked out from behind his barrier to see trees torn and men running. A projectile caught a man in the torso,...

Jensen writes in her mother Helen’s voice as she recaps Helen’s life story, starting with her childhood in Detroit in the 1920s and ’30s, where her father, Ho Sin, and mother, Bo-Ling, both Chinese immigrants, ran a laundry that barely provided for them and their six children. In 1936, after Bo-Ling’s death, Ho Sin returned to China with the children, remarried, and then returned to America, leaving them in the Tai Ting Pong village in the care of their new stepmother, Seam. Jensen paints a detailed portrait of the traditional village lives they led, which were culturally vibrant but materially austere, a problem exacerbated by their uncle Ho Huang, who gambled away the family’s farmland and brutalized his wife. In 1940, Ho Sin brought 17-year-old Helen to the San Francisco Bay Area, where she re-Americanized herself and waitressed at swanky eateries—her recollections of Chinatown are colorful and bustling. Later chapters describe her version of the American dream, with nice suburban ...

In her first book, the author, a scientist and co-founder of Philippine Global Explorers, presents a narrative about overcoming a midlife crisis and gaining global perspective. Following the death of her mother, a struggle with infertility, and a marital breakup, Rasco reexamined the life she’d built that had been defined by conventional ideas of success; her journey to deeper understanding included leaving her prestigious tech job and beginning a period of international travel (the author made it her goal to visit every country in the world). Rather than providing a complete blow-by-blow account of her travels, the author relates highlights that emphasize intercultural exchange, focusing on activities from driving (a consistent challenge as she navigated unfamiliar territory in different parts of the world) to dancing (“I feel most alive when I’m in motion”). Rasco’s travels (which included the founding of a short-lived tour company in Togo) would eventually lead to her current work....

This fascinating biography by British historian Tremlett gives us dictator Francisco Franco’s Galician childhood, military school, and the “Africanist” apprenticeship in Spanish Morocco before the civil war that brought him to power. The book is also, inevitably, a concise history of Spain during the first three-quarters of the 20th century. Unlike Hitler and Mussolini, Franco remained on the world stage until 1975. Tremlett describes him as a kind of dam that held back progress, despite “his lack of charisma, intellectual spark, ideological conviction or the kind of personal traits that Spaniards consider ‘simpático.’” He was, however, “fueled by relentless personal ambition and considerable luck.” Franco ruled for 39 years as the nation's caudillo, or military strongman, not so much for power itself, but to prevent others from wielding it. He was forever caught between church and monarchy, his own reactionary position, and progressive Republicanism in a conflict that cost half a...

Maven Blackthorn hasn’t been home since her mom died under suspicious circumstances 12 years ago, but the death of her grandmother, Lorinda, forces her return to Solstice, Vermont. Maven’s daughter, Beatrix, has never seen where her mother grew up, but she quickly learns the Blackthorns have a reputation for witchcraft, largely fueled by a centuries-long feud with the powerful Croft family, whose heir apparent, Ronan, was Maven’s forbidden teenage love and “worst nightmare.” Maven hopes to bid farewell to her grandmother and visit with her aunts without running into Ronan, but he proves hard to avoid. Maven’s hatred for Ronan runs deep and she believes the feeling is mutual. From Ronan’s perspective, it’s clear their painful unraveling was full of misunderstandings. When Lorinda’s body goes missing from the funeral home, Maven is forced to accept Ronan’s help in discovering what happened. While Maven dives into her family history and the many unfortunate events befalling Blackthorn wo...

“The sacred bones of a literary culture [are] being ground into dust by technology and AI and many other distractions,” writes essayist Allen. To help remedy this decay, she offers a set of appreciative essays on canonical European and Anglophone writers, focusing on the personalities of writers and how fictional and historical characters interact to offer lessons in living lives of beauty. Many of her writers—Samuel Butler, Somerset Maugham, Osbert Sitwell, and Ogden Nash, among others—achieved success despite hardship or criticism. “Light verse used to be a vital part of American culture, high and low,” Allen writes in her essay on Nash. Why has Sybille Bedford never escaped her status as “one of the twentieth century’s most attractive literary curiosities?” How can the plays of Horton Foote teach us that “we are all orphans wandering alone through life, and the consolations of community and family are fleeting at best?” The more you read these essays, the more you are convinced tha...

The story opens in 1937 with a letter penned by a young man named Robert informing his parents that he is leaving for Spain with his buddy, Max, whose family “ woke up one morning with a Star of David burned into their front yard .” Max, with his keen sense of injustice, feels compelled to go to Spain to fight against Franco; he is killed, leaving Robert on his own. In a moment of courage, Robert fires his rifle, killing a soldier on horseback who is about to murder a young boy. Maria del Carmen Escobar, the young boy’s sister, hides Robert in an old olive oil jar deep in the ground, where he remains for decades. The narrative jumps to 1969, when Michael Virtue, recently graduated from college, is motorcycling in Spain thinking about his uncle Robert, about whom he heard stories when he was a child. After crashing his motorcycle, Michael meets Carmen, who tells him Robert is dead, but she never shows him his grave. Twenty years later, Michael returns to Spain to investigate what happe...