High Tech

Wildfires are on the increase worldwide. The author opens with coverage of recent record-setting destructive fires in California, Canada, and Greece, followed by four chapters: “What Are Wildfires?”, “Why Are Wildfires Increasing?”, “What Are the Consequences of More Frequent, Destructive Wildfires?”, and “How Are Communities Adapting?”. The punchy prose delivers intriguing information (“some pine cones only open and release their seeds when exposed to heat from a fire”) interspersed with attention-grabbing quotations, such as one from a survivor of the 2023 Lahaina fire on Maui: “It’s like a nuclear bomb went off here. There’s nothing left.” Mooney notes the interconnected factors contributing to the uptick in wildfires: Climate change is a major culprit, human activity often plays a role (for example, through accidents, arson, or encroaching on wilderness areas), and environmental factors, like invasive grasses and insects, also have an impact. Some strategies for adapting to this n...

The author was born in the Dominican Republic and raised in Section-8 housing in Brooklyn; he moved from poverty to the ivory towers of academia to become a professor of English at the University of Toledo. While his account is a deeply personal story of survival, brilliance, and grit, he also connects his autobiography to a larger history of immigrants and poor, marginalized Americans. “I was, to most of the people who met me and myself, a punk-ass Dominican immigrant,” he writes of his experiences in high school as a self-described “ dique gangsta.” “ Dique ,” the Dominican Spanish word for “supposedly,” became a defining descriptor for Bonifacio’s life as he grappled with fundamental questions of identity. A major theme of the work is the author’s strained relationship with his father. “Papi’s love was rare,” he writes, describing being physically beaten as a child, and the author notes that the fear of his father’s violence “was [his] teacher for [Bonifacio’s] own budding machism...

After her four-year marriage ended, the author found herself nearing the end of her 30s and  confronting an uncertain future. Living in New York City and working as a ghostwriter—a job she had come to despise—she made the practical but emotionally fraught decision to freeze her eggs (“I can’t stop thinking that I’m behind schedule”). Soon after, she quit her job and moved to the small New England town of Hanover, New Hampshire, which she knew only because it was where she adopted Ronan, her Glen of Imaal terrier. Trading her mouse-infested environs for bohemian chic, Vereckey moved in with Susan and Jake, the couple who bred the terriers. Residing in the apartment on the bottom floor of the main house, Vereckey began the slow, uncertain work of rebuilding her life. Returning to her journalistic roots, the author took on freelance work for a local newspaper and settled into the rhythms of her new household, enjoying evening Jeopardy!  sessions with Susan and Jake over cocktail...

Bob Dylan has nothing on Leonard Cohen (1934-2016) when it comes to cryptic musical personas. He was a successful singer-songwriter but came to it late, almost casually, after establishing himself as a poet and novelist in his native Canada. He wrote songs steeped in religious imagery—“Hallelujah” most famously—but kept his own faith vague. Though he was embraced by the counterculture, he had a nihilistic streak and was, as one writer here notes, “a long-standing member of the National Rifle Association.” The essays Shumway collects don’t pretend to make a coherent portrait—except, perhaps, as a man who tried to wriggle out of every attempt to categorize him. A trio of essays discuss his uneasy relationship with ’60s folkies like Dylan, ’70s singer-songwriters, and ’80s rock acts. (Eric Weisbard delivers a particularly thoughtful piece on Cohen’s ’90s revival, stoked by his music’s appearances in films like Pump Up the Volume .) Cohen songs are less sung than incanted, which leads man...

Why would his boss, Asha Tamaskar, the CIA’s edgy new deputy director of covert operations, turn to him to infiltrate a radical European group bent on doing grave damage to Western interests? Who better to play double agent than an operative the Company “burn[ed]…before the entire world” and for whose actions the U.S. had planned to apologize to Russia before that country’s invasion of Ukraine “rendered this and every other issue moot.” Since being outed for having passed the incriminating dossier to a WikiLeaks-type publisher—an action for which some people consider him a hero—Falk has been hiding out in the Republic of Georgia. Now back on the beat, learning how to be a double agent as he goes, he pursues the intel needed to thwart the radical group’s coldly self-regarding front man, Felix Burnham, a onetime CIA agent and American citizen born in Russia. Falk’s increasingly dangerous mission takes him across Europe, out in the open, from Tbilisi to Prague to London, through checkpoi...

Delaney Huger is running late—a last-minute phone call from her boss delayed her departure. She has already missed the sunset wedding ceremony on the beach; she slips into the reception tent and meets up with her younger sister, Haven, who leads her to the singles table. Delaney grew up on the island and knows most of the attendees, but across the table is an attractive new man, Luke Sullivan, who, she learns, is Gull Island’s most eligible single dad. Luke arrived at the island a year ago and runs a burgeoning charter business, Sullivan’s Lark. But Delaney now lives in Virginia, is visiting for only 48 hours, and has an on-again off-again attorney boyfriend back home, so she dismisses any idea of getting into a relationship with the admittedly handsome newcomer (although “She had to admit this hunky, self-assured guy’s entrepreneurial spirit piqued her interest”). Delaney and Haven are co-owners of a wine shop on the island called Wine Haven. When Delaney learns that their business i...

A little over three years after he returned in triumph from his epic exploration of the North American West with William Clark, Meriwether Lewis was found dead in October 1809 of gunshot wounds at a small inn along the historic Natchez Trace in Tennessee. Ever since, historians have debated how he died, with most opting for the official explanation that Lewis, in a state of “mental derangement,” died by suicide—while others insist he was murdered. Turnbow joins the fray with a lucid account of the events leading up to Lewis’ death, which he calls “one of the most intriguing and enduring mysteries in American history.” The author devotes much of this volume to Lewis’ activities as a “point man, agent, or spy” for Thomas Jefferson. He became particularly useful to the president, per Turnbow, as a source of information about James Wilkinson, a rogue U.S. Army general whom he replaced as governor of the Upper Louisiana Territory in 1807 and who had not given up on his own plans “to contro...

If you keep upping your protagonist’s powers throughout a series, then you must balance the scales by increasing the number and strength of their enemies—as well as seriously messing with their personal life. Over the course of the Dresden Files, Harry Dresden, Chicago PI and now one of the most powerful wizards in the world, thought his first love was dead (she wasn’t), sacrificed his half-vampire girlfriend on an altar to save their child, lost another girlfriend when they learned she’d been mind-controlled into their relationship, bound himself into servitude as the Fae Queen Mab’s Winter Knight, and, for the length of an entire book, thought he himself was dead (he wasn’t). But nothing has hit quite as hard as the death of Karrin Murphy, the former police lieutenant who was his quasi-partner, friend, and, after a slow burn across many books, lover. Chicago is in a terrible state following a battle with Ethniu the Titan and her Fomor army, and Harry is doing his best to confront th...

Reminiscent of Langston Hughes’ The Negro Speaks of Rivers , illustrated by E.B. Lewis (2009), this elegantly wrought, first-person telling is both human and natural history. Lines from Negro spirituals that sing of rivers, like “Wade in the Water,” appear between Weatherford’s stanzas in a scriptlike font. The Alabama describes its size (“318 miles long, fifty to 200 yards wide, / and from three to forty feet deep”) and notes that its Choctaw name means “Thicket Clearers.” It also recalls enslaved Africans hiding in its waters as they sought freedom and the Cherokee people who passed its banks on the Trail of Tears. Throughout, Collier’s signature collage illustrations add richness, depth, hope, and light to the river’s weighty story. Weatherford never flinches from the horrors of oppression: victims of lynching thrown into the river, civil rights protesters beaten as they made their way across the Edmund Pettus Bridge on March 7, 1965. But Collier’s paintings emphasize Black and Nat...

Davies’ long-running series delightfully inverts Arthur Conan Doyle’s focus as Sherlock Holmes plays supporting character to a successful investigation by his observant landlady, Mrs. Hudson, that largely passes beneath his notice. Taking the Watson role of sidekick and narrator is scrappy teenage maid Flotsam, whose voice combines period formality, youthful snark, and as much insight into her mentor as the faithful doctor had into Holmes. The victim in Mrs. Hudson’s eighth case is arms dealer Charles Belladonna, whose death is originally ruled accidental. The plot is thickened by the inheritance of the title. The beneficiary is son Paul, left on the industrialist’s doorstep as an infant more than 20 years ago, current location unknown. Holmes and Watson are far from insignificant characters. Their highbrow conjectures on the case play drolly against Mrs. Hudson’s more conversationally delivered deductions. Holmesians will take pleasure in the many references to characters and places ...

Editor Knight-Justice, who contributes two illustrations, explains in a note that at age 14, Hughes’ poem “Mother to Son” not only introduced him to poetry’s rich possibilities, but deepened his understanding of his relationship with his own mother. He writes, “This is what poetry did for me, and I want it to do the same for you.” Some poems receive double-page spreads, while others, thematically aligned, appear on facing pages. “Dream Variation,” like other selections, sees night as a solace—a warm, positive reflection of Blackness: “Then rest at cool evening / Beneath a tall tree / While night comes on gently, / Dark like me— / That is my dream!” The facing poem, “Harlem Night Song,” invites a loved one to roam nighttime streets pulsing with jazz. To visually unify the project, the artists adopt a palette of blues and purples accented with warm yellows, oranges, and the varied skin tones of the mainly Black and Brown children and adults that enliven each spread. Styles vary, from Is...

Whether it be eggs to gather or stalls to muck, red-haired Annabelle is always busy on her family’s farm. But even with so much to do, she loves to sneak away to dance in solitude whenever she can and bring herself joy. She doesn’t realize, however, that her farm’s jolly pigs are watching—and that they’ve picked up a new habit. The pigs start twirling all over the grounds, trampling the vegetables, disrupting the other animals, and causing an all-around general ruckus. The farm’s workers chime in with their own rhyming complaints, demanding, “Make those pigs stop their jig; I cannot dig!” Annabelle’s parents, who present white, insist on putting a stop to the chaos, but their daughter has a different plan. She spends all night coming up with a creative solution that brings new life and spirit to the farm on a permanent basis. Michaud’s message of finding space to sustainably integrate personal passions into everyday routines is an encouraging one for young readers who love a silly sto...

After the tragic deaths of her parents, Emmeline, who’s gifted with the ability to see the future, is separated from her sister and forced into the service of the cruel and abusive Mr. Chitwood. He disguises the 11-year-old girl as a boy and forces her to perform a fortune-telling act for wealthy clients. Its success leads Chitwood to consider taking Emmeline from America to England to perform for the king, and she fears that she may never see her sister again. Recognizing the power of Emmeline’s gift, a kind woman helps her escape and sends her to Mr. Imason, a schoolmaster in Tarrytown, New York. Imason promises to hide Emmeline from Chitwood and his imposing manhunter, Doon, and while in his care, she’ll aid the rebel cause by using her visions to help predict troop movements as the Revolutionary War looms. Hidden in Tarrytown, she takes a new identity—Roo—and befriends two other children who are also living without their parents: Izzy, a chatty and headstrong student and school cu...

This novel, based on true events, gives the reader a ringside seat to a cross-country rampage that snuffed out multiple lives in 1950 and ’51. A U.S. Army lieutenant reports his twin brother missing, after he fails to show up for a highly anticipated family visit, and a bullet-riddled car’s discovery in Oklahoma leads police to fear for Carl Mosser, his wife and three children. It quickly prompts the largest nationwide manhunt since the 1930s, when John Dillinger was on the run. A handgun receipt implicates Billy Cook, a parolee with an extensive record and utter contempt for authority (“I'm used to being thrown anywhere,” he taunted his jailers). Law enforcement officials frantically scour the West, with Cook always a step ahead, killing a salesman in Palo Verde, California, and taking a deputy sheriff hostage in Blythe. After he crosses the Mexican border, it’s up to local police to capture him and keep his hostages safe. Later, a prolonged debate about Cook’s mental state plays...

David Bowie (1947-2016) wasn’t an overtly religious musician, but he spent much of his life pondering metaphysical matters. As Guardian journalist Ormerod notes, Bowie read widely about Christian, Jewish, and Buddhist traditions, studied up on occult figures like Aleister Crowley, and occasionally worked matters of faith into his performances. (Most famously, at a 1992 tribute to Queen frontman Freddie Mercury, he dropped to his knees and recited the Lord’s Prayer.) Bowie would occasionally make explicit religious references in his songs—an early song, “Silly Boy Blue,” was inspired by his investigations into Buddhism, and his late musical and song “Lazarus” had clear Christian overtones. But more often a listener has to do a lot of reading between the lines, a task at which Ormerod is only intermittently convincing. It’s interesting to know, for instance, how Bowie’s song “Station to Station” was informed by the Stations of the Cross and how the musician worked his Buddhist interest...

The author was raised in Lamesa, in the endless flat plains of West Texas. He describes himself as a typical, hard-working kid. As a teenager, he discovered a talent for broadcasting as a DJ on local radio and honed his skills through his college years at the University of Texas at Austin, after which he decided to pursue the law. Conner went to law school in Houston, where he met and married Anne Garwood, a socialite from a prominent family (“Anne and I met for drinks. Two nights later, we had our second date. Within a few days, we were together constantly”). They welcomed two kids, Emily and Will, who have both become very successful (Emily’s accomplishments are particularly impressive, as she was rendered paralyzed in a diving accident). Retired, the author and Anne now live in New Mexico. The book’s highlights find Conner in the courtroom: In the very first chapter, the author discusses his role in the true case of a legendary Texas wildcatter, Hugh Roy Cullen, detailing the troub...

When three boys, Ricky Henderson and brothers Mikey and Joey Schuler, vanish in 1950s Chicago and are later found dead in a nearby forest preserve, the city is thrown into a state of panic. A massive manhunt ensues, drawing in police from multiple jurisdictions. Despite sweeping up dozens of known pedophiles and other potential suspects, authorities fail to find the killer. The investigation is hampered by chaos at the crime scene, jurisdictional conflicts, and a flood of false leads, and the murders go unsolved for decades. Almost 40 years later, ATF investigator Nick Ferraro, who had known the victims as a child, stumbles upon an unexpected lead—a long-buried confession overheard by a criminal informant (“He told me he killed a couple of kids one time”). Teaming up with police officer A.J. Reid, the daughter of one of the original investigating officers, Nick begins to unravel a web of corruption and criminal ties that reach far beyond the boys’ murders. As the pair dig deeper, they...

Back in the 1980s, Lenya Fischer served as an intelligence officer for the Stasi, where her attributes—“sneaky, stealthy, a deep-diver”—earned her the nickname Der Narwhal. Now, after a stint in prison for bribery, the 63-year-old is back on the street working as one of Europe’s most tenacious corporate investigators for hire. Her current case has her looking into the activities of Peter Brunner, the scion of a lumber empire who seems to be hiding something in his Cyprus-, Malta-, and Liechtenstein-based shell companies. It won’t be an easy job: “The Brunners have been a kind of power behind the throne all across Europe since the Holy Roman Empire,” a friend warns her. “They didn’t stay on top through two world wars by being nice. They don’t like to be investigated.” Luckily, Lenya is one of the only people in the world with access to the perfect man to probe Brunner’s holdings: Orell Schneider, the so-called “007 of Money Laundering” (and Lenya’s ex-lover) whose past employers includ...

Initially, Cathcart’s novel seems to follow a familiar beat: a young man named Scoot mourns his departed friend, Hannah. Both have been living with cystic fibrosis; in the aftermath of Hannah’s death, Scoot finds that Hannah has left him money and a detailed request. It’s that request that lead things in a strange direction: Hannah’s wishes involve Scoot traveling to Europe to find the preserved heart of the composer and pianist Chopin. (That isn’t as random as it seems: several characters remark on parallels between Chopin’s tuberculosis and the cystic fibrosis that afflicts Hannah and Scoot.) The journey takes him to Tbilisi, Georgia, and involves Niki, a woman with her own connection to Hannah. Gradually, the boundaries of the novel expand even further, to include several chapters narrated by the late novelist George Sand. Cathcart moves backward and forward in time, filling in details about Scoot and Hannah’s relationship, Scoot’s troubled family history, and how precisely Niki fi...

Americans Eleanor and Talbot meet in Florence just after World War II—Eleanor came to Italy to study sculpture in 1939 and got stuck when war broke out, and Talbot was there as part of a U.S. intelligence group within the U.S. Army. They eventually marry and move to Washington, D.C., where Talbot joins the CIA and Eleanor, unable to find work in the art world, settles for a job in the Arlington Public Library system. Fifteen years later, distance has grown between them, and while Eleanor turns a blind eye to Talbot’s numerous affairs, the cracks in their seemingly idyllic life start to show. On the night of Eleanor’s 40th birthday party, an operation led by Talbot goes badly awry when a surveillance plane is shot down over the Soviet Union just weeks before Eisenhower and Khrushchev are scheduled to have peace talks. Talbot’s extramarital activities come back to haunt him, and a foundational plot twist midway through the novel completely shifts the narrative that readers thought they ...

In today’s troubled sociopolitical climate, it may seem odd to find solace in the teachings of a 13th-century Christian mystic. Yet, as the author convincingly argues, Saint Francis of Assisi lived during an equally tumultuous era and believed far too many were “slaves to money and power and persona” and needed a “way to escape” by experiencing God. Sweeney describes God not just as humanity’s creator, but also as a “Lover” and “Friend,” as he outlines the ways in which Francis suggests we can “find love and joy” by connecting with the divine. The author highlights Francis’ well-known affinity for animals, emphasizing his dedication to setting captives free versus keeping them in cages (a liberatory message that has widespread applications in one’s relationship with other living beings). Sweeney also discusses channeling emotions into action, noting that “We may love the calm, but we need storms” to prompt us to look outside of ourselves. The author challenges traditional gender norms...

As part of a four-book series, this volume recounts the production side of both types of Japanese storytelling media, beginning with a short section on the origin of film and moving on to animation technologies with a specific focus on Japan. Next, readers learn about the typical career paths of mangaka (manga authors and illustrators), the major publishing houses, and the production cycle of anime, including how it’s adapted for international audiences. Bolte covers the common artistic styles, which include features like big eyes and range from cutesy (chibi and kawaii) to more realistic. Finally, the author closes by looking at other related formats—feature films, light novels (which are originally released in serialized form), and video games. The sidebars and photo captions highlight pertinent case studies and explore topics such as overworked artists, how the racial identity of characters is interpreted by some non-Japanese audiences, and the career of Osamu Tezuka, creator of As...

When Diana, a wealthy sugar magnate in her mid-70s, is abruptly forced into retirement by her own daughter, she relocates to the Ocean’s Edge, “a fifty-five plus community beautifully nestled along Florida’s Treasure Coast.” What begins as a quiet chapter in her life quickly turns into an unexpected adventure. Diana soon befriends a quirky group of retirees whose idea of fun goes far beyond shuffleboard—they spend their days sipping coffee-based cocktails and solving cold cases. Her new circle includes Dennis, a retired detective with a sharp eye for detail; Bill, who’s a bit sleazy but incredibly tech-savvy; Estelle and Filomena, eccentric twin sisters (one a gifted medium, the other a tarot card reader); and Carol, the community’s nurse, who possesses an unusual ability to communicate with animals. Diana, with her wealth and political connections, proves to be an invaluable asset to the team, almost immediately helping them solve several cases. Diana finds her new vocation incredibl...

Across 15 stories, questions of identity, deception, and artistic expression intertwine, revealing characters who blur the line between perception and reality. In the titular story, a man and woman seemingly meet for the first time and agree to lie to each other, although the depth of their deceptions runs much deeper than it first appears. “A Day at the National People’s Museum” follows Mr. Rubens as he’s summoned for compulsory “Museum Service” in a Kafkaesque nightmare world where the people have decided to live with “no opera, no theatre, no art.” In “Waste Disposal,” a man disposes of a biscuit tin containing the ashes of his wife’s stepmother. A professor of art history attempts to combine academia and eroticism in “Pleasure Pain.” In “Patient Zero,” a painter, suddenly obsessed with what it means to be dead, goes to see a doctor. A screenwriter who has purported himself as a loner now wishes to extricate himself from this fabricated identity by acting in his latest project in “...

“The time is now. Climate change will impact everyone on Earth.” With this urgent declaration, Schroeder emphasizes the necessity of immediate strategies to slow global warming and mitigate its effects on the planet. She identifies human-caused greenhouse gases as a primary culprit and asserts that the most effective responses focus on reducing these emissions. The book opens by addressing the energy sector—“transportation, heat and electricity, buildings, manufacturing, and construction”—which accounts for 75% of global greenhouse gases. The subsequent short chapters explore carbon capture and storage technologies, sustainable agriculture, thrifting and recycling, and practical daily measures, such as purchasing energy-efficient appliances and growing one’s own food. Text boxes provide added context, from the history of electric vehicles to explanations of carbon cap and trade systems and farmer’s markets, offering readers deeper insights without overwhelming the approachable and eng...