High Tech

Atlas Whitaker was a baby when she was left on the porch of a farmhouse in Willow Creek, West Virginia. She never knew her mother and was raised instead by Zola Whitaker and Celia Jones, two compassionate and strong women who took her in as their own. In 1995, Atlas is now a college dropout plagued by aimlessness and an empty checking account; Zola has died, and the elderly Celia is at risk of losing the farmhouse. Guilt-ridden and wanting to help, Atlas takes a job at an asylum-turned-museum, where she assists an uppity curator with an exhibit showcasing Appalachian art. The job posting neglected to mention that Atlas would see ghosts in the hallway or get trapped in the creepy basement. The narrative jumps back to 1970, when 17-year-old Garnet Whitaker is desperate to get away from her abusive father. After Zola and Celia rescue her, she’s hired as the phone operator at the asylum, where she befriends a Deaf patient named Esther and develops a crush on one of the doctors, Eddie Jame...

With regard to his four decades as a Springsteen fan, Pethes knows he’s not special. But the magic of Springsteen is that he makes his fans feel that they are and, often, that he has altered their lives. How does Springsteen do this? Pethes, a literature professor at the University of Cologne, thinks he has the answer: “The impression of communication between Springsteen and his audience arises because both sides attribute to the other a desire for such an exchange and act accordingly.” OK, that isn’t something the reader can dance to. Here’s Springsteen’s answer, from 2012: “I’m in the midst of a lifetime conversation with my audience.” Pethes has identified and dedicated a chapter to each of six “communicative aspects” of Springsteen’s artistry; some include his musical influences, his rapport with his audience, and his storytelling gifts. Although Pethes doesn’t put it this way, his book suggests that, while many artists can claim one or more of those aspects—the Grateful Dead’s au...

A deadly showdown at an Asian market ends with veteran Anchorage, Alaska homicide detective DeHavilland Beans’ first fatal shooting—of a police informant, no less. Luckily, an unexpected call from an old acquaintance offers the promise of redemption for the devastated detective, or at least an opportunity to clear his head and gain some perspective. Felicia Gunnerson, the younger sister of Beans’ childhood friend Conrad, is now a cop in Beans’ native Galena, hundreds of miles from Anchorage, and she has a particularly troubling case. The missing man she’s searching for is Lloyd Paul, whom Beans knew as a teenager and who, despite a significant age difference, carried a torch for Beans’ mother, Mari. The search for Lloyd becomes a portal to a larger story about the dark legacies of World War II and the impactful connections of family. Beans’ second case is a multi-layered story with roots in recent American history. Hakoda writes fully fleshed-out characters whose relationships fuel th...

“I’m jealous of those who believe in a God,” writes Gupta, adding, “I’m also jealous of atheists.” Whether one is religiously “ensconced in the security of a benevolent God” or liberated from spirituality in a way that allows one to be “free to enjoy life in the moment,” the author appreciates the certainty that comes with either theistic or atheistic worldviews. Yet, as a self-described agnostic, the author is torn between competing, internalized conceptions of the world, struggling to reconcile her observations that there’s an intentional design to the universe and that the harsh realities of life indicate a cosmos seemingly devoid of useful divine intervention. Gupta offers a balanced take on what she views as the most and least convincing elements of both atheism and theism. In defense of theistic explanations, she points to documented yet unexplained paranormal events, the ubiquitous heavenly imagery and spiritual bliss associated with near-death experiences, and archaeological f...

Set in 2045, the story follows firefighter Miro Jackson, a member of Australia’s elite Predict, Prevent, and Control Unit, which uses a technology called MindLink to anticipate and prevent disasters before they occur. When the Delroy family dies in a suspicious house fire, Miro, informed by his former career in the New South Wales Police Force and a series of personal tragedies, begins to suspect that advanced AI systems may have influenced the outcome. The narrative then shifts to FBI agent Catalina Herrera, who’s investigating a series of unusual deaths in the American Midwest. Victims using Agentic’s augmented reality systems appear to ignore life-threatening storm warnings, raising concerns that AI-driven interfaces may be manipulating human perceptions and behavior. (“My theory, to be tested, is that our killer uses some device or psychological trick to persuade our victims to remain in a situation of almost certain death.”) As the investigations in Australia and the United State...

Fourteen-year-old Levi Anderson is an observer. At home at his family’s Indiana farm, he writes a few lines each day about light and shadows, the movements and sounds of the animals, or his father’s face in an emotional moment. Despite being surrounded by family members, Levi feels lonely, and after his oldest siblings leave to enlist in the Union army, he faces the brunt of his remaining brother’s frustrations and abuse. So, in 1861, Levi enlists as well, heading out to find himself and his place in the world. He turns his talent for observation to watching the men with whom he marches—and, much later, he applies his eye to his experiences in the notorious Andersonville prisoner-of-war camp. McDonald’s descriptions transport readers into each beautiful, peaceful, shocking, or heart-wrenching moment: “He had fired into smoke and the smoke had swallowed the bullets, and what the bullets had done on the other side was something he would never know and did not want to know.” After being ...

Connor Castaway and Drummer Washington are two talented wrestlers and friends who are seniors at First Landing High School in Virginia Beach. They struggle with various challenges off the mat, as well as the stress of wrestling for a highly competitive coach, known to all as “Coach Wild,” who also happens to be Drummer’s father. Both boys live in one-parent homes: Connor’s father died the previous summer, and Drummer’s mother left the family home some time ago.As they train, the teens must also negotiate the social pressures of high school life. The toll of injuries on their bodies is significant, and they use opiates for pain management; they also have troubled relationships with girls, adding to their problems. One of the story’s most intriguing secondary players is the loathsome and privileged Jorby, who threatens Isla, Connor’s love interest.Cunningham effectively assembles a cast of flawed characters doing their best (or their worst) in an engaging story of people striving for di...

Someone who taught ancient Greek and Roman culture at Cambridge for 50 years isn’t going to say there is no point, but Beard is quick to assure readers, in the breezy tone familiar from her television work, that she will make her case “without resorting to the tired clichés often used.” She doesn’t necessarily think the classics are “good for you” or impart “timeless truths.” What first sparked her interest was a 4,000-year-old piece of Egyptian bread at the British Museum that a kind curator took out of its case and held at eye level, so that 5-year-old Mary could see it up close; she still recalls the thrill of “an ordinary fragment of everyday life made by, and for, people who were unimaginably distant from me.” That sense of both nearness and distance is a through line in Beard’s short text, based on lectures she gave at the universities of Chicago and Edinburgh. Yes, classical literature still speaks to us of common, human emotions, but the world limned in, for example, the Iliad...

When last we met our hero, the titular turtle made a skeptical new pal (“Be careful, I’m a for-real bear.” “No way! I’m a for-real bear expert, and you are NOT a for-real bear”). The friend has now returned, hoping to engage Bearsuit Turtle in some sports. After shooting down suggestions (“We can’t play baseball without hot dogs and ample parking”), our protagonist counters with a different idea: Bearsketball. But the rules clearly hinge upon Bearsuit Turtle’s ability to bend them at a moment’s notice. After a dramatic floor-is-lava game, a stick game, and a rolling-down-a-hill game, we learn about the toughest one of all: Guess what number Bearsuit Turtle is thinking of. Happily, there’s one particular rule of Bearsketball that wasn’t explained at the start: “Everyone wins at Bearsketball.” The storyline perfectly replicates those friendships where one pal has all the ideas and insists on leading the way. Colors as bright and blatant as Bearsuit Turtle’s intentions, coupled with the ...

One Monday morning, the students of Toronto’s Ridgeview Alternative School (“an oasis of acceptance” for kids interested in the arts) arrive to discover their greenhouse blocked off with yellow crime scene tape. Few are upset that the body inside is English teacher Clifford “call me Cliff” Lowell—a rumored sexual predator, known for grooming underage girls and giving popular boys unfairly bad grades. Earlier in the semester, seniors and best friends Jordan Byrne and Nick Moretti entered Lowell’s class. The teacher acted very differently toward autistic Jordan before his transition; now, both boys’ low grades jeopardize their college acceptances and scholarships. New senior transfer Chloe Underwood, on the other hand, at first welcomes Cliff’s attentions and falls under his spell, a process described in explicit scenes of grooming and sexual abuse, but she quickly realizes how manipulative he is. What starts as a silly game among Jordan, Nick, and Chloe, who all present white, becomes ...

Meredith Metzger is a devoted social worker in Rockford, Illinois, a hardscrabble city that residents love and loathe in near-equal measure. In her profession, Meredith sees the worst the city has to offer, both in terms of individual decisions and systemic inequities that drive poverty and its associated hardships. But when the pressure becomes too much and leaning on her co-workers isn’t enough, Meredith starts drinking, eventually endangering her son. She puts her colleague Jamal Glover in the difficult position of having to give custody of Meredith’s young son, Mateo, to her ex-husband, Roberto Alvarez. Meredith must then continue to help families in the same position she’s in—a cycle of desperation and difficulty as she struggles to get sober. Narrated by a chorus of fellow social workers, the novel examines a variety of situations in which people may come in contact with the child protection system. But while attempting to explore the gray areas of society, the book seems more i...

For many fans, the consensus “big three” rappers are J. Cole, Kendrick Lamar, and Drake, distinct artists from different backgrounds and with a history of collaboration. And, more infamously, feuding: Beef entangling all three consumed much of 2024, culminating in Lamar’s savage Drake diss track, “Not Like Us,” which won him a Song of the Year Grammy and brought him to the Super Bowl halftime stage. But that spectacle is part of a complex, much longer story about hip-hop’s ongoing engagement with social-justice themes. McCool, a professor at West Chester University, and Hopkins, an arts journalist, begin their story with hip-hop landmarks like “The Message” and exploring how the genre’s commercial growth in the 1990s both bolstered and complicated conscious rap—N.W.A and Tupac Shakur, for instance, could at once deliver potent criticism of racist policing while perpetuating misogynistic stereotypes. Cole, a native of North Carolina, broke through in the 2010s by delivering raps that o...

God and Luc (the Devil) have waged war across seven battlefields for centuries. The final battlefield is the city of Carnage Coast, where God’s “champions” face off against Luc’s minions. Travis Holiday, known publicly as the armor-donning Iron Warrior, is one such champion. However, after enduring darkness in his own soul, he’s been largely absent for two years. He rushes back to Carnage Coast when he receives word that the enemy may be too much for Sgt. Rebecca Walters and costumed heroes like Grenade and the Pink Jaguar to handle. The city’s biggest threat seems to come from Candace Loveless, who’s apparently dead set on exposing the Iron Warrior’s true identity. Loveless’ agenda entails kidnapping and even killing innocent people to coerce Travis into submission. Soon, a series of rumors, letters, and videos cast Travis in a bad light, making his allies believe he’s dirty and convincing his girlfriend, Crystal, that he’s cheating on her. While some of what’s being said or shown ha...

Kyrie was 6 when a fine green dust rained down from the clouds. Those outside Peakin, California, died from a mysterious illness, but supplements have kept locals alive. Mayor Heathe is at the top of the community’s hierarchical structure, while Pastor Basil watches over people’s souls. Eighteen-year-old Kyrie spends much of her time journaling and working at the local mercantile, which helps her family afford the supplements they need to remain healthy. She resents her harsh, angry father, who often stumbles home drunk. After Kyrie’s friends, 21-year-old orphan Maple and Morgan, the son of town Council members, decide to marry, a violent event shatters the facade of their small-town life, introducing a more sinister storyline. The fallout prompts Kyrie to explore beyond Peakin’s borders, joining Thatch, a mysterious newcomer who shares uncomfortable truths. This action-packed dystopian novel offers attention-grabbing reveals and escapes along with a bit of romance amid the ensuing te...

The author here champions cultivating a daily habit of reading—even for a period of five minutes—as a way to “unlock clarity, habits, and a mindset for growth,” citing figures from business executives to professional athletes who credit the practice of reading with helping them to succeed in, as Jacobs puts it, “maintaining relevance, fostering resilience, and ultimately thriving in your personal life and career.” He takes readers on brief tour of the history of reading and describes (and then dismantles) some popular misconceptions about finding time for the pursuit, which he refers to as a “catalyst habit: a foundational practice that fuels growth in almost every other area of your life.” Reading, Jacobs asserts, improves thinking, sharpens communication, and can even lead to making smarter choices on the path to becoming what he calls a “deliberately developmental individual.” The author outlines the real, practical benefits of regular reading under the heading of five pillars: Pra...

Fifteen-year-old Clayton Wheeler knows he’s different from most other guys. He prefers comic books to sports and likes Wonder Woman, which, according to his despicable stepfather, James, makes him a “sissy.” He’s a regular target for bullies—specifically, jocks who bombard him with homophobic slurs. Clayton isn’t openly gay; he knows what and whom he likes, but he seems to be the only boy who feels this way in his California town. He’s reunited with Derek Barlow, an old friend whose family, after moving to New York several years earlier, has returned. Derek isn’t quite the same boy Clayton once knew. He’s the one who got Clayton into comic books, but now he’s on the football team, hobnobbing with the same guys who bully Clayton. Nonetheless, the closeness the two shared hasn’t entirely dissipated, and Derek and Clayton start hanging out again. This unfortunately cuts into Clayton’s time with his loyal friends and fellow nerds, the fashion-obsessed Ronee Jones and aspiring comic-book a...

Bigsby met the playwright in the 1960s, founded the Arthur Miller Centre for American Studies at the University of East Anglia in 1989, and has written extensively about his life and work, so his questions throughout the book are knowledgeable, though there’s little new here. The devastating impact of the Great Depression is a constant refrain, and its influence on Miller’s work is evident: “It meant that nothing man-made existed which could not be sharply changed, overthrown and turned into rubble at a moment’s notice.” This sense of existential uncertainty characterizes his plays, from All My Sons and Death of a Salesman through After the Fall and The Price , to such later works (better received in Britain than in America) as The American Clock and The Ride Down Mt. Morgan . Miller’s progressive politics are also evident in sharp comments about the House Un-American Activities Committee trying “to force people to renounce the whole era of the thirties and forties in which certain so...

A lifelong East Ender who fought in gangs as a boy and whose mother was killed when a German bomb dropped on their house, 45-year-old Harryboy Boas resides in a small room in a scruffy boardinghouse, sleeps with prostitutes, and prides himself on his reading acumen (“This Zola is a terrific writer. He can be tougher than Mickey Spillane, and when he gets on to sex he’s red hot”). He sometimes works in a laundry but mostly gets by on his winnings at the dog track—despite his hopeless tendency to gamble them away. When a quarreling couple moves in downstairs with their demanding 4-year-old son, Gregory, it’s only a matter of time before the father, Vic Deaner, impressed with Harry’s cool detachment, accompanies him to the track. A bookkeeper, he hopes he can win enough to soothe his wife, Evelyn, who flays him for not being able to afford better circumstances—ones that don’t include living near Black immigrants. But those hopes are quickly dashed, leaving Vic in debt from which a guilty...

When Sigler got a call about an audition for a television pilot, the then-teenager was confused. “HBO was a movie channel making, it seemed, a show about a group of opera singers?” she recalls in her memoir. The series in question was, of course, The Sopranos , which catapulted her to fame, although she almost didn’t audition at all, wanting to go to summer camp instead. Sigler’s book does recount her time on the series, and she makes clear her admiration for its creator, David Chase, and her colleagues, especially James Gandolfini and Robert Iler. But the real focus of the memoir is on how she maintained a career while struggling with health issues: first, an eating disorder (“Suddenly, friendships didn’t matter, my career didn’t matter—all that mattered was calories in and calories out”) and then a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis, which she kept secret for 14 years. She also tells the story of her disastrous relationship and marriage with her one-time agent, AJ DiScala, and their br...

In this follow-up to the author’s Moodtopia  (2018), Silverstein turns her attention to the application of holistic plant medicine (and its mood-altering effects) to children’s maladies. The earlier book concentrated on “helping women find emotional balance in a chaotic world”; as readers responded to the work, the author became increasingly aware that children are navigating that same world and might benefit from her approach, which, she claims, allows one to control one’s moods (rather than letting moods take the driver’s seat). Drawing on her three decades of experience treating clients, and her parenting of her own seven children, Silverstein presents anecdotes and advice for using such things as herbs, aromatherapy, and essential oils (“potent extracts derived from various aromatic plant parts”) to help children deal with hyperactivity, academic stress, sleeping problems, weak concentration, impulse control, emotional regulation, and ADHD. The author details the various herbal re...

January Hoolihan, immediately after completing seventh grade, goes to live with the grandfather she’s never known. Her punk rocker father died mere months ago from an overdose, and his live-in girlfriend, Sammie, is leaving Manhattan for LA without her. January moves in with Bill Hoolihan on Long Island’s Shelter Island. When Bill warmly welcomes her into his home, she realizes he’s not the “scary” old man others have led her to believe he is. January’s 8-year-old friend Crisscross is on the island as well, having trailed Sammie when she dropped January off. Amazingly resourceful, Crisscross lives on her own until a local food-market owner shows her some compassion. Crisscross is hiding from her alleged uncle, Felix, a biker. He’s been looking for Crisscross, who’d rather stay right where she is. Wisoff’s absorbing tale is stylized as January’s eighth-grade assignment—in the conceit of the novel, she’s writing about what she did over her summer vacation. Intriguingly, the story doesn’...

Mac’s world is filled with caps: a rain hat, a sleuth’s deerstalker, a makeshift crown, and an astronaut’s helmet, among others. Hats make Mac’s “heart go zing,” and the child has a chapeau for every occasion. There are hats for imaginative play, troublemaking, moments of introspection, and even times when Mac feels out of sorts—like when overbearing adults try to police what Mac wears (“then, my hat is an all-day head hug”). But compliments about a day’s style choice can turn Mac’s mood around, leaving the child feeling “like I can do anything!” Later, hats give Mac the confidence to make new friends and even join them on stage for a neighborhood performance complete with costumes and, of course, appropriate headgear. Though low on dramatic tension, this slice-of-life tale, narrated in zippy first-person prose, is high on affirmation, demonstrating how treasured objects can provide a sense of security while also empowering people to try new things. In Reid’s energetic illustrations, ...

The narrative unfolds in a future where space-mining companies have accidentally destroyed Earth, forcing humans, robots, and artificial intelligences to disperse to other planets. Piloting his space freighter, the Red Dwarf , Cpt. Sam Stonewell travels to the planet Oregon 4 to pick up a passenger called Kingsley, a slight, boyish android with blond hair, a royal blue coat, and loads of good-hearted charm who’s trying to find his missing castle. The search takes the Red Dwarf to offbeat locales, including a hippie planet whose atmosphere contains high percentages of pot smoke and hallucinogenic mushroom spores, and New Descartes, headquarters of the Church of the Holy Androids Order of the Singularity, which believes that the universe will disintegrate if there are no humans alive to observe it. Kingsley is significant to the Church, which regards him as the one nonhuman who qualifies as a conscious Observer of the universe. Kingsley gets wind of a plot by CHAOS, a sinister offshoot ...