Shadow Ticket by Thomas Pynchon

Penguin Review by Walter Cummins Shadow Ticket, Thomas Pynchon’s latest novel, published sixty-two years after his first, V, the author having reached age eighty-eight, replicates a number of themes treated…

The Hounding by Xenobe Purvis

Holt Review by George Yatchisin Xenobe Purvis can write spooky, but then there are all sorts of haunts, aren’t there? Her debut novel The Hounding, set during the 18th-century in…

What We Can Know by Ian McEwan

Knopf Review by Walter Cummins What We Can Know is divided into two parts, each covering the same events from information available a century apart. Part One, narrated by a…

The Paris Express by Emma Donaghue

Summit Review by Walter Cummins Emma Donaghue succeeds in integrating multiple stories that involve a group of varied individuals on a train ride from Granville, Normandy, to Montparnasse station in…

Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity by Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson

PublicAffairs Review by Walter Cummins It’s a common assumption that the technological inventions and innovations of recent centuries have increased wealth and living standards throughout the world. As a reality…

To Phrase a Prayer for Peace by Donna Spruijt-Metz

Wildhouse Review by Catherine Abbey Hodges To Phrase a Prayer for Peace, Donna Spruijt-Metz’s second full-length collection of poems, chronicles the poet’s experience of the first 118 days of the…

Playworld by Adam Ross

Knopf Review by Walter Cummins In Adam Ross’s Playworld, Griffin Hurt, the narrator, depicts a collection of situations he lived through during his years from middle school until early high…

The Mind Electric: A Neurologist on the Strangeness and Wonder of Our Brains by Pria Anand

Washington Square Review by Walter Cummins Pria Anand starts The Mind Electric by relating two childhood fascinations—her grandfather’s neurological symptoms from post-polio syndrome and, before she could read, the fantastical…

Fox by Joyce Carol Oates

Hogarth Review by Walter Cummins I hadn’t read a Joyce Carol Oates’ novel in years, an avoidance I can attribute to intimidation ny her output, which I believe is fifty-eight…

Sister, Sinner: The Miraculous, Scandalous Story of Aimee Semple McPherson by Claire Hoffman

Farrar, Straus and Giroux Review by George Yatchisin Why and how masses of people fall under the thrall of a magnetic person are the kinds of questions that sadly keep…