The Etruscan by Linda Lappin

Pleasure Boat Studio Review by Walter Cummins This new edition of Linda Lappin’s The Etruscan marks the twentieth anniversary of the novel’s initial publication in 2004. I reviewed it then,…

The Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler

Hogarth Review by Linda Lappin Anne Tyler’s delightful Vinegar Girl (2016) is often praised as a deliciously witty retelling of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew.  The novel shares the basic plot of much…

Flashlight by Susan Choi

Farrar, Straus & Giroux Review by Walter Cummins Flashlight’s nineteen sections, each focused on a situation in the life of a central character, are tour de forces, the situations inventive,…

Coolest American Stories, Edited by Mark Wish and Elizabeth Coffey

Coolest Stories Review by Jack Smith Coolest American Stories 2025, winner of the 2025 International Book Award for Fiction Anthologies, is rich with complex characters and myriad situations—for the protagonists,…

Libra by Don DeLillo

Viking Essay by Brian Tanguay Returning to a book I read twenty or more years ago is usually revealing, both about the book and myself. The book is the same,…

Dogs and Monsters by Mark Haddon

Doubleday Review by Walter Cummins The seven stories in Monsters and Dogs were written over a long period, their composition interrupted by Haddon’s triple heart bypass. That time span may…

The Uncollected Stories by Mavis Gallant

New York Review Books Review by Walter Cummins Although the forty-four Mavis Gallant works assembled by editor Garth Risk Hallberg for the 2025 Uncollected Stories had their initial magazine publication…

Hot Air by Marcy Dermansky

Knopf Review by George Yatchisin In Marcy Dermansky’s engrossing novel of (mis)manners Hot Air, third person limited isn’t just a narrative technique, it’s a view of the world where solipsism…

Cheesecake: a novel by Mark Kurlansky

Bloomsbury Review by Brian Tanguay I thoroughly enjoyed Mark Kulansky’s new novel, Cheesecake, set in the Upper West Side of Manhattan in the 1980s. West 86th street to be precise.…

My Name Is Emilia del Valle by Isabel Allende

Ballantine Review by Gabriel Tanguay Ortega I always look forward to the release of a new novel by Isabel Allende, as I already know what it has in store—lyrical, descriptive…