Life As No One Knows It: The Physics of Life’s Emergence by Sara Imari Walker

Riverhead Review by Walter Cummins Before I attempt to say something about a book that theorizes life’s emergence from the perspective of the science of physics, I should admit that…

The Art of Dying: Writings, 2019-2022 by Peter Schjeldahl

Abrams Review by Walter Cummins Peter Schjeldahl ends his essay “The Art of Dying”—written when he was well aware of his terminal lung cancer—with a recognition that “Dying is my…

Body Friend: A Novel by Katherine Brabon

Bloomsbury Review by Brian Tanguay In Katherine Brabon’s third novel, Body Friend, the narrator is never named. She’s a woman who knows herself best when she’s in the greatest physical…

The God of the Woods by Liz Moore

Riverhead Review by Walter Cummins It’s no surprise that Liz Moore’s The God of the Woods is a bestseller in the thriller & suspense and—not as obvious to me—literary fiction…

Ghost Dogs: On Killers and Kin by Andre Dubus III

Norton Review by Walter Cummins Andre Dubus III explores his vulnerabilities throughout the essays in this collection. Despite his literary regard and economic success as a writer and university teacher…

Freeman’s Challenge: The Murder That Shook America’s Original Prison for Profit by Robin Bernstein

University of Chicago Press Review by Brian Tanguay When William Freeman, a young Black man, stabbed four white people to death in Cayuga County, New York in March 1846, the…

The Same Bright Stars by Ethan Joella

Scribner Review by Walter Cummins As he demonstrated in his first two novels, Ethan Joella possesses a special ability to create a community of interrelated characters, each of whom is…

American Outrage: A Testamentary by H. L. Hix

BlazeVOX Review by Walter Cummins With every page of American Outrage—with every listing of the name of a person killed by gun violence, with every accumulating fact about guns in…

Soul, Ghost, My Absolute by Rosalind Palermo Stevenson

Rain Mountain Review by Walter Cummins In her piece “The Foghorn,” Rosalind Palermo Stevenson includes several of her own translations of Antonin Artaud, including, “The dream is true. All dreams…

That Librarian: The Fight Against Book Banning in America by Amanda Jones

Bloomsbury Review by Brian Tanguay Amanda Jones was born and raised in the small, rural town of Watson in Livingston Parish in southern Louisiana, roughly twenty miles southeast of Baton…