Books

Inspired by true events, The Half Life of Valery K takes readers to 1963 Soviet Russia, where a secret project threatens nuclear disaster. Scientist Valery Kolkhanov has spent years in a Siberian gulag focused only on his own day-to-day survival. When he is summoned for a special assignment, he assumes it will be his execution,
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Thirty writers consider the myriad ways a human body can exist in the world in Body Language: Writers on Identity, Physicality, and Making Space for Ourselves. The thoughtful essays in this anthology, brought together by Catapult editors Nicole Chung and Matt Ortile, touch on everything from death, eating disorders and racism to sex and taking
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Few words related to identity convey a more precise meaning than the ones Bolu Babalola uses to describe her identity: “I’m a Nigerian child, eldest daughter.” If you’re familiar with immigrant parents, you know the drill: Education is the key to securing your future, with a reliable profession (doctor, lawyer, engineer) followed by a judicious
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Definitions differ, but many people eventually discover the value in approaching life’s challenges with at least a modicum of grace. Grace and its manifestations are at the heart of The Poet’s House, Jean Thompson’s charming novel about a young California woman with a learning disability who figures out her place in life with the help
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By the mid-20th century, Pablo Picasso’s paintings and sculptures were turning heads in France and Germany, ushering in cubism, a new artistic style that challenged older styles. At this same moment, American art was dominated by a devotion to realism and the old masters, and therefore resistant to and repulsed by the “modern art” of
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The HarperCollins union represents over 250 employees in various divisions of the company, from legal to design to editorial and sales. They have been in negotiations since December of 2021, and the process was made more complicated by HarperCollins recently acquiring the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt trade division. The union says HarperCollins will not allow the
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In Julie Mayhew’s Greek island-set thriller, Little Nothings, little cuts do lasting damage and friendships are as intense and heartbreaking as romantic relationships. Thanks to her friendless childhood and dysfunctional family, Liv Travers never felt like she belonged. Even getting married to her husband, Pete, and giving birth to a daughter, Ivy, didn’t fundamentally change
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A talented new crop of memoirists explore the friction between their queer identities and their cultural and geographical surroundings. Asylum Edafe Okporo’s aptly titled memoir, Asylum: A Memoir and a Manifesto, recounts his experience growing up gay in Nigeria, a place known for having harsh laws against “known homosexuals.” Okporo writes with sensitivity about the
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