The Hogarth Shakespeare series—“Shakespeare’s plays reimagined by some of today’s bestselling and most celebrated writers” – continues with three additional releases in 2016: Jacobson’s take on The Merchant of Venice, Anne Tyler’s reimagining of The Taming of the Shrew in June’s Vinegar Girl, and Margaret...
*STARRED REVIEW After the brutal murder of his father and the wrenching separation from his mother and sister, Yongju must survive a new life of deprivation after his privileged upbringing as the only son of one of North Korea’s power elite. Danny, a misfit immigrant teen...
“Girls don’t ride bicycles,” Wadja hears repeatedly. Being an 11-year-old in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, she finds herself constantly at odds with the societal limitations of her gender, from being forced to wear the all-covering abaya to adjusting her feisty behavior in too many restrictive ways. When...
To get her four-eared infant to safety, Nouri Ahmad Mohammad ibn Mahsoud al-Morad's mother gave first her body, then her life. In 13th-century Persia, a child so different would require divine intervention to survive, and Nouri literally falls into the arms of a gentle, crippled...
Anna is 7 when her father disappears. In 1939 Krakow, Poland, being Jewish is enough to condemn people to death. When the Swallow Man appears – so named for his ability to conjure and communicate with birds – the unlikely pair reluctantly recognize in each other not...
Journalist Rod Nordland’s debut title began as a series of popular 2014 New York Times articles that introduced Ali and Zakia as Afghanistan’s Romeo and Juliet. At the time of the book’s publication, the young lovers were alive and living together, though facing a dangerously...
"A girl cannot be brave, or clever, or skilled as a boy can. If she is not good, she is nothing," an angry Reverend Erasmus Sunderly admonished his usually obedient 14-year-old-daughter, Faith. His words are harsh, but in Victorian England, not without societal support. He...
*STARRED REVIEW While the Titanic and Lusitania are both well-documented disasters, the single greatest tragedy in maritime history is the little-known 1945 sinking by Soviet torpedoes of the Wilhelm Gustloff, a German cruise liner that was supposed to ferry wartime personnel and refugees to safety. The...
Sam, Samir, and Nina met in law school in Paris. Sam and Nina were lovers. While Sam was briefly away, Samir shared Nina's bed, after which Sam attempted suicide and won Nina back. Fast-forward almost two decades: Sam and Nina are poor and desperate but still...
Linda Wallheim, who debuted in YA author Mette Ivie Harrison’s first adult title, The Bishop's Wife, returns to solve her second murder. For Linda, being a devout Mormon isn't a barrier to speaking her mind and demanding justice in the men-centric community in which being...
Here in my temporary exile in the Beehive State, I remain fascinated by the religion that dominates my current location. In a moment of ironic timing, as I was wandering the many surrounding mountains with narrator Kirsten Potter stuck in the ears, this passage stuck: "Whenever friends from other...
The year is 1913. Zeynep and Ali are teenage lovers in Anatolia (once Asia Minor, now modern Turkey) who part with a lingering sense of bitterness: Ali's impending departure breaks their promise of escaping their village together. Feeling betrayed, Zeynep turns away: "I refuse to be your...
In a house by the sea in Colombo, Sri Lanka, live two families: below are the Sinhala owners, the Rajasinghes with two daughters, Yasodhara and Lanka; upstairs are the Tamil clan of Shivalingams with their son, Shiva, twinned by a shared birthday to Yasodhara. While the...
Given that gang violence, unfortunately, makes for all-too-familiar headlines, the story of a gang truce is truly noteworthy news to be lauded and emulated. Back in the 1960s and 1970s, New York's Bronx was both a haven for poor ethnic communities pushed out of Manhattan, and...
Most of this true, part of this is reasonable conjecture, all of it is electrifying. Filmmaker Jack Baxter arrives in Tel Aviv in 2003 to make a film that never happens. But on the night before his departure back to New York, he stumbles upon a...
What I know about cricket is not so much about how the game is actually played, but that it's a cultural phenomenon that can actually save lives. Two favorite Indian films come immediately to mind: Lagaan, which was Oscar-nominated for Best Foreign Language Film in 2002,...
In case you've missed the recent headlines, Cuba has been in the news a lot: "We are separated by 90 miles of water, but are brought together through shared relationships and the desire to promote a democratic, prosperous, and stable Cuba," a recent official White...
In real life, Linda Lavin (known to a certain generation as TV's Alice, also known to others for her almost-half-century of on-stage success) isn't quite as old as the titular Boston Girl, but she absolutely epitomizes the ideal narrator here. The year is 1985, and...
