It’s the summer before Phoebe, 11, enters Southside Middle. Everyone says they’ll “eat her alive” when she gets there. On Phee’s street there’s an alley where the neighborhood kids hang out—and a house with a “killer dog” named Bull. She thinks some of the kids are too babyish, while others have in turn outgrown her. … Read more

In 12 loosely connected essays that collectively shape a kind of memoir, Mann, a professor of creative writing and author of Captive Audience, delves into his emotions as a father of a daughter throughout her first few years of life. The author capably navigates the intricacies of cultural expectations and archetypes, global concerns, and his … Read more

After the outbreak of water wars across all the world’s continents, access to freshwater streams and precious inland reservoirs becomes top priority for the planet’s fracturing assemblies of dissolving city- and nation-states. The narrator of Austrian writer Ransmayr’s enthralling short novel, a hydraulic engineer, sets off to build dams in Brazil, only to learn that … Read more

Busenbark’s husband, Rick, had a fatal heart attack in December 2011, which upended her life. Clinging to plans they’d made together before his passing, the author, a landscape painter, moved from Peterborough, New Hampshire to the small town of Hampton Falls, and opened an art gallery. Her sorrow had only just begun to abate when … Read more

This book of quotations includes chapters on topics such as “War & Peace,” “Science & Technology,” and “Education.” Each chapter includes musings by a wide range of famous figures, from Oprah Winfrey to Socrates to Joseph Conrad. The topic of “Government, Politics & Social Justice” includes such varied sources as Benjamin Franklin (“Pardoning the bad … Read more

In 859, Fatima Al-Fihri, the daughter of a rich merchant, decided to build a mosque and school. “I began as a small corner for books, where Fatima spent hours reading, thinking, and dreaming.” Over time, the library explains that it “grew into a grand building.” The library, which served both Al-Qarawiyyin Mosque and Al-Qarawiyyin University, … Read more

Norie Lynch has a passion for art and feels a close bond with Johanna, her maternal grandmother. After Gram’s death, Norie’s controlling father is killed in a car accident that also destroys a precious artist’s box that belonged to Gram and was brought to Canada when the family left Ireland generations ago. Now, Norie can’t … Read more

“The question of whether God exists” is as old as humanity itself, and has been the driving query asked by philosophers for more than two millennia. A self-described philosophical “hobbyist” who’s read and studied the canon of philosophy’s greatest minds for nearly 30 years, Payne approaches the question of God’s existence in a “logical, rational … Read more

In his nonfiction debut, the author, a psychologist and educator, discusses the vital importance of what he calls an “impact person” in substance abuse recovery—the term refers to involved individuals “with the ability to help, assist, or change someone’s life for the better.” Licuanan clarifies that there are limits to what such people can do; … Read more

This latest entry in the author’s Madison Knight series characteristically begins with a crime—in this case, it’s the horrific rape and murder of teenage Emily Kane at a high school senior-class beach party by someone she knew (“As her brain screamed for oxygen, the spinning in her head began to slow. This is how I … Read more