The twenty-three sparkling, glimpse-like, and sometimes unnerving stories in this debut collection are populated with characters who are in over their heads. You’ll meet new moms, teens, sisters, a baby-sitter with a Xanax problem, and a dad out of his depth attempting to chaperone a ski trip. But you’ll also meet the plucky Target Girl, who is a target for her father’s knife-throwing act. The narratives here are vividly framed and spiked with surprising moments of wisdom.
Orgies of Feeling: Melodrama and the Politics of Freedom by Elisabeth R. Anker ’97 (Duke).
Melodramas have always had a starring role in literature and film. But
here Anker, a George Washington University professor of political
science and American studies, argues that melodramas are also crucial
to politics. Using recent U.S. political actions as a lens, Anker
examines, among other things, how the story line of the 9/11
attacks—that we were ambushed on a clear blue Tuesday morning—worked to
drive the political reaction. Melodramatic stories like this, she
argues, can galvanize a nation, lay the groundwork for more government
surveillance, and finally lead to war.
Strong Darkness by Jon Land ’79 (Forge).
In this sixth installment of the Caitlin Strong Texas Ranger series,
and Land’s thirty-fourth book overall, the multistrand story hops from
Texas to Providence and sometimes goes back in time as Strong trails a
serial killer whose methods are ghoulishly close to those of a killer
her great-grandfather hunted in the 1880s. In another thread, a Brown
student, the son of Strong’s boyfriend, is attacked near campus,
prompting an investigation that circles back to Texas and, finally, to
a Chinese billionaire industrialist with a treacherous plan.
ALUMNI NONFICTION
Voices of a People’s History of the United States, 10th Anniversary Edition by Anthony Arnove ’94 AM, ’98 PhD and Howard Zinn (Seven Stories).
The Demise of Virtue in Virtual America: The Moral Origins of the Great Recession by David Bosworth ’69 (Front Porch Republic ).
New World Drama: The Performative Commons in the Atlantic World by Elizabeth Maddock Dillon ’85 (Duke).
Thinking Differently: An Inspiring Guide for Parents of Children with Learning Disabilities by David Flink ’98 (HarperCollins).
On the Okey Dokey Trail: A Smart-Aleck Perspective on the Give and Take of Life by I. Leigh Private ’81 (BIF Press).
Poetry Los Angeles: Reading the Essential Poems of the City by Laurence Goldstein ’70 PhD (Michigan).
Searching for Bubbe Fischer: The Path to Mah Johngg Wisdom by Karen Gooen ’85 (Bubbe Meises Publishing).
George Frideric Handel: A Life with Friends by Ellen Harris ’64 (Norton).
AIDS Drugs for All: Social Movements and Market Transformations by Ethan B. Kapstein ’75 and Joshua W. Busby (Cambridge).
Servants of the Goddess by Catherine Rubin Kermorgant ’87 (Vintage).
Spies in Revolutionary Rhode Island by Christian M. McBurney ’81 (The History Press).
Staging the Blues: From Tent Shows to Tourism by Paige McGinley ’08 PhD (Duke).
Between Ruin and Restoration: An Environmental History of Israel by Daniel Orenstein ’06, Char Miller, and Alon Tal (Pittsburgh).
The Moneymaker Effect: The Inside Story of the Tournament That Forever Changed Poker by Eric Raskin ’97 (Huntington).
Healing: Cancer, Heart Disease, and More by Jerry Rhine ’60 (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform).
Reading the European Novel to 1900 by Daniel Schwarz ’65 AM ’68 PhD (Wiley-Blackwell).
A Dance with Freedom: Your Guide to Liberation from Lies and Illusions by Sylvie Imelda Shene with Ed Sweet ’87 (Syvlie Imelda Shene).
The Risk of Reading: How Literature Helps Us to Understand Ourselves and the World by Robert Waxler ’66 (Bloomsbury).
FACULTY NONFICTION
Billionaires: Reflections on the Upper Crust by Darrell M. West (Brookings).
ALUMNI FICTION
Faint Promise of Rain by Anjali Mitter Duva ’95 (She Writes Press).
Genesis Code: A Thriller of the Near Future by Jamie Metzl ’90 (Arcade).
The Elementalists by Chris Sharp ’97 (Diversion).
Glimmerglass by Marly Youmans ’76 AM (Mercer University Press).
Belzhar by Meg Wolitzer ’81 (Dutton).
ALUMNI POETRY
Scarsdale by Dan O’Brien ’99 MFA (CB editions).
