THE DISAPPEARING HALF† by Brit Bennett. (Riverhead, 400pp., $18.) Bennett’s novel, one of the Book Review’s 10 Best Books of 2020, follows the divergent lives of two mixed-race women from Louisiana as they navigate their way through the late 20th century America. Our reviewer, Ayana Mathis, called it “a brave foray into vast and difficult terrain” that “raises thorny questions about the cost of blackness.”
HEATING MILK: Stories† by Dantiel W. Moniz. (Grove, 224 pp., $17.) “In Moniz’s collection,” wrote our reviewer, Chelsea Leu, “the ordinary experience of being a woman is laced with a kind of enchantment.” Set in the cities and suburbs of Florida, these stories follow a number of women and girls as they experience and struggle with adultery, miscarriage and childbearing.
A WORLD UNDER THE SAND: The Golden Age of Egyptology† by Toby Wilkinson. (Norton, 544 pp., $18.95.) This account focuses on the British and French obsession with ancient Egyptian ruins from 1822 to 1922. Wilkinson “mastered the facts with painstaking research and let them speak for themselves,” noted our reviewer, Rosemary Mahoney. And “facts seldom speak this clearly.”
EDUCATION: A Memoir† by Tara Westover. (Random House, 368 pp., $18.99.) Westover’s memoir, about growing up without formal schooling in southeastern Idaho and later breaking up with her family as she climbs the ladders of higher education, was one of the Book Review’s 10 Best Books of 2018. take tolls,” our reviewer, Alec MacGillis, observed. “But people also remain convinced that the costs are worth it.”
CONFUSED IN BLUE: Police in the American City† by Rosa Brooks. (Penguin, 384 pp., $18.) Brooks shares her experiences as a volunteer reserve officer with the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, DC, and reflects on how her relationship with her mother, the writer Barbara Ehrenreich, has contributed to her politics. As our reviewer, Maurice Chammah, noted, Brooks’ “calm, deliberate tone, based on experience, is an achievement in itself.”
THE PROPHETS† by Robert Jones Jr. (Putnam, 416 pp., $18.) This novel is about two enslaved boys and their blossoming romance, which causes betrayal and suffering on an antebellum plantation in Mississippi. According to our reviewer, Danez Smith, this love story “reaches through time and form to shake something ancient, mighty in the blood.”
