GIRLSHIP: Essays† by Melissa Febos. (Bloomsbury, 336 pp., $18.) Febos’ eight essays on growing up in a female body – and how it is irrevocably marked by patriarchy – draw on investigative reporting, memoirs and science to create a “feminist proof of survival” with a voice that is “irreverent and original.” “, our reviewer, noted Betsy Bonner.
THE WINDOW SEAT: Notes from a life in motion† by Aminatta Forna. (Grove, 272 pp., $17.) The topics of this collection of essays span decades and continents, from the “Renaissance Generation” of Africans “who came of age at the same time as their country” to the author’s childhood in Tehran around 1979. According to our reviewer, Leah Mirakhor, Forna’s” wide-ranging subjects outline a path to a kind of freedom, to be at home, always somewhere else.”
THE HAUNTING OF ALMA FIELDING: A True Ghost Story† by Kate Summerscale. (Penguin, 368 pp., $17.) This haunted true crime novel tells the compelling story of a researcher at the International Institute for Psychical Research in London in the 1930s, who joins haunted clubs and attends seances while investigating a woman believed to harbor a mischievous ghost in her home. . Our reviewer, Marilyn Stasio, called it a “delightful period piece”.
THE PLOT† by Jean Hanff Korelitz. (Celadon, 336 pp., $17.99.) A young novelist saves his faltering career, but is filled with guilt after stealing the lavish plot of a novel from a student who overdosed two years earlier. As our reviewer, Elisabeth Egan, noted, “Korelitz’s Russian nesting doll of a novel keeps us guessing to the end.”
THE WORLD WITHOUT US† by Alan Weisman. (Picador, 448 pp., $21.) Weisman travels the world, interviewing everyone from evolutionary biologists to art curators, to envision the post-human future of our planet in this “morbidly fascinating non-fiction eco-thriller,” as our reviewer, Jennifer Schuessler, called it. Originally published in 2007, this reissue includes a new afterword by the author.
THE SWEETNESS OF WATER† by Nathan Harris. (Back Bay, 368 pp., $17.99.) This unconventional post-Civil War novel begins with a white Georgia landowner befriending two formerly enslaved black men who wander his property in the middle of the night, and the start of an ambitious tale of mutual affection between white and formerly enslaved men. made people in the deep south.
