Unexpected ancestors
Few secrets are as devastating as those that make us rethink our identity. Heidi Neumark discovered one when her daughter Googled their name.
Flight Behavior, by Barbara Kingsolver
On her way to a desperate assignation, an unhappy wife and mother is stopped in her tracks by a miracle: a mountain ablaze with color and motion, a fire without heat or sound....
Canada, by Richard Ford
To help us understand ourselves, every age needs its Huckleberry Finn, a naive boy on the lam, harmed or abandoned by his parents and left to confront evil and to figure out life for himself....
The Story of Beautiful Girl, by Rachel Simon
These days it’s a rare novel that addresses disturbing social issues without flinching and treats religious faith as a force for good, without denying the complexity of either....
Spiritual Rx, by Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat
In this engaging and useful book, Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat continue the task begun in their earlier volume, Spiritual Literacy: Reading the Sacred in Everyday Life, to encourage and g...
Being Polite to Hitler, by Robb Forman Drew
To the fictional Julian Brightman, an obtuse maker of propaganda films for the U.S....
That Old Cape Magic
Discontent isn’t listed among the deadly sins, but Richard Russo’s new novel convinced me that it should be....
Olive Kitteridge
Many of the main characters in Elizabeth Strout’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel are old, and like aging itself, this book is not for wimps....
The Private Patient
Few novelists have remained at the top of their form as long as P. D. James has....
The Reluctant Fundamentalist
An ambitious young man leaves the provinces, hoping to make his fortune in the city....
Uncharitable donation: A gift book from the IRD
Recently 98,000 ministers found a gift in their mailboxes: a special edition of Efraim Karsh’s Islamic Imperialism, compliments of the Institute on Religion and Democracy....
Slow Man/Philosophy Made Simple
How do two agnostic men—unsure of the existence of God and with no religious affiliation—deal with the coming of old age, disab...
Extremists
In creating the character of 18-year-old Ahmad Mulloy, John Updike has imagined what some of us fear most—a homegrown terrorist....
Good old days?
Life expectancy in the developed world has nearly doubled in the past century....