Benediction
by Kent Haruf (Knopf, $26)
“The writing fits the landscape” in the final book of Kent Haruf’s trilogy about fictional Holt, Colo., said John Reimringer in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. As he chronicles the last days of a 77-year-old shop owner, the author’s spare, precise sentences “have the elegance of Hemingway’s early work.” The characters’ reticence prevents us from fully understanding the events that shaped their lives, but Haruf’s “determined realism” on that score proves to be deeply satisfying.
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The Next Time You See Me
by Holly Goddard Jones (Touchstone, $25)
The first pages of Holly Goddard Jones’s debut novel “evoke memories of Stephen King’s Carrie,” said Michelle Moriarity Witt in the Raleigh, N.C., News & Observer. Here, though, the bullying of a teenage girl leads not to a paranormal revenge story but to a complex portrait of a southern Kentucky town. The community’s hunt for a missing resident is the tie that binds several narrative threads, and all reveal the author’s “intimate understanding of the back roads of Southern culture.”
News from Heaven
by Jennifer Haigh (Harper, $26)
The decline of Bakerton, Pa., may have been inevitable, but Jennifer Haigh’s “fine, enveloping” stories about various fictional residents of the former coal town “are not ordinary or predictable at all,” said Janet Maslin in The New York Times. Current inhabitants find unlikely paths to happiness while the prodigals—a Houston oilman among them—face old ghosts. “It’s Haigh’s great gift to make all these people come alive and to make readers really care about how their destinies unfold.”
American Elsewhere
by Robert Jackson Bennett (Orbit, $14)
Wink, N.M., is no ordinary place, said Jeff VanderMeer in the Los Angeles Times. Even in the world created by fantasy novelist Robert Jackson Bennett, Wink doesn’t appear on any map, and newcomer Mona is taken aback by its eerie residents and the pink moon that appears nightly. Readers may find themselves a step ahead of Bennett’s strong, flawed heroine as she unravels the town’s secrets, but she’s such a convincing character that her story “manages to surprise, terrify, and move” us.
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August 9 editorial cartoonsCartoons Saturday's political cartoons include snake oil salesmen, Ghislaine Maxwell's new residence, and more
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5 hastily redrawn cartoons about redistrictingCartoons Artists take on Donald Trump's draughtsmanship, the White House ballroom, and more
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Bonnie Blue: taking clickbait to extremesTalking Point Channel 4 claims documentary on the adult performer's attention-grabbing sex stunts is opening up a debate
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Also of interest...in picture books for grown-upsfeature How About Never—Is Never Good for You?; The Undertaking of Lily Chen; Meanwhile, in San Francisco; The Portlandia Activity Book
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Author of the week: Karen Russell
feature Karen Russell could use a rest.
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The Double Life of Paul de Man by Evelyn Barish
feature Evelyn Barish “has an amazing tale to tell” about the Belgian-born intellectual who enthralled a generation of students and academic colleagues.
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Book of the week: Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt by Michael Lewis
feature Michael Lewis's description of how high-frequency traders use lightning-fast computers to their advantage is “guaranteed to make blood boil.”
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Also of interest...in creative rebellion
feature A Man Called Destruction; Rebel Music; American Fun; The Scarlet Sisters
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Author of the week: Susanna Kaysen
feature For a famous memoirist, Susanna Kaysen is highly ambivalent about sharing details about her life.
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You Must Remember This: Life and Style in Hollywood’s Golden Age by Robert Wagner
feature Robert Wagner “seems to have known anybody who was anybody in Hollywood.”
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Book of the week: Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson’s Lost Pacific Empire by Peter Stark
feature The tale of Astoria’s rise and fall turns out to be “as exciting as anything in American history.”