Angelology
by Danielle Trussoni
The Week
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Danielle Trussoni’s debut thriller is “so prettily written” that, at first, you overlook its clumsy architecture, said Janet Maslin in The New York Times. Trussoni’s scholarship-laden tale “follows the Da Vinci Code model as loftily as it can,” sending a young nun and a smitten art historian on a mad hunt for an ancient artifact that must be kept from falling into the hands of a tribe of half-breed angels. But as suspense builds, Trussoni increasingly resorts to shortcuts. Her abrupt ending suggests that a sequel is coming.
Still Life
by Melissa Milgrom
(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $25)
Melissa Milgrom “uncovers a hidden world” in this absorbing tour of the fading art of taxidermy, said Ethan Gilsdorf in The Boston Globe. Cozying up to top practitioners in the field, Milgrom helps us see that taxidermy shouldn’t be dismissed as “merely weird and morbid.” The book closes, “fittingly,” with the author trying her hand at stuffing a squirrel. Yet she shares too few details about her own fascination with the subject and too many about “muskrats, coyotes, mallards, and perch.”
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
by Seth Grahame-Smith
(Grand Central, $22)
Last year, Seth Grahame-Smith added zombies to Pride and Prejudice and scored a surprise hit, said Lev Grossman in Time. This year, he’s back with a faux Lincoln study that casts Honest Abe as a secret lifelong vampire slayer. It’s more than a cheap trick: Grahame-Smith is “a lively, fluent writer with a sharp sense of tone and pace.” Once you recognize that he’s using vampirism as a metaphor for slavery, though, the allusion feels “too neat.” Neither blood trade “reveals anything in particular about the other.”
The Poisoner’s Handbook
by Deborah Blum
(Penguin, $26)
Fans of television’s CSI franchise will find plenty to enjoy in Deborah Blum’s “immensely entertaining study” of two Jazz Age New York doctors who helped pioneer forensic science, said Art Taylor in The Washington Post. Before the duo took control of the city’s medical examiner’s office, poisons were difficult to identify or trace. Blum occasionally writes too clinically, but also “understands and indulges our interest in serial killings, scandals, and schemes gone wrong.”
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Music reviews: Chance the Rapper, Cass McCombs, and Molly TuttleFeature "Star Line," "Interior Live Oak," and "So Long Little Miss Sunshine"
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Film reviews: Eden and Honey Don't!Feature Seekers of a new utopia spiral into savagery and a queer private eye prowls a high-desert town
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Critics' choice: Three chefs fulfilling their ambitionsFeature Kwame Onwuachi's grand second act, Travis Lett makes a comeback, and Jeff Watson's new Korean restaurant
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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.”