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Milletti’s debut is a bracing cri de coeur against the silencing of women’s voices. “Ghost writer. Housewife. Mother. I’ve been trained to silence myself in countless ways,” says the narrator, Jane Tamlin, who has been committed to a Buffalo psychiatric institute after a series of unsettling domestic incidents culminating in the mysterious disappearance of her husband. Jane has a “family history of authorship and unusual endings,” having ghostwritten the bestselling memoirs of her teenage brother before his overdose. Written in her confinement, Jane’s own narrative describes her “family’s swift and complete devolution” in the months before her husband’s disappearance, beginning when, in a blackout, she stabs her son with a butter knife. A nonfatal accident also befalls her infant daughter. All the while, her husband has quit his job, begun an affair with a neighbor, and decided to write his memoirs. Overwhelmed, underappreciated, and exhausted, Jane becomes convinced that her husband is orchestrating the strange events rocking the household: “Everything my husband writes becomes true.” The novel’s mishmash of genres—domestic drama, psychological thriller, satire, supernatural tale, metafiction—sometimes overwhelms, but Milletti is always entertaining in her dismantling of the madwoman in the attic trope, making for a sharp, playful novel. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 04/12/2019 | Details & Permalink

Berdzenishvili’s surprising, noteworthy autobiographical novel recalls life within the gulags in the last years of the U.S.S.R. Urged to recount his time there while in the care of an American doctor whose mother was born in a prison camp, the narrator presents, through a series of character-focused vignettes, a vivid and often hilarious portrait of the strange society the prisoners created. Locked away from the world, free-thinking prisoners—among them Zhora, who fervently and superstitiously loves numbers, and Butov, who takes on a Sherlock Holmes role in the camp—form strong bonds through their philosophical debates, jokes, and discussions, creating in some ways a haven rather than a prison. These are years the narrator remembers fondly, “because of the people that surrounded me, people the KGB had so zealously brought together.” Among all of these brilliant characters, there are the stories of the narrator and his brother, political dissidents imprisoned for their passionate visions of a free Georgian republic, both before and during their imprisonments. In the final chapters, Berdzenishvili’s depictions of what the gulag has taken away from him—namely, his wife and daughter—are deeply moving in their forthrightness and simplicity. Berdzenishvili pulls off both a feat of fractured storytelling and a beautiful excavation of a recent, haunting past. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 04/12/2019 | Details & Permalink

As scholar Wineapple (White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson) persuasively argues in this detailed and lucidly written history, the impeachment of Andrew Johnson, who ascended to the presidency after a mere six weeks as Lincoln’s v-p, was motivated by the impeachers’ view of Johnson’s actions as undermining the sacrifices Americans had made throughout four years of war. Many of Johnson’s fellow Republicans believed that his policies were antithetical to their aims of reconstructing the nation and helping millions of former slaves build new lives as free people. In February 1868, the House of Representatives voted to impeach Johnson, but this decision was based less on his alleged offense—violation of the Tenure of Office Act—than on his refusal to support his party’s aims. While previous scholars have viewed the impeachment, which failed to remove Johnson from office and allowed him to serve out his term, as an embarrassing political grudge fight, Wineapple argues convincingly that it clearly upheld the limits of presidential authority and the power of the constitutional system of checks and balances. Her arguments are novel and her prose lively (she describes the 14th Amendment as “a farrago of political jockeying, political compromise, and nagging anxiety about the future of a country where all people are created equal”). This book has much to offer enthusiasts of both historical and contemporary American politics. Illus. (May)

Reviewed on 04/12/2019 | Details & Permalink

In her first book, Garrett-Scott, assistant professor of history and African-American studies at the University of Mississippi, expertly explores the financial lives of black women from just before the Civil War to the beginning of the New Deal. She traces the women’s involvement—as owners, employees, and customers—in organizations ranging from formal banks to burial organizations, mutual aid groups, and secret societies. Garrett-Scott argues that women “played essential roles in blacks’ efforts to use finance to carve out possibilities within U.S. capitalism and society” and, in the process, “forged their own definitions of economic opportunity and citizenship.” Garrett-Scott highlights institutions including the Freedman’s Bank, a short-lived post–Civil War bank created to help freed slaves and black veterans, and the St. Luke Penny Savings Bank opened in Richmond, Va., by powerful businesswoman Maggie Lena Walker to give black Americans access to loans and protection from the racism encountered in other banks. Garrett-Scott also explores how, in the 20th century, banks in general presented opportunities for black women to work in finance. This recovery of one aspect of black women’s history will appeal to scholars as well as those with a serious interest in the history of finance and women’s history. Illus. (May)

Reviewed on 04/12/2019 | Details & Permalink

Mackenzie’s superior third mystery set in Romney Marsh (after 2018’s The Body in the Ice) blends a fair-clued whodunit with an accurate depiction of late-18th-century England. At a dinner party at the home of justice of the peace Frederick Maudsley, the Rev. Marcus Hardcastle meets Maudsley’s son-in-law, Hector Munro, who, like the JP, is a partner in a local bank, the East Weald and Ashford. Hardcastle overhears Maudsley and Munro discussing keeping something a secret from “the Grasshopper,” but thinks little more of that conversation until Munro turns up dead in a beached boat, shot in the stomach. Hardcastle later discovers that the Grasshopper was a reference to a London bank connected with the East Weald and Ashford—and that the dead man was consorting with one of the smuggling rings operating out of the area. The plot thickens when Hardcastle finds indications that Munro’s involvement with criminals may have been part of a scheme to shore up the local bank’s resources. Fans of Imogen Robertson’s historicals will be pleased. Agents: Heather Adams and Mike Bryan, HMA Literary (U.K.). (Mar.)

Reviewed on 04/12/2019 | Details & Permalink

Aydin Torkal, the 20-something hero of this exciting thriller from British author Sinclair (the Enemy series), was born in Turkey but taken as a child by his father to Afghanistan to be trained as a terrorist. Aydin, now part of a sleeper cell in Paris, is toying with leaving the cell when he sees a TV news report about a terrorist bombing in Aleppo, Syria. One victim happens to be his twin sister, who was working in Aleppo with a humanitarian charity. This prompts Aydin to finally desert. As he flees from place to place, he’s forced to kill some of his jihadi brethren, including several in Berlin. Meanwhile, Rachel Cox, a member of the British Secret Intelligence Service, goes to Berlin to investigate the murder by cyanide of several unidentified corpses discovered in a demolished van—and discovers a possible link between this crime and Aydin. Rachel’s superiors suspect Aydin is part of an impending terrorist attack, but Rachel believes there’s some critical information concerning Aydin they don’t know. The suspense builds as Aydin faces danger and Rachel tries to prevent a terrorist attack. This is a real page-turner, impossible to put down. Agent: Camilla Wray, Darley Anderson (U.K.). (Apr.)

Reviewed on 04/12/2019 | Details & Permalink

Menasse’s witty but humane satire, his English-language fiction debut (after Enraged Citizens, European Peace and Democratic Deficits), follows a sprawling, multinational cast grappling with the realities of European Union bureaucracy. Greek Fenia Xenapoulou detests her post as an executive of the budgetless, much-maligned culture department of the European Commission. She launches a desperate, determined effort for reassignment by proving herself with a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Commission. Austrian Martin Susman, in a feverish haze after a visit to Auschwitz, proposes centering the concentration camp as the birthplace of the European Union, while his brother who inherited the family’s pig farm pressures him to improve the negotiating power of pig farmers with China. Meanwhile, Brussels police inspector Émile Brunfaut tries to discover why his murder investigation is being officially squashed by his superiors, and Polish seminarian-turned-assassin Ryszard Oswiecki realizes his victim (and focus of Brunfaut’s murder investigation) was the wrong person. Other characters include Auschwitz survivor David de Vriend, who mourns the diminishing number of fellow survivors, and Austrian professor Alois Erhart, who grows frustrated with his new think tank colleagues and their conservative goals. All the characters bumble through bureaucratic meddling, language differences, and competing ambitions toward an open-ended yet rewarding conclusion. The massive cast never becomes unwieldy thanks to Menasse’s delightful prose. This epic, droll account of contemporary Europe will be catnip for fans of mosaic novels and comical political machinations. (June)

Reviewed on 04/12/2019 | Details & Permalink

The title of this account aptly references both the breakthrough discoveries and the obsessive rivalry between two 19th-century American paleontologists. Born into a Quaker family in Philadelphia, Edward Cope was a self-taught prodigy with a passion for the natural sciences. While traveling in Europe, Cope met Othniel Charles Marsh, who would become Yale’s first professor of paleontology, and the two bonded over their shared ambition—before “the blade of rivalry” severed their friendship. Noyes (The Magician and the Spirits) provides a snappily written account of the equally indomitable scientists’ frenzied race to be the first to locate, excavate, and assemble dinosaur bones and name species. Laced with jealousy, betrayal, sabotage, and revenge, this quest brings them to various sites as their professional and personal enmity plays out in the press. The author provides insight into the rivals’ outsize personalities and casts their story against the volatile political, territorial, and economic landscapes of the era. Still, while she acknowledges that white Americans were then conducting an “attack on the Plains Indians’ way of life,” her language veers into bias in places, generalizing the Crow as “congenial” and “peaceful” and some lands as “unknown terrain.” Sidebars and cameos give the book additional historical context. Ages 10–up. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 03/22/2019 | Details & Permalink

McCully (She Did It!) dramatically details the life of Augusta Ada Lovelace (1815–1852), the person first credited with understanding a computer’s potential beyond mathematical calculation. Lovelace’s father was the poet Lord Byron, and her childhood was framed by her principled, domineering mother’s determination to eradicate all traces of his paternity. Privately tutored in mathematics to ward off any poetical instincts, Lovelace thrived intellectually even as she endured physical ill-health and her mother’s emotional coldness. Her introduction at age 17 to her future mentor and collaborator Charles Babbage, inventor of the earliest computer prototypes, changed her life, offering intellectual food and challenge. McCully proceeds with clear explanations of Lovelace’s intellectual activities—in particular, Note G, in which Lovelace proposes an algorithm considered to be the first for a computer—while blending a largely sympathetic view of her personal life: marriage, offspring, gambling and other addictions, and early death from uterine cancer. Archival photos and illustrations, appendices, source notes, a glossary, and a bibliography deepen the portrait of this singular figure whose impact on science and technology has long been understated. Ages 10–14. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 03/22/2019 | Details & Permalink

Churnin (Irving Berlin: The Immigrant Boy Who Made America Sing) adds to her repertoire of biographies for children with this side-by-side comparison of Martin Luther King Jr. and Anne Frank. Both born in 1929, though an ocean apart, each endured discrimination and, eventually, death because of who they were. A straightforward narrative points out that, while they never met, the contemporaries were connected by shared experiences: being shunned by their peers as children; experiencing injustices small and large (“Everywhere Martin went, he saw signs that said, ‘Whites Only’... Every day, more signs blared, ‘No Jews Allowed’ ”); and finally finding power in words and self-expression. Stylized illustrations by Nayberg (Anya’s Secret Society) initially employ a muted color palette of tawny, brooding hues, while ending spreads in brighter greens and blues strike a hopeful note. As the teenage diarist and civil rights leader stand together, the timeless, powerful themes they heralded form the conclusion: “Love is stronger than hate. Kindness can heal the world.” A timeline and selected bibliography are included. Ages 8–14. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 03/22/2019 | Details & Permalink