Written with Will MillardPublished by Witness Books, 2025, 312 pages “When I was young, if you had granted me one wish, I probably would have chosen to be invisible. If I was invisible, I rationalized, then I could get as close as possible to the earth’s most elusive creatures. Moreover, I could comfortably evade all …
Continue reading In the Hide—How the Natural World Saved My Life: Gordon Buchanan
Translated from Spanish by Maureen ShaughnessyPublished by Charco Press, 2024, 188 pages. Original version published in 2021. “So then, why did you come back every summer? Do you like to suffer? Why didn’t you just stay home? There, in Buenos Aires, dying of heat. Ah. No. That’s right—it’s because you couldn’t. You didn’t have anyone …
Continue reading Why Did You Come Back Every Summer: Belén López Peiró
Tarquin Hall is a British author and journalist. He has written six crime novels featuring Vish Puri (The Case of the Missing Servant, 2009; The Case of the Man Who Died Laughing, 2010; The Case of the Deadly Butter Chicken, 2012; The Case of the Love Commandos, 2013; The Case of the Reincarnated Client, 2019; …
Continue reading A Detective in Modern India: An Interview with Tarquin Hall
Published by Catapult, 2020, 218 pages “We continue to slip in and out of society like ghosts in the night, connecting our hearts and minds with the land and the many tribal peoples who cross our paths every single day, carrying the heavy thread of the prayers of hundreds of individuals. We run through landscapes …
Continue reading Spirit Run—A 6,000-Mile Marathon Through North America’s Stolen Land: Noé Álvarez
Published by Random House / Mantle / Picador, 2024, 303 pages “My name is James. I wish I could tell my story with a sense of history as much as industry. I was sold when I was born and then sold again. ... I can tell you that I am a man who is cognizant …
Photo: SH Design via AdobeStock “‘The time has come,’ the Walrus said, / ‘To talk of many things: / Of shoes — and ships — and sealing-wax — / Of cabbages — and kings — / And why the sea is boiling hot — / And whether pigs have wings.’”—Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass “Fantasy is hardly an escape from reality. It’s a way of understanding …
Continue reading Stepping through the Looking Glass: A Journey through Speculative Fiction
Authors: Bridget Collins, Laura Purcell, Elizabeth Macneal, Imogen Hermes Gowar, Jess Kidd, Natasha Pulley, Kiran Millwood Hargrave, and Andrew Michael HurleyPublished by Sphere, 2021, 293 pages There is something about December that seems to call for ghost stories. So I have picked a collection of eight ghostly tales written by contemporary writers. The stories are …
Continue reading The Haunting Season—Ghostly Tales for Long Winter Nights
Translated from Norwegian by Becky L. CrookPublished by Penguin, 2017, 144 pages. Original version published in 2016. “Whenever I am unable to walk, climb or sail away from the world, I have learned to shut it out.“Learning this took time. Only when I understood that I had a primal need for silence was I able …
Photo: Terria Clay/WCS Jonathan C. Slaght is an American wildlife biologist and author. He is one of the leading experts on Blakiston’s fish owls. His book, Owls of the Eastern Ice: The Quest to Find and Save the World’s Largest Owl (2020), won several awards, including the 2021 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award, the …
Continue reading On the Trail of Fish Owls: An Interview with Jonathan C. Slaght
Photo: karina_lo via Adobe Stock Another year is almost over, and it’s time to look back at the books we read in 2025. As always, it’s a rich and varied collection. The fiction section includes three Booker Prize longlisted books, including the winner, David Szalay’s Flesh, as well as Tash Aw’s The South and Benjamin …
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