books&beats

On this Books & Beats, Betsy Burton brings you two hefty tomes: Atlas Obscura (Workman) by Joshua Foer, Dylan Thuras, and Ell Morton; and John Derian…

Betsy Burton reviews The Various Haunts of Men (Overlook Press) by Susan Hill this week. It’s a British mystery, the first of a series, and Betsy says…

Charles Ellis Johnson and the Erotic Mormon Image (University of Chicago Press) by Mary Campbell chronicles the Mormon Church’s turn-of-the-century…

The Gustav Sonata (Norton) by Rose Tremain is the story of best friends Anton Zweibel and Gustav Pearle. Anton is a musical prodigy. Gustav must take care…

The Girl from Venice (Simon & Schuster) is the latest thriller from Martin Cruz Smith. The story blends together two of Shakespeare’s plays: “The Two…

News of the World (Morrow) is Paulette Jiles’s new novel. It’s about a Civil War vet and the young girl he’s been hired to take back to her own people…

In Lying Awake (Vintage) by Mark Salzman, a Carmelite nun living in Los Angeles is suddenly struck with numinous visions. But are they just the result of…

Hag-Seed (Hogarth) is Margaret Atwood’s retelling of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Betsy Burton says this is a “novel of revenge unlike any you’ve…

In Nutshell (Nan A. Talese), Ian McEwan’s latest novel, a very special fetus overhears a murder plot. Yes, it’s a story straight out of the womb. And, as…

Mercury (Harper Collins) by Margot Livesey is a story about obsession and horses. Betsy Burton says Livesey has crafted a novel “that tells us something…

In A Gentleman in Moscow (Viking) by Amor Towles, a young aristocrat’s poem saves him from catching a Bolshevik bullet. He ends up under house arrest in a…

Mischling (Lee Boudreaux Books) by Affinity Konar is the story of twin sisters Pearl and Stasha trying to survive Auschwitz and the Nazi physician Josef…