Alas, nothing particularly spooky. But here are five recommendations to read as we move into this next month. BIG KISS, BYE BYE, Claire-Louise Bennett Fitzcarraldo Editions, pp. 168 Claire-Louise Bennett is the author of critically acclaimed works of auto-fiction Pond (2015) and Checkout 19 (2021), which respectively detail the daily workings of a writer’s life;…
Available Works is back, and it’s once again turning WSA’s industrial aerie at 180 Maiden Lane into a buzzy celebration of print, design, and creative culture. From 10-12 October 2025, the fair returns for its fifth edition — a weekend-long convergence of art, rare books, independent publishing, and design, presented by Something Special Studios, WSA,…
As we begin a new month, here are five suggestions from the books which have been published in September. GRACE PERIOD, Maria Judite de Carvalho Two Lines Press, pp. 168 Maria Judite de Carvalho was one of Portugal’s foremost authors, as well as one of the acutest observers of womens’ lives under the oppressively patriarchal…
When Kiran Desai’s second novel, The Inheritance of Loss, first found me, I was on the cusp of a new decade of my life. It was winter in Boston, where I was beginning a semester’s long haul. I wanted to read fiction that would work through me, move me, and ask me questions. Nearly two…
Five books in translation describing far-away places and experiences to make back-to-school and back to work a little less daunting. LOWEST COMMON DENOMINATOR, Pirkko Saisio Penguin Books, pp. 288 Written in a distinctive staccato prose which toggles between persons as well as time periods, Lowest Common Denominator tells the story of the author, one of…
In Dur e Aziz Amna’s debut novel American Fever, Hira, the sixteen-year-old female protagonist, has no second thoughts when her mother asks her, “If you could be anyone in the world, who would you be?” “A Pakistani man,” she replies. This terse exchange had a spectral presence in my mind as I read A Splintering,…
What if a library was an altar? A sacred space for the imagination and collective healing. A place where reading becomes a ceremony, and books are portals for transformation. For the fifth anniversary of KOKOBA: Meeting Our Griots, I curated La Bibliothèque Des Possibles, a roving study space conceived as an altar dedicated to African…
Whether you are lucky enough to be on the beach somewhere or just hanging out in the local park, summer is prime time for lying down and spending hours engrossed in a book. Here are five suggestions for all tastes this month. SALT WATER, Charles Simmons Pushkin Press, pp. 192 Set over the course of…