Elisabeth Ring

‘Breakneck’ Takes Aim at U.S., China’s Flaws – and Promise

The cover of Breakneck, with the title, subtitle, and author superimposed in sans-serif text upon a photograph of a woman in what appears to be traditional Chinese clothing standing on ground surrounded by vegetation. Behind her, rising out of a body of water, is the smog-faded image of a building being constructed.

Breakneck reads like being cornered at a party by someone itching to rant about both the U.S. and China’s approach to growth and policy. Fortunately, this rant is well researched and reasoned.

‘Feather Detective’ Gives Voice to One Woman’s Quiet Efforts

The cover for The Feather Detective, featuring an illustration of what appears to be a colorized and stylized version of the titular figure, Roxie Laybourne, with over a dozen trays of colorful and largely tropical bird specimens.

Roxie’s life is fascinating on its face, but Sweeney’s writing lets it shine with an effective choice of details and events to illustrate such an illustrious life.

‘The Unheld’ Blends Fear and Displacement in Weird West

The cover of The Unheld by Luke Larkin, featuring what appears to be a painting of a normal moose in rustic brown hues. The painting has been done in landscape but has been rotated 90 degrees to a portrait orientation.

In an atmosphere of one group of people pressing into the unknown and another group of people being forced from everything they’ve known, the shadows of the mountains and the expanse of the prairies can hold any number of bone-chilling things.

‘Hollow’ Full of Twists and Wise Restraint

Sullivan threads several tricky needles well in Brimstone Hollow, and that restraint helps her plot and characters shine.

‘Old King’ Brings Unfinished Complexity

Loskutoff’s exploration here seems to be in the tension between nature and modernity that drove Ted Kaczynski, but the Unibomber remains a largely one-dimensional character.

‘Under the Falls’ Sticks to the Shallows

The cover to Richard Russo's Under the Falls has the author and title superimposed on an overhead photograph of a teenage boy in blue swim trunks diving backwards into water from a rocky bluff while other teens, also in swimming gear, crouch nearby.

Under the Falls sets up complex relationships, old hurts, clashing motivations, and a town full of secrets but doesn’t give them time to live up to the potential that’s well within Richard Russo’s wheelhouse.

‘Plant Lady’ Has Fun With Revenge

The cover of Plant Lady, featuring an illustration of a young woman with dark hair and wearing a green gardening apron over her white shirt and gray pants. She stands beside a shelf of plants and the title. She is holding a pair of scissors that are dripping blood onto her yellow boots.

There’s a lot to love about Plant Lady, not least of which is the tempered delight the book takes with its kills, but the straightforward fun means missed opportunity for deeper exploration of complex subject matter.

‘Flower’ a Gripping, Sobering History

While the prose and structure is a nice read, there’s no making this subject matter go down easy. But then, forced family separation, rampant human rights violations, and elusive justice should never go down easy.

‘Grave’ a Fast-Paced Horror Where Anything Goes

The cover of Carry Me To My Grave, featuring an overhead view of a train passing through dense forest. The smoke from the train makes a large cloud that looks like a skull.

This isn’t a polyphonic novel, nor is it one grappling with morally gray characters. This is a story of humans good, monsters bad, and the fate of the world hangs in the balance. Carry Me To My Grave doesn’t try to do anything more or less than this, and it does it well.

‘Race’ A Nail-Biting Cross-Country Roadtrip

The cover for Eric Moskowitz's debut, The Longest Hardest Race, featuring a colorized picture of two early Ford Model-Ts racing down a dirt road. The portrait of a fairly young Henry Ford is superimposed just beneath the title.

The Hardest, Longest Race at its core is about the struggle between the past and the future, between what’s true and what gets remembered.