The Used Marketplace
Areus is a muscular 20-year-old Torian; his people can live for thousands of years, and most generally enjoy their lives. All has not been well for Areus, as he’s been plagued by a dream of a great king in pain, but he’s also a talented athlete who competes in an event like wrestling called Lúkari. His fighting abilities come in handy when he later faces enemies in the realm of the mortals while accompanied by a wise man named Santia, … Read the rest
A floating monster that resembles outer space is the visual metaphor for the protagonist’s nebulous but crushing feeling of gender dysphoria. Nisha, who is brown-skinned, is not sure exactly what is going on, but she knows she hates being called a boy. In a heartbreakingly authentic moment, she laments that the monster only listens to other people, not her own pleas for it to go away. Her mother, who is brown-skinned, and her father, who is light-skinned, introduce her to … Read the rest
Drawing on surveys, official reports, and news stories from 2019 to the first months of 2022, Stephan sketches a picture of a confused, rapidly politicized response to the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic in the United States. Notwithstanding some dramatic language and frequent quotes from experts and victims, the narrative makes dry reading. It seems mostly to be a catalog of failures, as the author records then-President Donald Trump’s skeptical early statements, points to racial and political divides in vaccination … Read the rest
Following the pattern of other entries in the much-honored Scientists in the Field series, Castaldo and Heim introduce several biologists and other researchers working at Isle Royale, a group of islands on Lake Superior, with portraits and short descriptions of their work and interests. Castaldo adds historical context and observations gleaned from a decadeslong study of how rising and falling populations of local wolves and their main prey, moose, affect the unusually isolated area’s entire ecosystem. She also offers an … Read the rest
The movie climaxed in 1995, with Pacino’s intense L.A. cop, Vincent Hanna, shooting and killing De Niro’s fatalistic bank thief Neil McCauley, his nemesis and alter ego. In the “before” sections of the novel, set in 1988, Hanna pursues a sadistic home-invading gang of killers and rapists while McCauley plans the heist of millions in cartel money from a truck bound for Mexico. Following McCauley’s death and a massive shootout, his wounded right-hand man, Chris Shiherlis (the Val Kilmer character), … Read the rest
A professional killer is targeting drug-dealing thugs mostly using the same knife-related M.O. After eight murders, police detectives William “Bernie” Bernardelli and Marcelle DeSantis have no evidence and no leads. Then things get more complicated, as they receive word that a Southeast Asian heroin group is setting up shop in Chicago. The feds send Internal Revenue Service Special Agent John Shepard, a socially inept accountant with a generalized anxiety disorder, to meet with the detectives. Shepard asks Bernie and Marcelle … Read the rest