The Used Marketplace
One day in 1990s Brooklyn, Ti Zoot returns from Haiti and decides to pick up his car at his friend Ernse’s home. When Ti Zoot opens the trunk, he discovers Ernse’s body. Readers learn that this may be the vengeful result of Ernse’s impregnating the girlfriend of a gangster named Quico. Flash-forward, and Ti Zoot is missing his pal, while Ernse’s wife, Nancy, is trying to move on and raise her daughter. Nancy begins to date Max, a Miami gangster … Read the rest
First published in Chinese in 2011 and recently translated by Rojas, this study of literary representation considers how various forms of realism—and critical departures from them—convey a sense of truth. Yan illustrates his arguments with examples from a stunning range of authors, including Chinese luminaries such as Lu Xun and Shen Congwen as well as a host of notables from around the world, with special emphasis given to Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Balzac, Flaubert, Kafka, and García Márquez. As Yan explains, there … Read the rest
After much of the country’s leadership is assassinated by terrorists in a coordinated attack at the White House, Secretary of State Elizabeth Cunningham reluctantly becomes the American president. In an effort to not have to rely on Middle Eastern oil, Cunningham evacuates millions of people from North Dakota and Wyoming in order to turn them into oil-producing “Energy Territories.” These territories, run by a ruthless security firm, quickly become lawless areas where anything goes. Army veteran and widow Jennifer “River” … Read the rest
The work that many Americans do in such areas as manufacturing, health care, food service, and retail are also the jobs that “seldom enable families and communities to thrive,” especially during economic downturns or other catastrophic events like the pandemic. In this book, Iversen probes the nature of working- and middle-class jobs via interviews with workers from a variety of different social, economic, and ethnic backgrounds. Once considered the “land of opportunity,” the U.S. has seen “a decoupling of wages … Read the rest
Mari E–whose full name isn’t disclosed at first—is barely into her latest investigation when threatening notes turn up in her mailbox. She’s apparently too close to unmasking whomever is blackmailing an appellate judge with reputed evidence of murder. So she brings in another PI for “backup”—Derek Abernathy, whom she meets for the first time. It turns out the case he’s working on has ties to hers. He’s looking into a couple of journalist co-workers, one who’s been missing for a … Read the rest
The Second Civil War all but destroyed the United States, now called Prevalence. The tyrannical Scarlet Kingdom controls the Northeastern Territories and has killed or expelled any resistance—primarily non-White races. But three other factions arise from the country’s ruins: the Yaiba Insurrection, the Kabuto Sanctuary, and the Yoroi Alliance. The Yaiba is the most formidable, its members sporting Hanzo Gear, which combines ancient Japanese weaponry with 21st-century tech (for example, a heat-generating sword). The three factions suggest joining forces against … Read the rest