Embers of the Hands: Hidden Histories of the Viking Age by Eleanor Barraclough (W.W. Norton & Company). Reviewed by Anne Cassidy. “Also found in Herjolfsnes was a runic stick with the inscription, ‘This woman, who was called Gudveig, was laid overboard in the Greenland Sea.’ Though the Viking Age had strong oral traditions, it was mostly non-literate — with the exception of runes, which exist at the intersection of text and object and put us ‘within touching distance of the people of the past,’ notes Barraclough. In this case, we learn not only of Gudveig’s existence but also of the perilous voyage from Iceland to Greenland. According to a 13th-century document, about half the ships that set out didn’t make it. But that didn’t stop Vikings from pushing even farther west, reaching Newfoundland (the edge of North America) around the year 1000.”

We Lived on the Horizon: A Novel by Erika Swyler (Atria Books). Reviewed by Mariko Hewer. “The seemingly disparate events that tie the three women and the AI Nix together will eventually require them to make decisions fraught with pain, love, fear, and desire. Through it all, Swyler’s slow burn of a story continues to ask challenging, unanswerable questions about what it means to be human and what it means to evolve.”

The Power of Nuclear: The Rise, Fall and Return of Our Mightiest Energy Source by Marco Visscher (Bloomsbury Sigma). Reviewed by Jay Hancock. “‘Original and gripping,’ say the book’s blurbs. ‘A timely intervention.’ ‘Clear explanation.’ All true. The Power of Nuclear, published in Europe in 2022, should amplify the message that solar and wind energy alone are not enough to end carbon pollution. The work is also a model of critical thinking in a world fogged by memes, egos, and intellectual garbage. Visscher considered the arguments, assembled the facts, double-checked them, weighed them, and changed his position, angering allies along the way. Who else do you know, in public life or private, who has done that lately?”

The First and Last King of Haiti: The Rise and Fall of Henry Christophe by Marlene L. Daut (Knopf). Reviewed by Peggy Kurkowski. “The Shakespearean drama of Haitian revolutionary Henry Christophe’s life is revealed in all its glorious color and complexity in Marlene L. Daut’s superb The First and Last King of Haiti. A product of more than a decade of research, this stout biography is a shimmering synthesis of his life within the rebellious milieu of Saint-Domingue/Haiti in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.”

The Cannibal Owl: A Novella by Aaron Gwyn (Belle Point Press). Reviewed by Holly Smith. “Reading a good novella can feel like overhearing an unexpectedly powerful snippet of conversation: It flies past quickly, but you find yourself still turning it over in your mind days or even weeks later. Aaron Gwyn’s The Cannibal Owl is a good novella. Set in early 1800s Texas — and based loosely on the childhood experience of the real-life Levi English — the story’s brevity belies its depth. This one is going to stay with you.”

Memorial Days: A Memoir by Geraldine Brooks (Viking). Reviewed by Kitty Kelley. “Brooks enchants with her descriptions of Australia, the fragrant forests filled with blooming ti trees, swooping green rosellas, and the bracing scent of eucalyptus. There, she wrestled with the will to survive. After several weeks alone, she managed to vanquish the beast and emerged to write Memorial Days — a masterpiece.”

Righteous Strife: How Warring Religious Nationalists Forged Lincoln’s Union by Richard Carwardine (Knopf). Reviewed by Tom Peebles. “But Lincoln’s spiritual metamorphosis was intertwined with his evolution regarding the slavery question. The pre-presidential Lincoln had advocated for the containment of slavery in locations where it already existed. Yet as war president, his anti-slavery convictions deepened. A ‘more capacious moral framework,’ Carwardine argues, led Lincoln to ‘embrace emancipation…and equality of civic opportunity for both black and white.’ As the war progressed, Lincoln’s thinking on these intertwined issues came to align with anti-slavery religious nationalists, although for a remarkably long period, he was able maintain the support of both sides.”

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