Putin’s Sledgehammer: The Wagner Group and Russia’s Collapse into Mercenary Chaos by Candace Rondeaux (PublicAffairs). Reviewed by Antoaneta Tileva. “Author Candace Rondeaux, an award-winning journalist, public-policy scholar, and director of Future Frontlines at the New America Foundation, gives us in Putin’s Sledgehammer an expansive chronicle, making connections few have traced, some gained by analyzing 130,000 leaked files from the many shell companies of Yevgeny Prighozin, Wagner’s former head, who died in a suspicious 2023 plane crash. The detailed analysis reads more like a breathless spy thriller than an academic exploration, owing not only to Rondeaux’s brilliance but also to her personal connection to the material: She was a student in St. Petersburg around the time Prighozin first met Putin, then mayor of the city.”

That’s All I Know: A Novel by Elisa Levi; translated by Christina MacSweeney (Graywolf Press). Reviewed by Mike Maggio. “Throughout the novel, Little Lea insists she wants to flee — to free herself from these confines and start over in the city — but she can’t. Like her disabled sister, she is crippled by a life that has fully possessed her and is bound to the ones she loves and the ones she doesn’t. Readers will have to wait until the very end of the tender, engaging That’s All I Know to find out whether she triumphs. Along the way, they’ll grow to care for the people of this town — and come away with an understanding of the complexities of human nature in a world where simplicity masks the reality of joy and suffering.”

How to Dodge a Cannonball: A Novel by Dennard Dayle (Henry Holt and Co.). Reviewed by Carr Harkrader. “You could describe How to Dodge a Cannonball, Dennard Dayle’s debut novel, in any number of ways: a cockeyed look at the Civil War; a bonkers coming-of-age tale featuring a band of (mostly unwilling) brothers journeying across 19th-century America; and certainly a satire of our country’s many racial issues. But I like to think of it as the literary equivalent of its protagonist’s job in the army: It twirls whatever flag is placed in its hands in an impressive (and often tangled) display for the entertainment of its readers.”

How to Lose Your Mother: A Daughter’s Memoir by Molly Jong-Fast (Viking). Reviewed by Gretchen Lida. “There’s something utterly delicious about a memoir that roars and crashes like a trainwreck. The kind of book where the author’s dirty laundry isn’t just airing out but smoldering atop the wreckage. Where not a single reputation escapes without a stain or two. Political commentator and author Molly Jong-Fast’s How to Lose Your Mother is just such a book.”

Bodock: Stories by Robert Busby (Hub City Press). Reviewed by John P. Loonam. “While most of the tales take place right before, during, or after the ice storm, Busby also takes us back into the history of Bodock — a town whose name stems from the longtime mispronunciation of the local bois d’arc tree. One of these histories is actually set in the past, while another — featuring several generations of ghosts hanging out on the porch of a bait shop — contains a bit of magical (and comical) realism. We learn that trouble has been endemic to the town since white settlers cheated the local Chickasaw out of the land, held neighbors in slavery, and even sold their own children into indentured servitude.”

The Rarest Fruit: A Novel by Gaëlle Bélem; translated by Hildegarde Serle (Europa Editions). Reviewed by Alyson Foster. “Ferréol may be Edmond’s father, his ti père, but he is also his owner. He dotes on his adopted son, teaching him the Latin names of flowers but not how to read the books in his library. He spares Edmond from toiling in the sugarcane fields, assigning him instead to the garden, but indignantly dismisses the boy’s aspirations of becoming a botanist. Edmond runs wild through a childhood paradise — Bélem vividly conjures the lush beauty of Réunion’s landscape — but it’s a corrupted Eden populated by fellow slaves, a ‘bunch of living skeletons’ who coldly eye the coddled favorite, awaiting his inevitable downfall.”

Dinner with King Tut: How Rogue Archaeologists Are Re-Creating the Sights, Sounds, Smells, and Tastes of Lost Civilizations by Sam Kean (Little, Brown and Company). Reviewed by Peggy Kurkowski. “Though experimental archaeology remains controversial in the academic community — and is often considered a ‘rogue upstart’ — Kean emphasizes the benefits of a firsthand approach to learning about extinct cultures. In 11 absorbing chapters that range from Africa of 75,000 years ago to Mexico in the 16th century, he teams up with experts to walk in the footsteps of prehistoric hunters, sailors, pyramid builders (and looters), and others. Along the way, Kean shares his own do-it-yourself experiments and their enlightening (and sometimes hilarious) outcomes. When baking his version of the Egyptian bread that once fed hundreds of thousands of pyramid laborers, for instance, he becomes more Indiana Scones than Jones and declares a delicious victory (apparently, the long-ago bread was spongy, with a sourdough tang).”

Subscribe to our newsletter here, and follow us on Instagram, Bluesky, Facebook, Pinterest, and LinkedIn. Advertise with us here.