Kolkhoz by Emmanuel Carrère; translated by John Lambert (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). Reviewed by Ken Kalfus. “Less warmth emerges in Carrère’s own depiction of the woman. Proud and imperious, Hélène was the person on whom he was most dependent for approval, which was often withheld. They evidently saw each other as literary competitors. He continues to compete, taking the opportunity to slight her methods of scholarship as old-fashioned. He also says she held contempt for the common Russian people, identifying instead with her noble forebears. She argued in bad faith and was not above lying. She was also vain about her celebrity.”

How Bright the Path Grows: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the March on Washington by Marcia Chatelain (Pantheon). Reviewed by Robert Beauregard. “How Bright the Path Grows is a book with an outspoken feminist agenda. Chatelain wants historians to acknowledge the brave and talented women who gave so much to the pursuit of racial justice and received so little in return. Consequently, this is history less academic than popular, one devoid of nuanced debate and heavy on individual stories. Its goals are to provoke and inspire, as well as to inform, and the author does all three quite ably.”

Dodge City: A Novel by Patrick deWitt (Ecco). Reviewed by Ryan Davison. “Lee heads east with a significant supply of uppers given by a generous friend to help him stay awake on the drive. As he visits relatives along the way, Dodge City becomes the thoughtful ‘amphetamine-fueled cross-country road trip’ promised in the publisher’s blurb. The reader is drawn in with every mile traveled, and we grow to respect this contemplative young man trying to understand his place in the world and gain clarity about the present by revisiting the past.”

Darkness Becomes Bright: On the Brief Life and Immortal Art of Edgar Allan Poe by Emily Ogden (Viking). Reviewed by Marcie Geffner. “In Poe’s correspondence, Ogden finds a passionate, willful, and self-destructive man who possessed a canny ability to maneuver others into giving him what he wanted. His actions could be so inexplicable that Ogden likens him to ‘a penguin with a faulty compass [that] will set out toward the fatal Antarctic interior if no one flicks him back into the seabound flock.’”

Be Still My Unbeating Heart by Josh Winning (G.P. Putnam’s Sons). Reviewed by Nick Havey. “Be Still My Unbeating Heart tries to do a lot, and that’s part of the pleasure. Formulaically, it’s a cozy whodunit, but it’s also a travel romance that features as its main characters a vampire who was turned in the 1970s (and who no doubt shares cultural references with his creator, author Josh Winning) and a talking cat á la ‘Sabrina the Teenage Witch.’ Bastian (the vamp) and Whitby (his kitty companion) inhabit a world in which vampires are a known quantity. No longer shrouded in mystery, they’re just a supernatural, incredibly dangerous part of everyday life.”

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