First glimpsed riding on the back of a boyâs motorcycle, fourteen-year-old Czeslawa comes to life in this mesmerizing novel by Lily Tuck, who imagines her upbringing in a small Polish village before her world imploded in late 1942. Stripped of her modest belongings, shorn, and tattooed number 26947 on arriving at Auschwitz, Czeslawa is then[read more...]
âBecause she was my mother, the death of zaftig good-time gal Renay Corren is newsworthy to me, and I treat it with the same respect and reverence she had for, well, nothing. A more disrespectful, trash talking woman was not to be found.â So began Andy Correnâs unforgettable obituary for his mother, Renay Mandel Corren,[read more...]
No episode in NYPD history surpasses the depravities of Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa, two decorated detectives who covertly acted as mafia informants and paid assassins in the Scorsese world of 1980s Brooklyn. For more than ten years, Eppolito and Caracappa moonlighted as the mobâs early warning alert system, leaking names of mobsters secretly cooperating[read more...]
Joni Mitchellâs life, psyche, and evolving legacy are explored here in vivid technicolorâfrom her childhood in Saskatoon, Canada, to her arrival in Laurel Canyon that turned her into, as Alford puts it, âthe bard of heartbreak and longing.â Each period of Mitchellâs life is observed via the artists, friends, family, and lovers she encountered along[read more...]
There are two things Nina Jacobs is determined to do over the summer of 1986: avoid her motherâs depression-fueled rages, and lose her virginity before she starts college in the fall. Both are seemingly impossibleâwhen her mother isnât lying in bed for days, sheâs lashing out at Nina over any perceived slight. And after a[read more...]
