Book review: With Teeth — by Kristen Arnett

(Riverhead Books)Sammie and Monika’s marriage is not unusual. They’ve assumed roles, chosen at first, but, as time has passed, those roles, and how they have come to define them, are now limiting, causing resentments. Sammie has slipped into the main caregiver, mother role, of Samson, named after Sammie, their son. Samson is presented as a troubled boy, emotionless, perhaps tending towards sociopathic, but the thing is, it’s Sammie who is doing the telling, and Sammie is the epitome of unreliable narrators. … (read more)

If you’ve been feeling numb around the edges lately, as, wearily, year two of the global pandemic marches on, you are sure to be fully woken up by this brilliant but raw memoir. The title references the oft-held-belief that “any black boy who did not sign … (read more)

(Ballantine Books)The title of Andy Weir’s latest sci-fi thriller immediately imparts a good sense of the plot, taking its name from the common American idiom which refers to a desperate attempt at a very long football pass that has only a small chance of … (read more)

(Custom House) Mary Jane — a 14-year-old girl in 1970s Baltimore, sheltered from the seismic cultural shift the country has taken by her strict, conformist parents — has been hired as the summer nanny for Izzy, the young daughter of Dr. and Mrs. Cone, a j … (read more)

(Doubleday Books) In a departure from his most recent bestselling books, Chris Bohjalian, lucky for us, a local to Addison County and a New York Times bestselling author, makes his return to historical fiction, and, even more fortunately, this much-antici … (read more)

(Nancy Paulsen Books) Two children, in their house, and one inquires of the other, “Wonder walk?? which tells the reader, or listener, of this picture book, that a wonder walk is something they do with some frequency. Off they go, and on the walk they won … (read more)

(Harper) The adolescent brain is a marvel of biology, and understanding the pace of its growth is how this book begins to unravel why teens are “wired for risk.” Numerous studies have been done, not with actual teens (but with rats!) about the effects and … (read more)

(Algonquin Books) In their free Black community, rooted in still-rural Brooklyn in the days of Reconstruction following the Civil War, Libertie’s mother was a person of high regard, a Black female doctor, though with light skin; she was revered, respected … (read more)

(Scribner Book Company) Subtitled “Three Friends Who Fought for Abolition and Women’s Rights,” and written by author, journalist and current executive editor of the New Yorker, Dorothy Wickenden’s, “The Agitators” recounts the individual and shared life s … (read more)

(Forever) If you like cooking competitions and romantic comedy, you will love Farah Heron’s new romance. Reena Manji’s parents have done it again; they’ve arranged her marriage to her father’s newest hire, a “Good Muslim,” but the Nadim who moves in acros … (read more)

(Avid Reader Press) The story of Elena and Mauro, Colombians by birth and allegiance, and their family, children born in both Bogotá and the United States, is the story of emigration and immigration, of belonging and not belonging, of longing and loss. As … (read more)

(Scribner Book Company) Meet Vera, the oldest living survivor of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake — one of the worst and deadliest earthquakes in the history of the United States — who, having managed to escape her collapsed home with her sister, witness … (read more)

(Atlantic Monthly Press) “Endpapers,” a historical and literary narrative/memoir, written by Cornwall-based journalist Alexander Wolff, opens with an illustrated family tree and contains a liberally-distributed trove of family and archival photographs, bu … (read more)

(Viking Books for Young Readers) In David Arnold’s new young adult (that adults will also enjoy) post-apocalyptic survival story, a young woman and her dog set out on a quest, “roaming hillsides and ruined cities, foraging for supplies, operating on the f … (read more)

(Crown Publishing Group) Pulitzer Prize-winning author Elizabeth Kolbert’s new book may have you shaking your head and chuckling, albeit grimly and under your breath. In the groundbreaking Silent Spring, Rachel Carson denounced the idea of the “control of … (read more)