Jack Daniel is a household name, but Nathan “Nearest” Green, Daniel’s mentor and first master distiller, was obscure for much of the company’s history. Born into slavery, Green was instrumental in developing the distilling process for the iconic brand, and his descendants are employed by Jack Daniel Distillery to this day. Love & Whiskey chronicles […]
It’s 1087. The plague is sweeping through Anderson’s fantasy version of Italy, just as it was in the real world. A Benedictine monk named Nicephorus is having visions of St. Nicholas calling him to minister to the sick and dying. And a team of relic hunters, the dog-headed Reprobus and silver-tongued Tyun, are looking for […]
During the Golden Age of Piracy, Jacquotte Delahaye, the daughter of a French father and Haitian mother, is forced to flee her life as a shipwright in Santo Domingo when her father is assassinated. Unfortunately, the ship she escapes on is captured by pirates. She and a fellow refugee named Teresa are made indentured servants […]
Garrard Conley, the author of the bestselling memoir Boy Erased, covers similar themes of reconciling queer sexuality with a deeply repressive religious community in this foray into historical fiction. In 18th-century Massachusetts, a Puritan preacher falls in love with a physician who leaves Boston to join his small religious community. Their affair and the steps […]
Open Throat follows the adventures of a cougar in Los Angeles. Though they are elderly and prey on younger men, they are not the kind of cougar you might assume. The real P-22 puma lived in L.A.’s Griffith Park from 2012-2022, and author Henry Hoke has spun a colorful narrative based on sightings of the […]
Are you looking for a gooed popular science book? Slime: A Natural History by Susanne Wedlich, translated from German by Ayça Türkoğlu, oozes charm. The text touches on the biology of slime of all kinds, from organisms like slime molds to secretions like mucus, but doesn’t get mired in complex scientific details. The book also […]
Are you looking for a holiday film that actually suits the mood of 2021? Do you secretly wish that more Christmas movies would harken back to the old yuletide storytelling traditions of hauntings, murder, and contemplation of human mortality? We may have something for you that fits the bill. The Green Knight doesn’t aim to […]
The Handmaid’s Tale meets Chinese folklore meets mecha in this fantasy reimagining of the rise of the historical Chinese Empress Wu Zetian. Humanity is under attack by alien creatures, and the greatest weapon in that fight is, obviously, giant robots powered by human life force. These robots are designed to be piloted by two people—specifically, […]
