BOOKS

Silverview: A Novel By John le Carré Viking; $28.00

Julian Lawndsley has renounced his high-flying job in the city for a simpler life running a bookshop in a small English seaside town. But only a couple of months into his new career, Julian’s evening is disrupted by a visitor. Edward, an émigré living in Silverview, the big house on the edge of town, seems to know a lot about Julian’s family and is rather too interested in the inner workings of his modest new enterprise. When a letter turns up at the door of a spy chief in London warning him of a dangerous leak, the investigations lead him to this quiet town by the sea.

The Night the Lights Went Out: A Memoir of Life After Brain Damage By Drew Magary Harmony; $27.00

Drew Magary, fan-favorite Defector and former Deadspin columnist, is known for his acerbic takes and his surprisingly nuanced chronicling of his own life. But on the night of the 2018 Deadspin Awards, he suffered a mysterious fall and cracked his skull in three places and suffered a catastrophic brain hemorrhage. For two weeks, he remained in a coma.

Drew dives into what it meant to be a bystander to his own death and figuring out who this new Drew is: he doesn’t walk as well, doesn’t taste, hear, or smell as well; failing as a husband and father as he bounces between grumpiness, irritability, and existential fury. Eager to get back what he lost, Drew experiences an awakening in this incredibly funny, medically illuminating, and heartfelt memoir.

The 1619 Project created by Nikole Hannah-Jones and The New York Times Magazine One World; $30

In late August 1619, a ship arrived in the British colony of Virginia bearing a cargo of twenty to thirty enslaved people from Africa. Their arrival led to the barbaric and unprecedented system of American chattel slavery that would last for the next 250 years. This is sometimes referred to as the country’s original sin, but it is more than that: It is the source of so much that still defines the United States.

The New York Times Magazine’s awardwinning 1619 Project issue reframed our understanding of American history by placing slavery and its continuing legacy at the center of our national narrative.

This is a book that speaks directly to our current moment, contextualizing the systems of race and caste within which we operate today. It reveals long-glossed-over truths around our nation’s founding and construction—and the way that the legacy of slavery did not end with emancipation, but continues to shape contemporary American life.

Music Is History By Questlove Abrams Image; $29.99

Music Is History combines Questlove’s deep musical expertise with his curiosity about history, examining America over the past fifty years. Focusing on the years 1971 to the present, Questlove finds the hidden connections in the American tapestry, whether investigating how the blaxploitation era reshaped Black identity or considering the way disco took an assembly-line approach to Black genius. And these critical inquiries are complemented by his own memories as a music fan, and the way his appetite for pop culture taught him about America.

A history of the last half-century and an intimate conversation with one of music’s most influential and original voices, Music Is History is a singular look at contemporary America.

The Sentence By Louise Erdric Harper; $28.99

In this stunning and timely novel, Pulitzer

Prize and National Book Award–winning author Louise Erdrich creates a wickedly funny ghost story, a tale of passion, of a complex marriage, and of a woman’s relentless errors. Erdrich’s latest novel asks what we owe to the living, the dead, to the reader and to the book. A small independent bookstore in Minneapolis is haunted from November 2019 to November 2020 by the store’s most annoying customer. Flora dies on All Souls’ Day, but she simply won’t leave the store. Tookie, who has landed a job selling books after years of incarceration that she survived by reading “with murderous attention,” must solve the mystery of this haunting while at the same time trying to understand all that occurs in Minneapolis during a year of grief, astonishment, isolation, and furious reckoning.

Cannelle et Vanille Bakes Simple: A New Way to Bake Gluten-Free By Aran Goyoaga Sasquatch Books; $35.00

Cannelle et Vanille Bakes Simple is all about easy-to-follow, gluten-free recipes for enticing breads, cakes, pies, tarts, biscuits, cookies, and includes a special holiday baking chapter. Aran also shares her gluten-free all-purpose baking mix so you can whip up a batch to keep in your pantry. An added bonus is that each recipe offers dairy-free substitutions and some are naturally vegan as well. With inventive, well-tested, recipes and Aran’s clear guidance (plus 145 of her stunning photos), gluten-free baking is happily unfussy, producing irresistibly good results every time.

Still Life By Sarah Winman G.P. Putnam’s Sons; $27.00

Tuscany, 1944: As Allied troops advance and bombs fall around deserted villages Ulysses Temper finds himself in the wine cellar of a deserted villa. There, he has a

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