Our recommended books this week include histories of corporate mismanagement and misbehavior in the 19th century (“Savings and Trust”) and in the 21st (“Valley So Low”), along with a family memoir of mental illness, a true crime account of forgery in the world of absinthe enthusiasts, and a history of the botanists who preserved an important seed bank in the midst of war and starvation. In fiction, we recommend a new novel by Susan Minot and a story collection by Mark Haddon. Happy reading. — Gregory Cowles
DON’T BE A STRANGER
Susan Minot
As she dependably has for some 35 years now, Minot once again uses her sharp fiction as a vehicle to explore female desire, staging a romantic collision between a divorced mother and a much younger musician.
DOGS AND MONSTERS:
Mark Haddon
Haddon is best known for his 2003 novel “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time,” but he is equally accomplished at creating gripping narratives and sympathetic characters in his shorter fiction. The stories in this splendid new collection are inspired by an eclectic variety of sources, including Greek mythology and canonical British writers.
VALLEY SO LOW:
One Lawyer’s Fight for Justice in the Wake of America’s Great Coal Catastrophe
Jared Sullivan
On Dec. 22, 2008, in Roane County, Tenn., a sprawling 84-acre mountain of coal ash maintained by the Tennessee Valley Authority collapsed, sending a tsunami of toxic sludge across the surrounding countryside. Sullivan’s scrupulous book recounts the accident — by volume, the largest industrial disaster in U.S. history — as well as the ensuing lawsuits and the lasting damage.
THE FORBIDDEN GARDEN:
The Botanists of Besieged Leningrad and Their Impossible Choice
Simon Parkin
Parkin’s ethically haunted book offers a cinematic telling of the brutal Nazi siege of the Russian city of Leningrad (now called St. Petersburg) during World War II, with a focus on the scientists determined to save that city’s vital seed bank even as they faced starvation conditions themselves.
THE ABSINTHE FORGER:
A True Story of Deception, Betrayal, and the World’s Most Dangerous Spirit
Evan Rail
Along with the promised detective story, about the search for a supposed absinthe expert who was passing off modern mixtures as vintage spirits among enthusiasts, Rail’s book delivers a lively stand-alone seminar on temptation — as well as the culture and history of the much-maligned liquor and its reputation for causing madness and murder.
NO ONE GETS TO FALL APART:
Sarah LaBrie
In this affecting debut memoir, LaBrie, a TV writer, chronicles her mother’s descent into what would eventually be diagnosed as schizophrenia, while also exploring the through-line of mental illness that snakes through her family history.
SAVINGS AND TRUST:
The Rise and Betrayal of the Freedman’s Bank
Justene Hill Edwards
In the waning days of the Civil War, Congress created the Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company to serve the financial interests of Black Americans struggling to find a secure economic footing after Emancipation. In this riveting and heartbreaking read, Edwards, a historian at the University of Virginia, tells the story of its dashed promise and ultimate failure at the hands of greedy white investors.
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