The Serpent Papers
The Serpent Papers is about the completion of Joseph Bell’s soul. This battle is fought within and without, and the outcome determines whether his soul lives or dies.
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Longform
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The longform book reviews on bookscover2cover combine a narrative, descriptive, and analytical style to persuade readers to read the book. The books are chosen for complexity, relevance, value, and style.
Hip Set
Michael Fertik’s novel Hip Set is not only a thrilling detective story but also a literary inquiry into the sacred and the profane—the secular sandwiched between both. When it comes to human behavior, there is nothing pure about it, just as there is nothing pure about what lies on an arc between good and bad or between heaven and hell.
Last Night In Granada
“The magic power of a poem consists in it always being filled with duende.” The narrative in Chris Pellizzarri’s novella, Last Night in Granada, moves along memory corridors that intersect…
Unreasonable Doubts
The cast of characters in Unreasonable Doubts by Reyna Marder Gentin could have stepped out of a Shakespearean play. Consider the lovers Liana Cohen and Jakob Weiss, the counselor Rabbi…
Tiger and Clay – Syria Fragments
“There are memories for which we can live more than a life time.” —Brother of Rana Abdulfattah Photographs over the past several years have shown migrants and refugees crossing the…
No Enemies, No Hatred: Selected Essays and Poems
Liu Xiaobo is the author of hundreds of essays and seventeen books. Most of the essays in No Enemies, No Hatred are from the period between 2004 and 2008, and reflect, in the service of freedom of speech, how words followed by action can change the direction of a country.
The Fire Next Time
The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin was first published in 1963 during the emerging Civil Rights Movement and was an instant best seller. A brilliant social critic, public intellectual, and interpreter of racial myths and beliefs, Baldwin captured the zeitgeist of a country riven by race. Without prejudice or fear, he deconstructed the institution of racism in America.
The Warmth of Other Suns
The Warmth of Other Suns is a magisterial book examining the Great Migration from the South that began during World War I and lasted until the 1970s.
The Morning They Came for Us: Dispatches from Syria
One of Di Giovanni’s themes in her book The Morning They Came for Us: Dispatches from Syria is “the velocity of war,” the speed with which it descends upon a country, whether it be Bosnia, Sierra Leone, Somalia, or Syria. The book is based on Di Giovanni’s reporting from Syria during the six-month period, June–December 2012.
The Way to the Spring: Life and Death in Palestine
Ben Ehrenreich, on assignment for Harper’s magazine, went to Palestine’s West Bank in 2011 to report on Israel’s water war with Palestine. The Way to the Spring is based on his eye-witness account of life in the West Bank—in the village of Nabi Saleh and the cities of Hebron and Ramallah.