I was taken by the equal measure of compassion, candor, vulnerability, and insight weaved into Abani’s story about race, culture, and family history, and even more so by the innovative metaphor used to frame the narrative–the face as the focal point of autobiography.”– Nicole Dennis-Benn, Here Comes the Sun (Liveright) *”I just finished reading Chris Abani's The Face, which is a brief but profound, poetic memoir that I couldn't put down. When I'm done, I'm looking forward to reading Violation, by Sallie Tisdale Reasons of State, by Alejo Carpentier and lastly My Garden (Book), by Jamaica Kincaid.” - Alexander Chee, The Queen of the Night (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) *”I am reading Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere, by Jan Morris, as I just went there recently. (The first, Three Month Fever, about Andrew Cunanan, I could not put down.) There's nothing like lying in the sunshine reading about violent crime.” - Mikita Brottman, The Maximum Security Book Club: Reading Literature in a Men's Prison (Harper) Some books in my pile are re-reads like Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, and Beyond Belief by Emlyn Williams, but some are new to me, like Resentment and Depraved Indifference, the second two books in Gary Indiana's true crime trilogy. I'm a connoisseur, and it's very hard to find really well-written true crime – 90% of it is pulp journalism – but when it's well done, it can be mesmerizing. *”I'm teaching a new course on True Crime the fall, so I have a lovely pile of summer nasties. Everyone I trust says this is a glorious book.” – Ramona Ausubel, Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty (Riverhead) She by Michelle Latiolias, who is my teacher from graduate school, and is much less known than she deserves to be and whose writing always snaps me back to what matters.

*”As always, the stack is taller than the months in summer, but here are a few at the top: Grief is the Thing with Feathers, by Max Porter. My little readerly heart rejoices in anything with sentences this carefully made. Next, I'm reading Junichiro Tanizaki's Seven Japanese Tales, which, like his novels, rocked postwar Japan.” - Kathleen Alcott, Infinite Home (Riverhead) I just devoured Muriel Spark's The Driver's Seat, a novella which completely subverts all ideas about the anguished female. “I make it a summer tradition to re-read some Ashbery, who seems to suit the weather and my attendant mood this year it's Rivers and Mountains and Houseboat Days.

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