“I consider myself a storyteller, and chocolate is my love language,” writes debut author Rix, the founder of Phillip Ashley Chocolates, in this irresistible collection of melt-in-your-mouth recipes. Rix opens with a crash course on “Chocistry 101,” covering chocolate’s origins (the cacao tree’s Latin name means “food of the gods”), types (dark, milk, semi-/bittersweet), necessary equipment (thermometers, scales, and molds), and foundational techniques, including an in-depth breakdown of how to temper chocolate. Bold flavor combinations—including bonbons infused with barbecue smoke or coconut curry—draw from Rix’s Memphis culinary roots and family favorites. Recipes range from sweet to savory and classic to avant-garde, with standouts including champagne-infused truffles; chocolate-dipped sweet potatoes inspired by Rix’s grandmother’s farm; peanut butter caramel cayenne brownies that pack a kick; and, as a vegan option, an avocado-based chocolate pudding. Chocolate-for-breakfast dishes, cocktails, and sample menus for “chocuterie” round things out. Some recipes require tricky techniques, but Rix proves a reliable guide through even the most challenging concoction. This stuns. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 10/03/2025 | Details & Permalink

TikTokker Rallo (I Didn’t Know I Needed This) reflects on navigating the turbulence of one’s 20s in these candid, confessional essays. Many of the entries zero in on the perils of comparison; “Does Anyone Else Know WTF to Do About Imposter Syndrome?” explores the author’s struggles with feeling out of place in school and social settings, and calls for an accepting culture where young people can more openly “commiserate and explore and find ourselves together.” Elsewhere, “Does Anyone Else Feel Like They Need to Stop Scrolling?” analyzes social media’s role in facilitating both connection and alienation that stems from comparison culture. “Does Anyone Else Feel Like They’re Having a Quarter-Life Crisis?” unpacks the grief of revising “invisible timelines” for marriage, career, and stability, while also reckoning with the freedom of rewriting expectations. Rallo’s voice is conversational and refreshingly funny, particularly when she’s skewering the contradictions of “adulting,” though the essays tend to circle the same themes—imposter syndrome, self-doubt, and the search for purpose—without offering much in the way of fresh insight. Still, Rallo’s candid approach will go a long way toward reassuring young adults that they’re not alone. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 10/03/2025 | Details & Permalink

Lawyer Garner (Garner’s Dictionary of Legal Usage) uncovers in this scrupulous biography the life of artist and etcher Oskar Stoessel. Born in 1879 Austria, Stoessel passed the notoriously difficult entrance exam for the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna (the same year Adolf Hitler failed to gain admittance), where he honed his etching skills, later forging connections with giants like Gustav Klimt and building a roster of famous subjects, including authors, actors, and diplomats. In 1939, he and his brother were driven by Hitler’s rise to immigrate to New York. George Messersmith, an American diplomat who’d commissioned a portrait from Stoessel, helped the artist establish connections, arranging portrait sessions with Franklin Delano Roosevelt (Stoessel’s depiction was said to be Eleanor Roosevelt’s favorite) and numerous Supreme Court justices. Still, antisemitism in the art world kept Stoessel from achieving real renown, according to Garner; at 80, he returned to Austria and died four years later. Garner studiously digs through Stoessel’s correspondences with Supreme Court justices to meticulously track the artist’s career in America, setting it against an uneasy postwar atmosphere in which eagerness to move past the conflict often led to open xenophobia. The result is a worthy resurrection of a little-known artist. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 10/03/2025 | Details & Permalink

Nature writer Kumar (Conversations with Birds) explores the history and diversity of apples in this thorough mix of memoir and ecology. Growing up in northern India, Kumar started foraging for apples at age 5 in the Himalayan foothills. Now living in New Mexico, where grocery store apples are “cardboard-like” and “hollow,” she began searching for wild apple trees and exploring America’s frayed relationship with the fruit. Originating in central Asia, apples were first brought to North America by Spanish conquistadores and French Jesuits in the 1500s and 1600s. Over the next centuries, apples were cultivated coast to coast and became the most diverse domesticated crop in America, at one point having more than 16,000 named varieties. Now, only a fifth remain available, thanks to industrial agriculture’s focus on high yields of supermarket-ready fruits. The decline in diversity leads to dull flavors, Kumar explains, and leaves the fruit more vulnerable to climate change and disease. The author couples her extensive research with personal stories, including numerous anecdotes about home gardening and raising children. The narrative meanders at times and is often bogged down by metaphors (“This wild gardening, tucked into the margins of our lives”). Still, readers will be inspired to reconnect with nature. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 10/03/2025 | Details & Permalink

Iyer traces her passion for conservation and animal rights activism back two generations in this beautiful debut memoir. In three sections, Iyer directly addresses her grandfather, her father, and finally, readers. Through family lore and public records, she retraces her grandfather’s travels to Burma, where he worked as an engineer for the British colonial government, and the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu, where he returned to live out Gandhi’s ideals of compassion and self-reliance. She then addresses her father, a social worker who immigrated to the U.S. in the 1970s and died in the early 2000s. His sensitivity to animal suffering inculcated Iyer with a deep compassion for all living things, and led her to step away from her engineering career to pursue writing and animal rights advocacy. Some of the pieces in this section read like long-form journalism, including one where Iyer visits egg farms in India and sees chickens being slaughtered by people who don’t eat animal products. The strands binding these chapters with the book’s final section, in which Iyer shares her struggles to conceive a child with her husband, can feel tenuous, but she manages to stitch everything together through thoughtful musings on Tamil poetry and Hindu philosophy. This singular personal history edifies as much as it charms. Agent: Anjali Singh, Anjali Singh Literary. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 10/03/2025 | Details & Permalink

Meyer (For a Lifetime) romps through parallel timelines in the irresistible latest in her Timeless series. Charles spends half his days as a farmer in 1883 Virginia and the other half as an earl and adviser to Queen Elizabeth in 1563 Britain. At age 25 he’ll have to permanently choose a timeline and needs to iron out his problems in each life first. He starts by commissioning fellow time traveler Andrew, a medical student in the 19th century, to treat the ill Queen Elizabeth. It seems like a fail-safe plan until Charles’s stepsister Cecily points out all three could be accused of sabotage if the court learns Charles hired a fake physician. Meanwhile, in the 19th century, Charles agrees to show up in his earl persona at Andrew’s family’s vacation home, in an effort to boost Andrew’s mother’s social standing. As it becomes increasingly difficult to carry out their duties without being found out (or irrevocably changing history), Cecily, Charles, and Andrew must put their trust in God to lead them to the right path, wherever—and whenever—it leads. Meyer uses questions of time and fate to develop her characters’ identities and moral crises, and vividly reanimates bygone eras with rich historical detail. Readers will be hooked. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 10/03/2025 | Details & Permalink

Allen (Slow Burn) underwhelms a bit in this spooky but familiar account of mysterious occurrences in Appalachia. Recent college dropout Nathan decided to through-hike the Appalachian Trail, hoping to outrun the ghastly creatures that seemed to be trailing him on his college campus. But the hike proves no escape. Instead, through a close encounter with several of these monsters as he tries to rescue a child who’s fallen into danger on the trail, he discovers supernatural abilities of his own when he shape-shifts into a huge, pantheresque monster himself. Worse, his panther alter ego is a powerful attraction for the most dangerous of his kind. Nathan must learn all he can about his heritage, including searching through his memories of his Native American grandmother as quickly as possible if he hopes to stand a chance against the monsters that pursue him. The concept doesn’t feel particularly original and the prose leans distractingly purple at times, but horror fans will find some decidedly creepy scenes if they persevere. It’s a mixed bag. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 10/03/2025 | Details & Permalink

Psychotherapist Feliciano (This Book Won’t Make You Happy) shares good-humored guidance for making the Christmas season joyful. With four kids under the age of 10, the author and her husband found themselves too consumed with last-minute prep to enjoy Christmas morning; after nearly falling asleep while her kids unwrapped gifts, she committed to figuring out how to appreciate the holiday. According to Feliciano, doing so begins with identifying moments in which one would like to be fully present and working backward to achieve them, including by turning down unnecessary commitments and taking time to meditate. She also suggests reframing the season’s stresses by finding gratitude in so-called obligations (“I should watch holiday movies with the kids” becomes “I get to watch holiday movies with the kids”) and simplifying tradition for sanity’s sake (instead of hiring a professional photographer for Christmas card photos, the author snapped a candid shot of her family in their holiday pajamas). Feliciano’s psychological insights are well balanced by funny, down-to-earth recollections of her own holiday mishaps (she remembers dragging a massive Christmas tree into her home “like a caveman who has just killed a lion and is headed back to the cave”). This’ll go a long way toward helping readers find merriment when things feel anything but festive. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 10/03/2025 | Details & Permalink

Identity politics and social justice are on the menu in this hit-or-miss installment of Mariner’s annual anthology of the year’s best culinary and travel writing. Noting that “any discussion of food (or travel) that ignores power is incomplete,” editor Terry (Black Food) highlights themes of resistance, survival, queerness, and “the politics of pleasure.” Some of the essays explore sociocultural material with aplomb, including John Paul Brammer’s memoir of eating rattlesnake as part of his raucous coming of age as a gay boy in Oklahoma, and Henry Wismayer’s withering, incisive critique of the banality of modern tourism. Others amount to stolid soapboxing; Ayurella Horn-Muller, for example, hammers home the irony that some American farmworkers are food insecure, proving mostly that poorly paid people are poor without revealing much more. Some of the best essays focus raptly on the food, among them Giri Nathan’s shell-shocked homage to Ugly Baby, a Thai restaurant in Brooklyn known for its bizarre, searingly hot dishes. (“In Ugly Baby’s strange crucible, all my rules are suspended: I ate brain, and would probably eat human if it were wrapped in a banana leaf and sold to me with deceitful slivers of lemongrass, kra pow, and kaffir lime leaves.”) The result is a hodgepodge of the delectable and the dreary. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 10/03/2025 | Details & Permalink

In this evocative account, Velikonja (The Chosen Few), a Slovenian cultural studies scholar who has served as a visiting professor in Ukraine several times since the 2022 Russian invasion, provides snapshots of everyday life in the country while analyzing the protest art and rhetoric that has emerged in response to the war. “Not for a moment do I imagine encapsulating it in all its immensely complex and painful reality,” he writes. “These are more its fragments, chips that rolled toward me as much as I rolled toward them.” Some of the vignettes and photographs are especially resonant and eye-opening, including an exploration of how patriotic imagery has worked its way into the design of packaged foods, and a graffito of a fierce but adorable kitten getting ready for combat. Velikonja also reflects on how the war has shaped spoken language in Ukraine, including the ongoing minimization of the Russian language, which he relates to similarly heated linguistic politics in Slovenia. Velikonja manages to address some of the nuances of the conflict without straying from an overall condemnation of Russia (“There is no excuse for a full military attack”). With an eye for poignant detail and an urgent sense of the larger historical questions at hand, this makes for an immersive and unpredictable examination of war’s reverberations throughout society. (Aug.)

Reviewed on 10/03/2025 | Details & Permalink