Implicit in any piece of writing is a stab at answering a perennial question: Whose story gets to be remembered? That's true for not only the half-dozen books below — but also pretty much anything recorded since people living in what is present-day Iraq began making records of life events using this relatively newfangled practice called writing in the first place.
This week's publishing calendar offers plenty of stories written down in stone (or on somewhat newer technology) — from a coming of age in war-torn Ukraine to a dispatch from wildfire country and a glimpse of the recovery-industrial complex, right down to the lives of the folks behind those very first written symbols, many millennia ago. They also answer a simpler question that you'll hear at the lending desk of your local library: So, what books would be fun to crack open this week?
Between Two Rivers: Ancient Mesopotamia and the Birth of History, by Moudhy Al-Rashid
For the vast majority of their time on Earth, our human ancestors didn't really leave us, their descendants, many clues about what they were getting up to. Then, the folks living between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers helpfully turned on a light, using the world's first known writing systems to record their past. Al-Rashid of Oxford University takes readers on a tour of this most distant niche of human history, attempting to illuminate still further the daily lives behind the dusty relics they left behind.
Hotshot: A Life on Fire, by River Selby
One can imagine how difficult it must be for many writers to gin up enough material for the bio blurb of their debut book — especially if, like Selby, they're still a student. Still, it's unlikely the back cover of Hotshot prevented much difficulty for Selby, who, before seeking their higher degrees, spent the better part of a decade fighting wildfires in the American west. This hybrid work of nonfiction is not only a chronicle of those experiences, it's also an intimate memoir of trauma and gender dynamics and a researched history of wildfires and those who fight them.
Loved One, by Aisha Muharrar
There's a good chance you haven't heard of Muharrar; Loved One is, after all, a debut novel. Presuming you haven't, there's a good chance you know Muharrar's work anyway. A writer and producer on Parks and Recreation, The Good Place and Hacks, the Emmy winner has experience handling high-concept plots and humor with an undertow of earnestness. That's on display here, with a premise that sounds like it could be compelling TV too: Julia, grieving the unexpected loss of best friend Gabe, undertakes an awkward gumshoe quest to find and return his missing things for his mother.
Rehab: An American Scandal, by Shoshana Walter
Walter's beat is rehab. That's an oversimplification, of course, but it is fair to say the investigative reporter has spent the better part of a decade probing the welter of laws, hospitals and treatment programs that comprise the response to addiction in the U.S. That reporting exposed alarming practices, earned Walter a nod as a Pulitzer Prize finalist and sustained an entire podcast miniseries. Now, all that work undergirds her stark portrait of the lucrative drug-treatment industry, as seen from the perspectives of a handful of average people caught in its undertow.
The Sunflower Boys, by Sam Wachman
Artem, the Ukrainian narrator of Wachman's debut novel, stands on the cusp of pubescence — a time of dizzying complication in any boy's life, complicated quite a bit further by the Russian invasion of that country in 2022. The Sunflower Boys is a coming-of-age in almost unimaginably harsh circumstances, as Artem must find himself, grapple with his feelings for his best friend, and look out for his little brother, all in the deepening shadow of war.
We Are All Guilty Here, by Karin Slaughter
"I'm very interested in damaged people," Slaughter told NPR back in 2012. The fascination clearly hasn't waned. Her latest mystery is peopled with plenty of broken and unsavory characters — all the better to complicate the case at the heart of the novel: a pair of disappearances, separated by more than a decade. The novel is expected to kick off a new series for the prolific thriller writer, set in the small town of North Falls, Ga.
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