The Owners' Manual | Issue 21 | Spring/Summer 2021

‘Appleseed,’ byMatt Bell Three characters from distinct eras — 1700s Ohio, the latter half of the 21st century and a millennium from now — confront their roles in a disordered world (and eventually, an environmental apocalypse) but find some traces of hope, too. With its urgent warnings about our ecological future, this novel may not be textbook escapist reading, but it conjures up thought-provoking, immersive worlds. ‘The Plot,’ by Jean HanffKorelitz Writer, Jake Bonner, whose career has sputtered: After modest success with his first book, he can’t sell his next novel and is teaching at a no-name M.F.A. program. He meets a young, outrageously self-assured writer who is certain the premise of his manuscript is destined to make him famous. So when Jake learns that too-good-to-waste plot is up for grabs, he takes it — and finds all the success the other writer predicted... ‘The Maidens,’ byAlex Michaelides After a Cambridge student is found dead, Mariana, a grieving psychotherapist in London, is drawn into the murder investigation. The dead woman was one of the Maidens, a group of female students in thrall to a charismatic professor who is Mariana’s prime suspect. Pick up this novel if you’re after a bookish thriller with stunning backdrops scattered with clues in Ancient Greek. ‘Couple Found Slain: After a FamilyMurder,’ by Mikita Brottman In 1992, a young man named Brian Bechtold was judged “not criminally responsible” for the murder of his parents, a crime he had never tried to conceal. Diagnosed with schizophrenia, he was sent to a maximum security psychiatric hospital. Brottman’s real goal here is to shine a light on his decades- long captivity.

The Love Songs ofW.E.B. DuBois,’ by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers Jeffers traces the history of an African- American family from the arrival of its earliest enslaved ancestors. The story shifts perspective, opening with a Greek chorus that guides readers through generations but eventually focusing on Ailey, a teenager in the 1980s who balances her life in the city with annual visits to the family’s ancestral home in Georgia... ‘The Other Black Girl,’ by Zakiya Dalila Harris Nella is delighted when another Black woman is hired at the publishing house where she works: someone who can commiserate about microaggressions and awkward company seminars about diversity, and help elevate authors who may not otherwise get published. But Hazel — charming, confident and immediately successful — doesn’t turn out to be the ally Nella had hoped for... ‘A Slow Fire Burning,’ by Paula Hawkins This novel focuses on the murder of a young man on his houseboat in London. Could his killer be Laura, the off-kilter woman who went home with him and was later seen covered in blood? Miriam, his odd, uncomfortably nosy neighbor on the river who’s trying to play Miss Marple? And what to make of his aunt Carla, with whom he shared a lifetime of grief? The flaws of each character will surprise and perhaps even enchant you... ‘All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family Keepsake,’ by Tiya Miles The historian Tiya Miles’s wide-ranging new book was inspired by one modest item: a sack passed from mother to daughter. The mother, an enslaved woman named Rose, gave the sack — containing a dress, pecans and a braid of her hair — to her daughter Ashley in 1852...