Be sure to check out our starred reviews this week, which include Sinclair McKay's Berlin, zeroing in on World War I to the fall of the Wall in 1989, "a love letter to the indomitable spirit of Berliners"; Big Red: A Novel Starring Rita Hayworth and Orson Welles by Jerome Charyn, with "delicious cameos" by Hollywood players; and Brand-New Bubbe by Sarah Aronson, illus. by Ariel Landy, "an interfaith celebration of open-mindedness and the unifying power of a good bowl of soup."
The author of Family of Origin, CJ Hauser, discusses her first work of nonfiction, The Crane Wife: A Memoir in Essays, in The Writer's Life. The title comes from Hauser's essay first published in the Paris Review and read by more than one million people.
--Jennifer M. Brown, senior editor, Shelf Awareness