Robert Olmstead @farbrightstar

Iced tea/La Aroma de Cuba… THE AGE OF THE BORDERLANDS: INDIANS, SLAVES, AND THE LIMITS OF MANIFEST DESTINY, 1790-1850 @UNC_Press Andrew C. Isenberg. New history breaks w triumphalist narratives. U.S. forced to accommodate other colonial empires and powerful Indigenous societies.

Iced tea/La Aroma de Cuba… ALL THAT DIES IN APRIL @WorldEdBooks Mariana Travacio @MarianaTravacio. Lina leaves her husband and desolate home in the Argentinian Andes searching a better life. Aching, mythic, violent and loving, the telling dignified, noble and for the ages.

Iced coffee/Le Bijou 1922… STATE OF EMERGENCY @WorldEdBooks Jeremy Tiang '40s to present. Leftist movements political detentions Singapore Malaysia. Siew Li leaves home to fight for freedom in the jungles. Decades later, a Malaysian journalist uncovers the truth of a massacre.

Iced coffee/RyJ… NOBODY’S ANGEL @HardCaseCrime Jack Clark self-published 500 copies he sold for $5 to passengers in the CHI taxi he drove. QUENTIN TARANTINO: “My favorite novel this year… terrific story... a serial killer robbing murdering cabbies." Sustained unfolding drama.

Iced coffee/La Aroma de Cuba… SHIFTING SANDS @BasicBooks Judith Scheele prehistory to present 3.2 million sq mi several million people variety of languages, cultures, livelihoods and we know so little and yet we blunder on ignorant and destructive like always. Fascinating book.

Iced coffee/AF... SOMEONE TO WATCH OVER YOU @PushkinPress by Kumi Kimura. Unusual, unsettling, poignant connection fostered by the covid pandemic. The writing: subtle, tense, sharp, beguiling, atmospheric, unblinking, sustained, the danger, chaos, disruption outside the door.

Iced coffee/RyJ… GOAT SONG @nybooks Konstantin Vaginov ('99–'34) Served in the Red Army Russian Civil War. Active in Gumilev’s Acmeist movement, Guild of Poets, member of the avant-garde OBERIU. Inspired by his interactions w Mikhail Bakhtin. Daringly experimental modernist.

Iced coffee/Le Bijou 1922… THE FORT BRAGG CARTEL: DRUG TRAFFICKING AND MURDER IN THE SPECIAL FORCES @VikingBooks Seth Harp @sethharpesq I don’t think of myself as naïve but the scale impunity acceptance cover-up is devastating. Monsters home, abroad and in our name. What we are.

Iced coffee/La Aroma de Cuba… BLOOMLAND #dzancbooks John Englehardt @johnenglehardt1 Social roots community fallout a shooting at a fictional university. Psyches + stories blend + intersect. American myths of self, grief, violence. Unique and compelling use of the 2nd person.

ICED COFFEE/DIESEL… I GAVE YOU EYES AND YOU LOOKED TOWARD DARKNESS @GraywolfPress by Irene Solà. Earthy, bewitching, ferocious the rugged Guilleries Mts in Catalonia wolf hunters, brigands, deserters, race-car drivers, ghosts, demons, 400 yrs of women in so few pages. Marvelous.

Iced tea/Omar Ortez… JUNAH AT THE END OF THE WORLD 1st novel Dan Leach @deadmediumdan When outsider sunglasses kid w a speech impediment Junah Simmons walks into class Sept. '99 the chalkboard reads THE END OF THE WORLD IS HERE. Another full-hearted from Hub City @HubCityPress.

Iced coffee/RyJ… WILDFIRE DAYS: A WOMAN, A HOTSHOT CREW, AND THE BURNING AMERICAN WEST @ScribnerBooks Kelly Ramsey. Megafires erupting. Elite firefighting crew. Vivid, visceral, intimate, bone-deep weariness, unbreakable camaraderie, courageous reckonings. #WildfireDays

Iced coffee/Jaime Garcia… THE WHITE BEAR and A FORTUNATE MAN @nyrbclassics by Henrik Pontopiddan(1857-1943) Realist, influential member of the Modern Break-Through portraits of Denmark turn of the 20th broad social critiques. Severely censured for blasphemy. 1917 Nobel Prize.

Iced coffee/La Aroma de Cuba…JOSEPH SMITH @yalepress John G. Turner. Early 19th American anxieties: the nature/meaning of salvation, validity of miracles, the 2nd coming, human relationships for eternity. Fascinating/mysterious/persistent the power and sway of charisma then/now.

Iced coffee/RP… GIRL,1983 @wwnorton Linn Ullmann. Paris winter night lost in the streets. The address of a photographer 30 yrs her senior. 4 decades later her life unraveling, she seeks to comprehend the young girl she was. Desire anxiety beauty youth memory power. Autofiction.

Iced coffee/Jaime Garcia Reserva… FORTUNATE SON #missionpointpress debut Andrew Bridgeman @andy_bridgeman Deceit, intrigue, conspiracy, suspense. Kirkus says, “brilliantly executed thriller.” For me, it’s in the sentences, their pacing, precision, texture, fidelity… First rate.

Iced coffee/Indomina… THE JOURNALIST @Dalkey_Archive Harry Mathews (’17) an Oulipian, inventor of "Mathews's Algorithm". Postmodern metafiction bedroom farce, ever more convoluted illusive perceptions breed a dark muddle of suspicion intensely funny excruciatingly poignant.

Iced coffee/San Lotano… SEA OF GRASS: THE CONQUEST, RUIN AND REDEMPTION OF NATURE ON THE AMERICAN PRAIRIE @randomhouse Dave Hage and Josephine Marcotty “…just a tablespoon of soil contains more living things than the human population on Earth.” Scientific, elegiac, bit of hope.

Iced coffee/RyJ… TO CATCH A THIEF @PPPress David Dodge ('10-'74) "Le Chat" ("The Cat") infamous thief has come out of retirement and is liberating jewelry from wealthy tourists on the French Riviera. Or is it a copycat who is stealing fortunes? 1952 classic really quite nice.

Iced coffee/Le Bijou 1922… OUR LAST WILD DAYS @AtriaBooks by Anna Bailey. Living in the swamps, the Labasques hunt alligators. To the people of Jacknife, LA, they are troublemakers, not the kind you want in your community. Life and consequence on the hardest wettest edge.