Svetlana's Reads and Views

  Title of the book: We the people; a history of the U.S Constitution  Author: Jill Lepore Publisher: Liveright  Publishing Date: 2025 ISBN: 978-1-63149-608-0 Summary: Goodreads Choice AwardNominee for Readers' Favorite History & Biography (2025) The U.S. Constitution is among the oldest constitutions in the world--and one of the most difficult to amend. At what cost? In this landmark, lavishly illustrated book, Harvard professor of history and law Jill Lepore argues that the philosophy of amendment is foundational to American constitutionalism. Challenging both originalism and the Supreme Court's monopoly on constitutional interpretation, Lepore argues that the framers never intended for the Constitution to be kept, like a butterfly, under glass, but instead expected that future generations would be forever tinkering with it, improving the machinery of government. In an account as radical as Charles Beard's An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the U...

  Title of the book: Stealing America; The Hidden Story of Indigenous Slavery in US History  Author: Linford D Fisher Publisher: Liveright Publishing Date: 2026 ISBN: 978-1-324-09495-1 Summary: Indigenous enslavement was a colossal phenomenon of almost unimaginable consequences that ensnared nearly 600,000 Native Americans in North America. In a saga that predates 1619, this double-stealing of Indigenous people and their lands upends virtually every known narrative of American history. Captured Natives, often deliberately misidentified as Black slaves, were used not only on southern plantations, but on small northern farms, and were routinely shipped overseas. While the American Revolution pealed the bells of freedom for colonists, it paved a larcenous trail of westward expansion that decimated tribes and plundered Indigenous lands. Even after Congress outlawed Native slavery in 1867, Americans forced Indigenous children into boarding schools and white homes, where they labore...

 Name of Book: Goodbye Chinatown Author: Kit Fan ISBN: 978-1-64286-165-5 Publisher: World Editions  Type of book: Hong Kong, England, China, protests, 2001-January 2020, relationships, mother/son relationship, parents/daughter relationship, cooking, ambitions, fame vs motherhood  Year it was published: 2026 Summary: As her native Hong Kong seethes, torn between two world powers, Amber Fan tries to build a career as a chef in London’s Chinatown. Amber Fan, a young Oxford-educated chef, opens the first Chinese fusion joint in London’s Chinatown following the failure of her father’s traditional restaurant. When her parents decide to return to Hong Kong, taking with them their young son Bobby as well as the haunting secret surrounding his birth, Amber is left alone in London. That is, until a woman called Celeste hires out the restaurant, coughing up three grand for a dinner for one. Who is this extravagant stranger, and how did she get so wealthy? Set in the aftermath of Hon...

  Title of the book: Returning; A Search For Home Across Three Centuries Author: Nicholas Lemann Publisher: Liveright  Publishing Date: 2026 ISBN: 978-1-63149-841-1 Summary: Nicholas Lemann grew up thinking he wanted to be Jack Burden, the ever–curious reporter–historian in Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men who gets drawn into a web of southern intrigue. Like his fictional mentor, Lemann pulls us mesmerizingly into a three–century family drama, in which he traces the Lemanns from their humble beginnings in Germany to the nineteenth–century American South, where they became Jewish plantation owners and aspirants to New Orleans society. Yet Lemann began chafing against the South’s strict racial hierarchy and his relatives’ eagerness to be accepted in an anti–Semitic environment, including a deliberate blindness to the plight of desperate European Jews. Returning follows the narrator as he rejects this assimilated world and embraces the rites of Judaism. Through its nuanced...

  Name of Book: No Way Home Author: T.C. Boyle ISBN: 978-1-324-09752-5 Publisher: Liveright  Type of book: Boulder City Nevada, desert, helplessness, hopelessness, friendship, relationships, being a resident, doctor money, limits, post 2020s, causing pain  Year it was published: 2026 Summary: David Lynch meets Fight Club in T. C. Boyle’s most compulsive, obsessive, and psychologically haunting novel in many years. No Way Home tells the haunting story of Terrence Tully, an LA medical resident who is abruptly informed that his mother has died. Arriving at her home in a forlorn Nevada desert town, the naive doctor finds himself “like a swimmer caught in a riptide,” drawn into a love triangle involving the manipulative, margarita–swilling receptionist Bethany and her ex–boyfriend Jesse, a vengeful middle–school teacher cocksure about his sexual prowess. There is indeed no way home for Tully, who cannot extricate himself from this aimless, post–twenty–something world where mot...

  Name of Book: I'll Make a Spectacle of You Author: Beatrice Winifred Iker ISBN: 9780316575249 Publisher: Run For It Type of book: Appalachia, Afrolachia, 1823 to 2027, Tennessee, USA, horror, beast, protection, LGBtQ relationships and characters, friendships, family  Year it was published: 2025  Summary: This heart-pounding horror debut from Beatrice Winifred Iker, takes readers to Bricksbury University, the oldest and most storied HBCUs in the nation. But as one student is about to find out, a long history comes with a legacy of secrets.   Zora Robinson is an ambitious grad student at her dream program, the Appalachian Studies at Bricksbury university. When her thesis advisor suggests she research the local folklore about a beast roaming the woods surrounding campus, Zora finds a local population uneager to talk to an outsider.   As she delves into the history of the beast, she uncovers a rumored secret society called the Keepers that has tenuous ties to the ...

  Name of Book: Holy F*ck  Author: Joseph Incardona (trans Sam Taylor)  ISBN: 978-1-916725-25-6 Publisher: Bitter Lemon Type of book: 2000s? USA Georgia, summer, prostituion, Nevada, road trip, escape, run a way, religion ,hit, comedy  Year it was published: 2026 (2024)  Summary: (From goodreads) Stella works miracles. Literally. She heals the sick and the paralysed, just like in the Bible. The Vatican is overjoyed—imagine, a real saint in the 21st century, and in Georgia, the heart of the American South. The only hitch? Her method: she heals the people she sleeps with in her motorhome. And she sleeps with a lot of people, it's what she does for a living. And that's precisely what's bothering the Vatican. For Luis Molina of the Savannah News, this story smells like a Pulitzer for sure. For the Vatican, it smells more like trouble. A saintly hooker isn't exactly presentable. A martyred saint, on the other hand, has a conveniently rewritten past. That’s a job...

  Name of Book: An Enigma by the Sea  Author: Carlo Fruttero and Franco Lucenini (trans Gregory Downing) ISBN: 978-1-916725-19-5 Publisher: Bitter Lemon Part of a Series: Italian Mysteries by Fruttero and Lucentini (stand-alone, but previous ones included LOVERS OF NO FIXED ABODE and RUNAWAY HORSES)  Type of book: Italy, 1990s, Tuscany, winter, christmas holiday, depression, mystery, literary elements, coastal town life, beach, travel, holiday homes, murder, disappearances, romance, tarot  Year it was published: 2026 (originally 1991) Summary: (From goodreads) On the wintry Tuscan coast, the wealthy elite retreat to their lavish holiday homes. But the season turns sinister when a couple vanishes from a locked villa, and the body of a dubious count washes ashore, bludgeoned to death. With echoes of Agatha Christie and the erudite suspense of Umberto Eco, a sly meditation on class, illusion, and desire, this literary mystery is both sharply observant and darkly en...

  Name of Book: For Human Use Author: Sarah. G Pierce ISBN: 9780316586535 Type of book: Humor, horror, financial issues, dating, 2020s, death, modern culture about influencers, hinted grooming  Year it was published: 2026 Summary: An unforgettable debut, For Human Use is a twisted tale of modern love that bends every genre, sears itself into your brain, and presents a horrific romantic comedy unlike anything you’ve ever read before. ★ “An utterly ingenious horror-romcom, darkly zeitgeisty, and unnervingly plausible—funny as hell, too. You will not forget this book.” ―Heather Aimee O’Neill, author of Read With Jenna book club pick The Irish Goodbye Modern dating is dead. Sarah G. Pierce’s debut, For Human Use, is a glossy, razor-cut spiral into algorithmic obsession and capitalist absurdity where the dread hits hardest because it reads like a headline you’ve already scrolled past. With darkly funny dialogue and a premise that shouldn’t feel this plausible, Pierce lures you in w...

  Name of Book: I hope you find what you're looking for Author: Bsrat Mezghebe  ISBN: 978-1-324-09249-0 Publisher: Liveright  Type of book: Eritrea, guerilla, independence, 1991 May to September, Ethiopia, history, choices, decisions,  secrets, war, relationships, USA Washington D.C.  Year it was published: 2026 Summary: A radiant, highly anticipated debut from the Well–Read Black Girl Books series, delving into the secret lives of three women on the eve of Eritrean independence. The year is 1991. Eritrea is on the verge of liberation from Ethiopian rule and in Washington, D.C.’s tight–knit Eritrean community, change is in the air. Thirteen–year–old Lydia and her family are grappling with what peace—after decades of war—might mean for their future, just as they welcome a new relative into their Berekhet, a cousin newly arrived from Ethiopia to attend medical school. Berekhet encourages Lydia to confront a barrage of new ideas for the first time, about nationhood...

  Title of the book: Salt Lakes; An Unnatural History  Author: Caroline Tracey  Publisher: W.W. Norton Publishing Date: 2026 ISBN: 978-1-324-08902-5 Summary: An acclaimed young nature writer’s intimate exploration into the history and imperiled future of these neglected–but–crucial ecosystems. Salt lakes are some of the world’s most extraordinary ecosystems, but nearly all of them—from the Great Salt Lake to the Aral Sea—are drying up, a harbinger of dust storms, rising sea levels, and worsening human health. In this dazzling love letter to strange and delicate waters and a moving odyssey into her own identity, Caroline Tracey takes readers across the American West and to Mexico, Argentina, and Kazakhstan to document salt lakes, their loss, and the efforts underway to save them. She explores how the lakes have reflected the fast–changing natural world through Mormon diaries, Soviet realist novels, and Australian Aboriginal paintings. And she unravels the lakes’ less...

  Name of Book: The Silent Period ( original: Il periodo del silenzio)  Author: Francesca Manfredi (trans Ekin Oklap) ISBN: 978-1-324-10609-8 Publisher: W.W. Norton Type of book: Italy, social media detox, silence, no talking, invisible, erasure, city, noise, 2020s?, relationships, friendships, projections  Year it was published: 2026 (original 2024)  Summary: A world–weary, disillusioned young woman grapples with the complexities of communication in this arresting novel from Italy’s “new Sally Rooney” (Corriere della Sera). Cristina Martino is 28 and adrift. Underemployed at a university library, she still lives at home with her parents in Turin, in the shadow of her married, affable older sister Elena. One night, as she listlessly scrolls through Instagram, Cristina decides to delete her social media profiles. What is at first a digital detox becomes an act of self– Cristina ceases to speak. While continuing her daily life, she deprives herself of words and ge...

  Name of Book: The Slain Divine Author: David Dalglish  ISBN: 978-0-7595-5716-1 Publisher: Orbit  Part of a Series: Vagrant Gods (THE BLADED FAITH and THE SAPPHIRE ALTAR are prequels)  Type of book: Fantasy, religion, faith, gods, conclusion, secrets, history, destruction, fights, conquer, righting wrongs  Year it was published: 2024 Summary: In the thrilling conclusion to USA Today bestselling author David Dalglish's new epic fantasy trilogy, a usurped prince must master the magic of shadows in order to reclaim his kingdom and his people. The Everlorn Empire's grip on Thanet is tighter than ever. The God-Incarnate himself has arrived on its shores to crush the struggling rebellion and carry out his final, sinister he will sacrifice the entire island in order to rise, reincarnated from its ashes.  The rebellion is struggling to separate allies from enemies, and to figure out a way to stop the slow destruction of everything and everyone they care for. Meanw...

  Name of Book: The End of the Sahara (Nihayat Al-Sahra in Arabic original) Author: Said Khatibi (trans Alexander E. Elinson) ISBN: 978-1-916725-22-5 Publisher: Bitter Lemon Press  Type of book: Algeria, Middle East, Islam, singing,  haram things,  club,  September to October 1988, revolution, movies, mystery, thriller  Year it was published: 2026 (2022) Summary: On an early autumn morning in 1988, on the outskirts of an unnamed Algerian city, a shepherd stumbles upon the lifeless body of Zaza Zaghouani, a stunning nightclub singer who left her hometown seeking a brighter future.  The story is set in 1988 Algeria. It takes place in just forty days, ending as mass protests erupt in the country. In a small town on the edge of the desert, plagued by a locust infestation and a food shortage, teetering on the brink of uprising, the body of Zakia Zaghouani—the singer at the Sahara Hotel—is discovered. Suspicion immediately falls on her lover, who is thrown i...

  Name of Book: The Cut Line ( original Lõikejoon)  Author: Carolina Pihelgas (trans Darcy Hurford)  ISBN: 9781642861624 Publisher: World Editions  Type of book: Estonia, summer, escape, 2020s, abusive relationships, toxicity, family, nature, threat, imminent war with Russia  Year it was published: 2026 (original 2024) Summary: In the dog days of an Estonian summer, Liine flees to the countryside to put a conclusive end to her toxic 14-year relationship. She undergoes every stage of separation in a lone farmstead amid forests. Physical labor and gardening help her withstand her ex-partner’s threats, the incredulity of friends and family, and her own anguish. Dread is pervasive in this novel. Set in the near future, it is filled with vivid depictions of the threat of climate change. All around Liine, nature is facing acute drought and heat. No less menacing is the presence of an expanding NATO base close to the cottage at the Russian border. The world’s largest m...

  Name of Book: Caledonian Road  Author: Andrew O'Hagan  ISBN: 9781324074878 Publisher: W.W. Norton Type of book: Classicism, 2021-2022, performative allyship, gender, parent/child relationships, friends, illegal immigration, LGBtQ+ relationships, art, marijuana, dark web, Eastern European, gang, Robin Hood, technology, elite, downtrodden, death  Year it was published: 2024 Summary: From the author of Mayflies, an irresistible, unputdownable, state-of-the-nation novel - the story of one man's epic fall from grace. May 2021. London. Campbell Flynn - art historian and celebrity intellectual - is entering the empire of middle age. Fuelled by an appetite for admiration and the finer things, controversy and novelty, he doesn't take people half as seriously as they take themselves. Which will prove the first of his huge mistakes. The second? Milo Manghasa, his beguiling and provocative student. Milo inhabits a more precarious world, has experiences and ideas which exc...

  Title of the book: The Oak and the Larch; A Forest History of Russia and Its Empires  Author: Sophie Pinkham  Publisher: W.W. Norton Publishing Date: 2026 ISBN: 978-1-324-03668-5 Summary: A majestic cultural and environmental history that reveals how forests have made—and resisted—Russia’s many empires. From the Baltic to the Pacific, from the Arctic to the steppes of Central Asia, Russia’s forests account for nearly one-fifth of the world’s wooded lands. The Oak and the Larch is the first-ever English-language exploration of this vast expanse—a dazzling environmental history of Russia that offers an urgent new understanding of the nature of Russian power, and of Russia’s ideas of itself. Inspired by the majestic oak, which towers over the country’s western heartland, and the hardy Siberian larch, an emblem of survival in the east, award-winning scholar Sophie Pinkham’s magisterial account spans centuries, revealing how forests have nourished ancient Siberian indig...

  Title of the book: Over-thinking about you; Navigating Romantic Relationships When You Have Anxiety, OCD and/or Depression  Author: Allison Raskin  Publisher: Workman Publishing Company Publishing Date: 2022 ISBN: 9781523513222 Summary: Dating is hard. But pursuing love and relationships when you live with mental illness can be even more overwhelming. Allison Raskin knows this challenge firsthand and shares her journey with perfect candor. She’s learned from her experiences, and we get to learn from her, discovering new ways to form healthy dating and relationship habits. How do you talk to a partner about your mental health? What is the potential impact of SSRIs on your body? What is the difference between having valid concerns and catastrophizing? It’s all here, from meeting online to how to handle a breakup, from recognizing and avoiding unhealthy relationships to the big one—sex. Woven in throughout are interviews with clinical psychologists, a psychiatris...

  Name of Book: Florenzer Author: Phil Melanson ISBN: 9781324095033 Publisher: Liveright  Type of book: Italy, Renaissance, 1464, 1471-1483, coming of age, LGBtQ character, church, banking, money, legacy, charge, scheming  Year it was published: 2025 Summary: Set in Renaissance-era Florence, this ravishing debut reimagines the intersecting lives of three ambitious young men—a banker, a priest, and a gay painter named Leonardo. Leonardo da Vinci, twelve years old and a bastard, leaves the Tuscan countryside to join his father in Florence with dreams of becoming a painter. Francesco Salviati, also a bastard and scorned for his too-dark skin, dedicates himself to the Catholic Church with grand hopes of salvation. Towering above them both is Lorenzo de’ Medici, barely a man, yet soon to be the patriarch of the world’s wealthiest and most influential bank. Each is, in his own way, a son of Florence. Each will, when their paths cross, shed blood on Florence’s streets. Bras...

  Title of the book: Bear Witness; The Pursuit of Justice In A Violent Land  Author: Ross Halperin  Publisher: Liveright Publishing Date: 2025 ISBN: 9781324090786 Summary: “The reporting is really remarkable—it’s detailed, it’s in depth, it’s cinematic....This book is a triumph. You should all get it.” ―David Grann, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Killers of the Flower Moon and The Wager Amazon Editors' Pick: A Best History Book of May A high-octane true-crime story, Bear Witness follows two Christians who refuse to let fear or conventional wisdom stand in the way of their altruistic mission. The vast majority of Hondurans would have never dared to set foot in Nueva Suyapa, a mountainside barrio that was under the thumb of a gang whose bravado and cruelty were the stuff of legend. But that is precisely where Kurt Ver Beek, an American sociologist, and Carlos Hernández, a Honduran schoolteacher, chose to raise their families. Kurt and Carlos were best friends ...