Internet Archive opens "National Emergency Library"
The Thread's Must-Read
"American Spy" by Lauren Wilkinson
I love a good spy novel, don’t you? Spymaster John LeCarre believes we’re drawn to the intrigue because “most of us live in a slightly conspiratorial relationship with our employer, and perhaps with our marriage.”
Here are three audacious and adventurous spies you should be acquainted with.
The first is Lauren Wilkinson’s Marie Mitchell. An FBI agent who is tasked to the CIA as a “honey trap” for the new leader of Burkino Faso. Mitchell becomes increasingly wise to the CIA’s motives and increasingly conflicted about her mission. The novel is called “American Spy.”
My second fictional spy is Liz Carlyle, the British agent created by Stella Rimington, a former director general of Britain’s MI 5.
Liz is solitary, quietly feminist and cynical — as all good spies are. She’s wise to the ways of domestic politics and international espionage. Plunge into the series with “Moscow Sleepers.”
And finally, don’t miss Charlotte Gray, the spy that author Sebastian Faulks created from the real-life WWII resistance work of agents like Pearl Witherington and Odette Sansom.
When you've read “Charlotte Gray" check out Cate Blanchette as Charlotte in the 2001 film.
With coronavirus concerns closing libraries around the world, the nonprofit Internet Archive has suspended its waitlists for the digital copies of more than a million books.
Three-time Hugo Award winner N.K. Jemisin turns her attention to our world in her new book — or at least, a version of our world in which cities can be born in human form to fight evil.
Emily St. John Mandel's powerful new novel follows a troubled brother and sister who get involved with a crooked hotel magnate whose Ponzi scheme destroys the lives of his investors.
"American Poison: How Racial Hostility Destroyed Our Promise," by Eduardo Porter
Journalist Eduardo Porter has written a book that cuts to the root of racism, tracing it from slavery, Jim Crow and segregation — and bringing it to today — with unblinking honesty and facts.
Eddie Robson's slim but punchy new novel is set in an unnamed city, made mostly of wood. The city has a king. The king talks to a cat. It's a gem of offbeat weirdness — with a deeply thoughtful core.
Even as bookstores close for public browsing, many are still serving up orders — and reading recommendations. Annie Metcalf from Magers & Quinn in Minneapolis.
Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai's new novel is a luminous, complex family saga that stretches across decades of Vietnamese history, from the French colonial period, through war and upheaval to the present day.
