Genevieve Valentine
-
Mary Shelley's timeless novel gave us not only an enduring trope — the misunderstood monster — but an equally enduring way to talk about what happens when human knowledge outpaces responsibility.
-
The companion piece to this year's Met Gala, Heavenly Bodies functions beautifully as an art object — but it has some odd blank spots, particularly around the contributions of women to Catholicism.
-
This collection of essays by novelist and scholar Joanna Russ was first published in 1983 — but it reads as if it might've come out last week. "Get angry; then get a reading list," says our critic.
-
Evolutionary biologist Menno Schilthuizen's new book is a breezy (sometimes too breezy) account of the ways animals have adapted to city life, and the staggering impact humans have had on evolution.
-
Your parents' favorite travel expert has made his name as a low-key, approachable, optimistic guy. But in his new book, he doesn't shy away from trouble and the ways travel makes you an outsider.
-
Most stage and screen versions of Frankenstein are based on a later edition of Mary Shelley's classic — this new reprint of her original text shows the story growing and changing with its author.
-
Christopher Frayling's new celebration of Frankenstein is half art book, half scholarly study, tracing the famous monster's path from page to stage to screen, just in time for his 200th birthday.
-
Peter Manseau skillfully weaves together spirituality, technology and the legacy of the Civil War to tell the story of a "spirit photographer" on trial for claiming he could take pictures of ghosts.
-
In this standalone novel, Ann Leckie returns to the world of her award-winning Ancillary trilogy with a different mission — a cozy mystery about the theft of some politically sensitive antiques.
-
The Portable Nineteenth-Century African American Women Writers, thoughtfully edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Hollis Robbins, is a rewarding read that reminds us the past isn't a single story.