Books Your August 2025 Reads Stories You May Like Digital Docs: How AI is Helping Train Medical Students How Naval ROTC Shaped My Years on the Hill, and Beyond ‘Door’ Prize: A Big Red Visual Quiz This month’s featured titles include the latest from a top mystery writer, a Marvel omnibus, and a look at challenges to democracy For more titles by Big Red authors, peruse our previous round-ups. Have you published a book you'd like to submit? Scroll down for details! And did you know that Cornell has an online book club? Check it out! Pro Bono Thomas Perry ’69 “Few crime-fiction authors are as skilled as Thomas Perry at keeping readers off balance and in suspense,” says the Wall Street Journal. “Mr. Perry’s Pro Bono, a cutthroat caper of embezzlement and revenge, repeatedly shifts direction as its unpredictable plot unfolds.” The latest from the prolific mystery writer follows a lawyer named Charlie, who specializes in retrieving stolen assets for victims of fraud and other financial crimes. It’s a topic close to his heart, because his mother was defrauded by her late husband. Charlie’s current case involves Vesper, a woman whose husband vanished and whose investment accounts are inexplicably shrinking. Meanwhile, he’s menaced by a pair of ex-convicts with dangerous knowledge about his past. “Pro Bono, in which Vesper’s travails become entangled with Charlie’s backstory, has more twists than Topanga Canyon,” the WSJ observes. “Time and again, when the case seems all but settled, unexpected players pop up to create a new crisis. What makes this book especially enjoyable is the care with which Mr. Perry sketches his characters, who run the gamut from caring to callous and saintly to sinister.” Six Nations Diplomat Donna Tesiero ’76 A former government major in Arts & Sciences, Tesiero holds a JD and two master’s degrees from other institutions. Her latest book combines biography and military history in delving into an Indigenous woman’s role in the American Revolution. A member of the Mohawk tribe, Molly Brant had a 15-year relationship—and eight children—with Sir William Johnson, Britain’s superintendent for Indian affairs. Sir William, a French and Indian War hero, had been the lead negotiator between Molly’s Six Nations (Iroquois) confederacy and the British colonies. After his death, and with the Revolution dawning, Molly must decide whether to throw her considerable influence behind the Colonial rebels or the British loyalists. Says the publisher, McFarland: “Drawing heavily on primary sources, this biography of the Mohawk leader chronicles her task to carve out a promising future for her children and her people in a world that threatens to make homeless refugees of them all.” Tesiero’s previous books include A Revolutionary Woman: Elizabeth Freeman and the Abolition of Slavery in the North. Wolverine: Sabretooth War Victor LaValle ’94, BA ’95 The acclaimed writer of literary horror made his Marvel debut in 2022, penning comics centered around the villainous X-Men mutant Sabretooth. Now, the entire story arc—written by LaValle and others—has been compiled into an omnibus version. The drama centers on Sabretooth’s exile, and his ultimate return to battle his arch-enemy, Wolverine. And while Sabretooth—a killer-for-hire—has historically been written off as a one-dimensional bad guy, LaValle deepens the character by viewing his wickedness through the lens of his lifelong imprisonment. The Arts & Sciences alum has garnered numerous awards and honors, penning such novels as The Ballad of Black Tom, The Ecstatic, Big Machine, and The Devil in Silver. Stories You May Like Digital Docs: How AI is Helping Train Medical Students How Naval ROTC Shaped My Years on the Hill, and Beyond His 2017 horror-fantasy tale The Changeling—which Kirkus lauded as a “smart and knotty merger of horror, fantasy, and realism”—was adapted into a series on Apple TV+. Global Challenges to Democracy Valerie Bunce, Thomas Pepinsky, Rachel Beatty Riedl & Kenneth Roberts Four Cornell government professors co-edited this scholarly volume from Cambridge University Press, which explores the ways in which democracy is under threat in numerous countries around the world. Subtitled Comparative Perspectives on Backsliding, Autocracy, and Resilience, the book was inspired by a conference held on the Hill in 2022. Its essays include several by Arts & Sciences faculty members. “Although this topic has received a lot of attention in recent years, we were struck by the lack of a comprehensive, global study that provides a comparative perspective on the dynamics of backsliding across different world regions,” Roberts, the Richard J. Schwartz Professor of Government, told the Cornell Chronicle. “This book aims to fill that gap by helping scholars understand why democracy is in retreat across so much of the world, but also to recognize the bold and creative ways in which political actors and civil society networks are working to defend democracy and make it more resilient in the future.” The Unmapping Denise Robbins ’12 Robbins’s debut novel is a work of literary speculative fiction; it imagines the chaos that strikes NYC when the city is inexplicably rearranged—leaving its inhabitants bewildered and throwing Gotham into disarray. “There is no flash of light, no crumbling, no quaking,” says the publisher, Bindery Books, going on to observe: “Each person in New York wakes up on an unfamiliar block when the buildings all switch locations overnight. The power grid has snapped, thousands of residents are missing, and the Empire State Building is on Coney Island—for now. The next night, it happens again.” The protagonists, Esme and Arjun, are staffers in the city’s emergency management department who are tasked with disaster response as the city continually reshuffles—and thousands of residents (including Esme’s fiancé) go missing. Now based in her hometown of Madison, WI, Robbins is a CALS alum who spent more than a decade working in climate activism on the East Coast. Her writing has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and appeared in numerous journals. Roman Bioarcheology Elizabeth Bews, MA ’18 Bews recently earned her PhD from the University of South Florida in biological anthropology. Her co-edited book explores bioarcheology—the study of bones and other remains, found at archaeological sites, that shed light on the people who lived there. “Research on the Roman Empire has long focused on Rome’s legendary leaders, culture, and conquest,” says the publisher, University of Florida Press. “But at the empire’s peak, tens of millions of ordinary people coexisted in its territories—people who built the structures, wrote the literature, and transformed the landscapes we study today. In Roman Bioarchaeology, researchers use human skeletal remains recovered from throughout the Roman world to portray how individuals lived and died, spanning the empire’s vast geography and 1,000 years of ancient history.” Having earned a master’s in archaeology on the Hill, Bews published the book while still a doctoral student, and is now a visiting assistant professor at the University of Montana. As she and her co-editor write in their introduction: “Rather than prioritizing objects speaking for others, bioarchaeological perspectives invite the people in the Roman period to speak for themselves.” To submit your book for consideration, email cornellians@cornell.edu. Please note that to be included, books must be recently published by a conventional publisher—not self published, pay-to-publish, publish on demand, partner-published, or similar—and be of interest to a general audience. Books not featured will be forwarded to Class Notes. Published August 15, 2025 Comments Irene Hendricks, Class of 1986 29 Aug, 2025 Thank you for this roundup. Just reserved several of these at my library. Reply Leave a Comment Cancel replyOnce your comment is approved, your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *Comment * Name * Class Year Email * Save my name, email, and class year in this browser for the next time I comment. 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