Books Your April 2025 Reads Stories You May Like Anchors Aweigh: Big Red Names Graced WWII-Era Hulls After 50+ Years, Computer Graphics Pioneer Remains a Powerhouse Prof Conflict Resolution Tips from a Veteran Divorce Lawyer This month’s featured titles include poetry, a prof’s neo noir novel, and a memoir about working for two celebrity chefs Did you know that Cornell has an online book club? Check it out! 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! Buzz Kill J. Robert Lennon Lennon’s second thriller is a sequel to 2024’s Hard Girls. That book’s protagonists, the formerly estranged twins Jane and Lila Pool, have healed their rift and co-founded a private investigation agency. In Buzz Kill, they dig into a case that’s close to home: the possibility that the long-ago suicide of an aunt—a lawyer with a powerful and unsatisfied client—was actually murder, tied to the sale of a new and deadly synthetic opioid drug. Other plotlines include the efforts of Jane’s daughter to find out who has produced a deepfake video intended to derail her campaign for class president. Lennon is the Bowers Professor of English on the Hill, where he also serves as editor of the EPOCH literary magazine. His many previous books include the novels Mailman, Happyland, Familiar, and Broken River, and several short story collections. Care and Feeding Laurie Woolever ’96 “I graduated from college in 1996 and moved to New York with three things: a vague ambition to be a published writer, a yawning desire for validation, and a love of feeding others,” Woolever writes in the intro to her memoir. “My parents had taught me to keep my head down and do my work, accept what’s offered, show up early, be polite, become indispensable. Beyond all that, I didn’t have much of a plan for the rest of my life.” Woolever went on to work as a private cook to a wealthy family, attend culinary school—and serve as the personal assistant to celebrity chefs Mario Batali and Anthony Bourdain. In the book, she chronicles her career; her struggles with drugs, alcohol, and marital infidelity; and her working relationships with her two famous bosses: Batali, whose reputation nosedived following allegations of sexual harassment and workplace abuse, and Bourdain, who struggled with mental health issues that ultimately led to his suicide. In a starred review, Publishers Weekly calls the book a “profane, exhilarating autobiography,” noting that, “Woolever paints a raw portrait of the culinary world’s hypermasculine work culture, but she steers clear of playing the victim … These rowdy reflections enlighten and entertain.” Aristotle’s Wife Claudia Barnett ’88 Published by Carnegie Mellon University Press, Barnett’s volume is subtitled Six Short Plays About Women in Science. Its characters include a Cornellian: Nobelist Barbara McClintock 1923, PhD 1927. McClintock is featured in the book’s final play, I Knew I Was Right, in which she attempts to convince a skeptical male colleague about the validity of her findings in genetics. “You must look at the entire organism,” McClintock says in Barnett’s imagined scenario. “You need to register the process. Then you’ll see that what one cell loses, the other gains. The genes jump, and there’s a reason. It isn’t random; there’s an on-off switch.” Stories You May Like Anchors Aweigh: Big Red Names Graced WWII-Era Hulls After 50+ Years, Computer Graphics Pioneer Remains a Powerhouse Prof Other subjects in the volume’s half-dozen plays are microbiologist Esther Lederberg; astronomer and astrophysicist Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin; and Pythias of Assos, depicted in the title work observing the natural world with her husband in Ancient Greece. In addition to being a playwright who has had her work produced around the world, Barnett is an English professor at Middle Tennessee State University. In the Pool of the Sea’s Shoulder Mary Gilliland ’73, MAT ’80 Gilliland is an award-winning poet who has taught on the Hill and elsewhere (including at Weill Cornell Medicine’s branch in Qatar). Her collections include Ember Days, The Ruined Walled Castle Garden, and The Devil’s Fools. Her latest work is a long-form poem whose disparate inspirations include a statue from Japan and the author’s own late brother, an ardent activist for human rights. “In the Pool of the Sea’s Shoulder is a multi-vocal poem with parts spoken by Marie Curie, the Radium Girls, and a mysterious fisherman,” states the publisher, Dancing Girl Press. “A grieving sister’s encounters with a 19th-century metal sculpture originally made in Fukushima and its associated legends of the sea prompt memories of her deceased brother’s activist years ensuring addition of LGBT to the state’s hate crimes law. He and his life partner converse about their lives in the high desert of the Southwest amid the nuclear industry’s benchmarks of Los Alamos and Church Rock.” Combat Monsters Henry Herz ’82 The Engineering alum’s latest book is an anthology of short stories (and two poems) in the genres of fantasy and alternative history, contemplating twists on action during World War II. “Did the Soviets use a dragon to win the Battle of Kursk?” muses the publisher’s description. “Did a vampire fight for the Canadians in Holland? Did the U.S. drop the second atomic bomb on a kaiju?” Says Publishers Weekly: “Herz makes good on the fascinating premise … bringing together 20 high-octane stories that add terrifying monsters to the battlefields of WW II.” Herz has published numerous children’s books, including the recent I Am Smoke and I Am Gravity, and edited such anthologies as Coming of Age: 13 B’nai Mitzvah Stories. His new release got a blurb from bestselling author Charlaine Harris of “True Blood” fame, who says: “Combat Monsters is a challenging and rewarding read. War is always terrible, but the added dimension of supernatural creatures gives these stories a whole different slant on ‘what if.’” The Remaking of Memory in the Age of the Internet and Social Media Qi Wang Wang is the Jacobs Professor of Human Development in Human Ecology, where she directs the Culture & Cognition Lab. Her co-edited book, from Oxford University Press, has a scholarly bent but is on a topic of interest to many lay readers: how online life impacts human memory. The volume’s essays address such topics as Google, fake news, nostalgia, and how grave historic events such as the Holocaust are addressed on platforms like Instagram and TikTok. “As much as memory is a product of the mind and brain and thus inherently private and personal, it operates as an open system saturated in cultural contexts and shaped by layers of dynamic cultural forces,” she writes in the intro. “As a key cultural force unique to our time of modern technology, the Internet and social media have brought about revolutionary transformations to how we receive, share, and remember information.” To submit your book for consideration, email cornellians@cornell.edu. Please note that to be included in our listings of new titles, books must be recently published by a conventional publisher—not self published, pay-to-publish, publish on demand, or similar—and be of interest to a general audience. Books not featured will be forwarded to Class Notes. Published April 8, 2025 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. Δ Other stories You may like Campus & Beyond CALS’ Beloved Apple Vending Machine Remains Fruit-Full Alumni Alum’s Youth Baseball Club Fosters Pro Players—and Scholars Alumni Prolific Cartoonist Finds Humor in—Well, Pretty Much Everything