Joshua Harmon: 3 books

An old fisherman recites his "sea-sorrow;" two sisters search for their runaway brother and the girl they believe he keeps tied to a tree; a mother recounts her son's rescue from a snowstorm. The landscape comes alive as these stories chart families broken apart and stitched back together over the course of harsh New England seasons.

"Most of the time," Theodore Adorno has noted, "records are virtual photographs of their owners." The Annotated Mixtape is a memoir of record collecting, cross-fades music with personal history and American history and culture (the 2008 Recession, AM radio, Reaganomics, nuclear war) to show how the vinyl LP has shaped and informed the author's life.

Bad Jews tells the story of Daphna Feygenbaum, a “Real Jew? with an Israeli boyfriend. When Daphna’s cousin Liam brings home his shiksa girlfriend Melody and declares ownership of their grandfather’s Chai necklace, a vicious and hilarious brawl over family, faith and legacy ensues.