1. “The Washington Writers Conference Is Back!” “Have you finally finished writing that book — or proposal — but aren’t sure what to do with it? Register for the all-virtual 2021 Washington Writers Conference ($295) and pitch your project face-to-face (okay, via Zoom) to three literary agents! Wherever you are on your creative journey, register NOW for the conference before it sells out! Last year’s registrants were rolled over, so we only have a handful of additional spots available this time around.”


2. “An Interview with George J. Veith” by Tom Glenn. “I’ve known George J. Veith, author of the new Drawn Swords in a Distant Land: South Vietnam’s Shattered Dreams, since 2008, when he interviewed me about my own long history of operating in Vietnam as a clandestine collector of signals intelligence against the North Vietnamese. At the time, Veith was working on his first book about the Vietnam war, Black April: The Fall of South Vietnam, 1973-75, in which he briefly quoted me. Recently, I had the chance to speak to Veith about his latest work.”


3. David O. Stewart’s review of The Strategy of Victory: How George Washington Won the American Revolution by Thomas Fleming. “With a sense of wonder, we ride a rollercoaster of emotions through the British invasion of New Jersey in June 1780, with bloody battles at Springfield and Connecticut Farms, where unsung regulars and militia staved off a powerful offensive that could have ended both the war and American dreams of independence. Why, you may ask yourself while reading this section, haven’t I heard of this pivotal episode before? Thank Mr. Fleming.”


4. Jennifer Bort Yacovissi’s review of First Person Singular: Stories by Haruki Murakami. “Few of the author’s stories, long or short, are without a measure of magical realism, but in an unremarkable way, at least in the eyes of his narrators. In ‘Confessions of a Shinagawa Monkey,’ the narrator spends an evening talking and drinking with a monkey who serves as a bathhouse attendant at an old inn. Arguably, this man devotes more time than do most Murakami protagonists to ruminating on the craziness of the situations the author throws at them, but while he’s surprised and curious that the monkey can talk, he’s not unduly flustered by it. It’s simply unexpected.”


5. Robert Allen Papinchak’s review of Hamnet: A Novel by Maggie O’Farrell. “What O’Farrell has done is incredible. She has memorialized a family. The novel is the thing in which she catches the conscience of the reader. This is the kind of dazzling novel to put in everyone’s hands, to tell everyone to read. It is a flawless achievement. Every sentence is silk; every detail vibrant; every character pulsates. In the overwhelming, heartbreaking conclusion of Hamnet, the author collects all the silences, all the sufferings, all the ghosts into a compelling resolution to tell the Shakespearean story. She breathes life into the boy who fell down the stairs.”

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