Hot Desk: A Novel by Laura Dickerman (Gallery Books). Reviewed by Kristin H. Macomber. “Dickerman sets her novel in motion with this not-quite-meet-cute-waiting-to-happen scenario. So, yes, Hot Desk checks the rom-com box. But truth be told, the author’s opening chapters only scratch the surface of the multilayered narrative to come. For starters, what begins in the post-pandemic era takes a turn back to the New York publishing world of the 1980s, when your Rolodex was your social-media hub, literary lions ruled both the bestseller lists and Page Six scandal columns, and publishers hired scads of English majors to scour their slush piles in search of the next Joan Didion — in other words, during a (largely but not entirely) golden age of the written word.”

The Improbable Victoria Woodhull: Suffrage, Free Love, and the First Woman to Run for President by Eden Collinsworth (Doubleday). Reviewed by Paula Tarnapol Whitacre. “That double conjecture — Collinsworth projecting onto Garnett, who is, in turn, projecting onto Woodhull — is an example of what I found most frustrating about this work. Collinsworth writes in an author’s note at the front of the book, ‘I have, when up against the limitations of the historical record, endeavored to accurately understand and re-create the motivations of the historical figures herein.’ To a certain extent, that’s what biographers have to do. However, the author’s statement, combined with minimal endnotes and other sourcing, make the line between fiction and nonfiction unclear.”

Archipelago by Natalie Bakopoulos (Tin House Books). Reviewed by Wendy Besel Hahn. “Complexity defines the protagonist/narrator from the start: her Greek and Ukrainian lineage connecting her to places far beyond the Detroit neighborhood where she was raised; her ambiguous status as neither native nor tourist in the region; her familiarity with, but not fluency in, numerous languages. As a translator spending a two-week residency on a Croatian island, she works in the middle between author and reader to interpret Greek texts and convert them into English without sacrificing nuance. Her larger task involves defining herself.”

For the Sun After Long Nights: The Story of Iran’s Women-Led Uprising by Fatemeh Jamalpour and Nilo Tabrizy (Pantheon). Reviewed by Rose Rankin. “The chapters alternate between the authors as they share their experiences, reporting the events of 2022 from afar and up close. Tabrizy waits fearfully for messages from Jamalpour and other contacts on the ground in Iran. Jamalpour runs from tear gas and rubber bullets during street protests in Tehran. We learn how Tabrizy and her colleagues use the same advanced-surveillance tools as the regime to corroborate photos and prove the government is lying — essentially turning the authoritarians’ weapons against them. Meanwhile, Jamalpour is hauled in for interrogations and threatened with jail time.”

The Unbroken Coast: A Novel by Nalini Jones (Knopf). Reviewed by Bruce J. Krajewski. “Most of the book’s action takes place between 1978 and 2005, the period encompassing Bombay’s transition to Mumbai, the Bombay riots of the 1990s, and India’s struggle with AIDS. The first character we meet in the modern timeline is Essie’s husband, Francis, a professor of history. His story shows how people from two different families — haves and have-nots — intersect. Instead of a bird flapping its wings Down Under, the catalyst for their interconnectedness is a bicycle accident.”

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