A wind stooped pine tree. A driverless blue mustang. A skydiving giantess. An eight inch cast iron skillet. These are the vivid images carried through John Irving’s twelfth novel, Last Night in Twisted River. The book begins in 1956 in a New Hampshire logging settlement called Twisted River where twelve year old Daniel Baciagalupo inadvertently kills someone with the aforementioned skillet, thinking a bear has broken into the house. The boy and his father Dominic, the cook for the logging village, are forced to go on the run, cutting all ties except for those with the live free or die logger, Ketchum.

Siri Hustvedt’s seventh book, The Shaking Woman or a History of my Nerves, begins with a strange and striking incident. The author tells of how, while giving a speech in honor of her deceased father, she began to shake violently, her entire body convulsing while she calmly delivered her oration. The mystery of this incident, which continues to repeat itself, is captivating; the image of it striking and curious. In her book, Hustvedt seeks to make sense of her strange condition by discussing the history of psychological theories on everything from hysteria to split brain studies to synesthesia.

Renowned American historian and activist Howard Zinn passed away on January 27th at the age of 87. Zinn is perhaps best known for his textbook A People’s History of the United States, in which he examines American history through the eyes of those who didn’t belong to the governmental machine. The book depicts Native American resistance towards European conquest, the struggle of slaves against their own bondage, the American woman’s battle for equality and many other perspectives that had been shunned by the traditional approach towards American History. With A People’s History of the United States, Howard Zinn altered the definition of what a textbook could be and what it could say. The book is now used as a textbook for many college and high school history courses and still sells thousands of copies every year.

Josh Goldfaden’s debut volume of short stories, Human Resources, published two years ago, marks the arrival of a stunning new literary talent. The collection of eight short stories is wacky and wonderful. It is definitely worth a read, as long as you have no problem with the absurd.