This Is the Noir Novel for Our Times

This month's Crime & Mystery column is up, reviewing new books by Sinead Nolan, Molly Harper, Nicholas DiDimizio, and Jordan Harper, who has written an absolute knockout of a novel.

Happy #EarthDay

black lab bounds out of a creek and up a sandy incline

It’s good to be Puck on #EarthDay in #Toronto.

If you called her "the goat," I think you'd get one of the most withering staredowns in history. But the truth is the truth. Happy 94th to Elaine May. Long may she reign!

WASHINGTON (AP) — Virginia voters approve new US House districts that could aid Democrats in midterm elections.

yellow lab stands in shallow creek above a tiny falls

Martha is having a good day.

Blowsy peony perfection

Blowsy peony perfection

Yeah, but sometimes the memories and grief are good. It's a way to spend time with them again.

Fresh picked peonies in yellow, pink, and magenta

何人不愛牡丹花

black labrador sits on a blue corduroy sofa, brown eyes upturned

Puck is 16 months old today. #dogsky

Carole, age 4.
Rowing her own boat.

📷 Carole King Family Archives

The Book Supplement, Vol. 4 Manil Suri, Dur a Aziz Amna, Angela Pelster, and Anne Enright.

The fourth edition of The Book Supplement is here! This week we have a memoir, a novel, and two stunning new essay collections. Please read and subscribe *for free* to support independent book criticism 🙏📚. No paywall.

The answer to something stealing your jobs is not to adopt it, it’s to kill it.

This is crazy. Just open-air larceny.

MAGA lunatic Caitlyn Jenner says she can’t travel internationally anymore after her renewed passport was returned with a male gender marker thanks to the orange felon’s bigoted passport policy.

She asked him for help and he ignored her letter.

Hate is what she voted for.

July 21 1935: The Führer orders a new reception hall and ballroom to "entertain foreign diplomats" at the Chancellery. Underneath the dance floor is an air raid shelter. A 2nd deeper bunker is built next to this in 1944, where he would spend his last days as the Reich collapsed.

A big fat daffodil

Look who finally showed up to the party.

Another day, another round of "Am I filled with incandescent rage because of perimenopause or because of the increasing inequity and inhumanity of society"

Tree in bloom at dusk

Take a moment for beauty.

A gray raised bed with three small shrubs surrounded by extravagant peach colored daffodils (to keep deer from eating the shrubs).

Anyway. My daffodils are good.

Whiting Foundation names its 10 emerging authors of 2026 The annual Whiting Award for Emerging Writers comes with $50,000 to support each winner's work. It's one of the largest prizes granted to promising new authors.

The annual Whiting Award for Emerging Writers comes with $50,000 to support each winner's work. It's one of the largest prizes granted to promising new authors. n.pr/3QfgBCK

honestly it’s hilarious that he’s trying to fight the pope and the pope is like “I don’t think about you at all”

brindle French bulldog stands on tree lined beach watching a black lab being chased by a golden retriever

We saw our friend Georges this morning, pictured here plotting to steal Puck’s ball. #dogs

A plan

If Nicole Kidman were my death doula, in my final moments I’d ask her to tell me EVERYTHING about Tom Cruise and Scientology, because who’s gonna find out? I’m literally on my death bed. Feel like I’d get some crazy tea.

Excommunication would be an immediate and public slapdown where consequence meets action *in the moment*, which is why i wish it would happen, but...

Roses just snuck up on me this year.

Provide the social safety so that grandmothers don’t have to take multiple jobs to pay for their husbands cancer treatment

I blame Reagan for everything.