![\"\"](\"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/a-washington-irving-sketchbook-199x300.avif\")
<\/p>\n\u201cRip van Winkle\u201d begins with a description setting the scene between the Hudson River and the Catskill Mountains (\u201cthese fairy mountains,\u201d which Irving so loved), then introduces us to the protagonist. Rip is a descendant of the Van Winkles who fought bravely under Peter Stuyvesant, though he himself is too timid to participate in such martial gallantry. He is \u201ca simple, good-natured man \u2026 a kind neighbor, and an obedient, hen-pecked husband.\u201d Too lazy to work the farm he inherited, he allows it to deteriorate while his children run around in rags. His only pleasures are squirrel-shooting, fishing, and hanging out in the local tavern, but even these activities are curtailed by his \u201ctermagant\u201d wife, who torments him with scoldings. He has no option but to get away from her by wandering through the woods with his trusty dog Wolf.<\/p>\n
One day, after taking a nap in the forest, he comes upon a group of men who are strangely dressed in old-fashioned Dutch outfits and playing ninepins. They offer him some of their liquor, which puts him into a deep sleep. When he awakens, his dog is gone and his trusty musket has rusted. He wanders into his old Dutch village, only to find it much changed. No one seems to recognize him, nor are any of his old friends around.<\/p>\n
Rip\u2019s main role now is oral historian, telling his story along with \u201ca chronicle of the old times \u2018before the war\u2019\u201d to all who will listen.<\/p>\n
When he asks about them, he learns that they died long ago. In fact, twenty years have passed while he slept, and during that time the American Revolution was fought and the colonists were freed from British rule. The old tavern sign, which used to feature a portrait of King George III, now sports the image of another George\u2014George Washington. The disputatious \u201ctavern politicians\u201d demand to know on which side Rip voted, \u201cFederal or Democrat,\u201d and he naively confesses that he is a \u201cloyal subject of the king, God bless him!\u201d<\/p>\n
Naturally, they accuse him of being a Tory and a spy, but in time they accept his story that he has simply been asleep. Unsure who he is anymore, Rip learns to his great relief that his wife has died and he is now as free of that \u201cpetticoat government\u201d as the American provinces liberated from their British despots. He is taken in by his daughter and lives out his last years as a contented man and \u201cone of the patriarchs of the village.\u201d<\/p>\n
There\u2019s that word again, \u201cpatriarch.\u201d As in The History of New York<\/i>, the Dutch patriarchs are invariably idle and quiescent. Rip\u2019s main role now is oral historian, telling his story along with \u201ca chronicle of the old times \u2018before the war\u2019\u201d to all who will listen. That this ordinary man, this \u201closer,\u201d as one of our presidents is fond of saying, should triumph and ultimately become one of the immortal figures of our culture merely by taking a long nap tells us something about Americans\u2019 apparently unconscious hunger for resisting the heroic.<\/p>\n
Steven Blakemore has argued in his thoughtful paper \u201cFamily Resemblance: The Text and Contexts of \u2018Rip Van Winkle,\u2019\u201d that there is also a political dimension to the tale. A number of pasts\u2014Dutch, Puritan English, and revolutionary era\u2014have been subsumed in the telling, and the changes Rip finds on returning to his village suggest Irving\u2019s own ambivalence about the direction the United States was taking.<\/p>\n
The hero, or antihero, of the story is Ichabod Crane, a rather ridiculous-looking schoolmaster who has set his cap for Katrina Van Tassel, the beautiful, coquettish daughter of a wealthy Dutch farmer.<\/p>\n
Although, noting a \u201ccovert resemblance\u201d between the two Georges, the king and Washington, Irving may also be suggesting that, in a sense, nothing has changed. All this may be true, but it is not why I keep going back to this tale. Long after I\u2019ve absorbed the seriocomedy of Rip\u2019s long sleep and return to reality, I am charmed by the storyteller\u2019s fluency, his controlled irony, his combination of briskness and leisurely relaxation as he pauses to tell us yet another fresh detail of environment and identity.<\/p>\n
Irving tells us that \u201cThe Legend of Sleepy Hollow\u201d was also in the papers found by the late Diedrich Knickerbocker. The tale begins with a tribute to the Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow area hard by the Hudson River. \u201cIf ever I should wish for a retreat,\u201d Irving says, \u201cwhither I might steal from the world and its distractions, and dream quietly away the remnant of a troubled life, I know of none more promising than this little valley.\u201d In fact, this area is precisely where he would later build his house, Sunnyside. Irving then alerts us to the prevalence of bewitchment in the region, setting us up for the Gothic tale to follow. \u201cCertain it is, the place still continues under the sway of some witching power. \u2026 The whole neighborhood abounds with local tales, haunted spots, and twilight superstitions.\u201d<\/p>\n
The hero, or antihero, of the story is Ichabod Crane, a rather ridiculous-looking schoolmaster who has set his cap for Katrina Van Tassel, the beautiful, coquettish daughter of a wealthy Dutch farmer. That Ichabod\u2019s favorite book is Cotton Mather\u2019s History of New England Witchcraft<\/i> shows him to be \u201can odd mixture of small shrewdness and simple credulity.\u201d (Irving himself had a thorough dislike of Puritanism.)<\/p>\n
Ichabod is also a glutton, and he can hardly contain himself when he contemplates not only the fine figure of Katrina but all the food he would be able to eat as her husband. Employing a method of comic elaboration such as Charles Lamb might use, Irving develops it to a high pitch in this story\u2019s prose:<\/p>\n
The pedagogue\u2019s mouth watered, as he looked upon this sumptuous promise of luxurious winter fare. In his devouring mind\u2019s eye, he pictured to himself every roasting pig running about with a pudding in his belly, and an apple in his mouth; the pigeons were snugly put to bed in a comfortable pie, and tucked in with a coverlet of crust; the geese were swimming in their own gravy; and the ducks pairing cozily in dishes, like snug married couples, with a decent competency of onion sauce; in the porkers he saw carved out the future sleek side of bacon, and juicy roasting ham; not a turkey, but he beheld daintily trussed up, with its gizzard under its wing, and, peradventure, a necklace of savoury sausages; and even bright chanticleer himself lay sprawling on his back, in a side dish, with uplifted claws, as if craving that quarter, which his chivalrous spirit disdained to ask while living.<\/p>\n
Ichabod has a certain courting advantage in that, as a schoolmaster and singing master, he is regarded by the villagers as a gentleman of cultivation: \u201cOur man of letters, therefore, was peculiarly happy in the smiles of all the country damsels.\u201d (Was Irving referring to his own experience?)<\/p>\n
His main problem in winning Katrina is the presence of rivals for her hand, especially the brawny, Herculean Brom Van Brunt, known as Brom Bones. Ichabod does what he can to spiff himself up, even borrowing a horse, an old nag, to ride to the shindig to which he and Brom have been invited. The author interjects: \u201cI confess not to know how women\u2019s hearts are wooed and won. To me they have always been matters of riddle and admiration. Some seem to have but one vulnerable point, or door of access; while others have a thousand avenues, and may be captured in a thousand different ways.\u201d Alas, nothing Ichabod tries succeeds; Katrina turns him down, and he leaves the party dejected.<\/p>\n
Beyond supplying readymade plots, these oral traditions were ready to hand in his efforts to establish an American literature, one absent all the rich history and defined class structure of England.<\/p>\n
At this point occurs the climax of the tale, Ichabod\u2019s encounter with the headless horseman, whom the reader assumes is Brom Bones playing a mischievous trick on him. Ichabod tries to outrun the ghost, but he is hit in the head with a pumpkin and thrown off his horse. After that he disappears, never to be seen in the village again.<\/p>\n
The old women in the village assume that he has been \u201cspirited away by supernatural means. \u2026 As he was a bachelor, and in nobody\u2019s debt, nobody troubled his head any more about him, the school was removed to a different quarter of the hollow, and another pedagogue reigned in his stead.\u201d Irving has managed to make us laugh at Ichabod while sympathizing with and rooting for him\u2014perhaps because many readers identify with the hapless Ichabod more than the strongman Brom.<\/p>\n
In a postscript we are told that a listener challenged the storyteller to supply the moral of the tale and expressed doubts about its veracity. \u201cFaith, sir,\u201d replied the storyteller, \u201cas to that matter, I don\u2019t believe one half of it myself.\u201d Thus Irving manages to have his cake and eat it too, by insisting on the tale\u2019s authenticity while asserting his own skepticism. Is this what might be called postmodernism avant la lettre<\/i>? In any case, one would never expect such a conclusion to a story by Edgar Allan Poe, whose oeuvre was too invested in readers\u2019 suspension of disbelief to risk disturbing it.<\/p>\n
Both of these tales were derived from the folk legends and mythologies involving witches and ghosts that were still prevalent along the Hudson Valley. Though Irving didn\u2019t believe in the supernatural, he found all this material refreshing. Beyond supplying readymade plots, these oral traditions were ready to hand in his efforts to establish an American literature, one absent all the rich history and defined class structure of England. (This was less of a problem for Hawthorne, who solved it by going back to the Puritans and the Salem witch trials.) Longfellow did the same by borrowing from American Indian legends in Hiawatha<\/i>.<\/p>\n
The nineteenth century saw authors in other countries (Germany, Ireland, Italy, Scotland, Norway) attempting to firm up their nationalist claims by ransacking popular ballads, rustic legends, and oral traditions. Idealizing the \u201ccommon folk\u201d of preliterate cultures was part and parcel of the Romantics\u2019 emotional rebellion against the sophisticated rationalism of Samuel Johnson, David Hume, and Alexander Pope.<\/p>\n
Walter Scott (whom Robert Louis Stevenson called \u201cthe king of the romantics\u201d) told Irving at Abbotsford, \u201cI don\u2019t choose to contradict the tale \u2026 for I am willing to have my lake stocked with any fish, flesh, or fowl that my neighbors think proper to put in it; and these old wives\u2019 fables are a kind of property in Scotland that belong to the estates and go with the soil. Our streams and lochs are like the rivers and pools in Germany, that have all their Wasser Nixe, or water witches, and I have a fancy for these kind of amphibious bogles and hobgoblins.\u201d Soon after Scott also urged Irving to familiarize himself with German folktales, of which he had a large library, Irving tried to teach himself German in order to do so.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Legend of Sleepy Hollow\u201d contains much lush, elaborately beautiful writing, many heightened nature descriptions, and a comic irony that percolates through every sentence. It is almost a shame that the climactic image of the headless horseman is what most of us remember, since there is also so much extraordinary wit and description along the way.<\/p>\n
\u201cHis stories of Rip Van Winkle and Sleepy Hollow are perhaps the finest pieces of original fictitious writing that this century has produced next to the work of Scott,\u201d said Chambers\u2019s Cyclopaedia of English Literature<\/i>. Remember, the century was still young when the anonymous critic made that judgment; he can be forgiven for not anticipating the wonders of Dickens, the Bront\u00ebs, William Thackeray, George Eliot, Robert Louis Stevenson, Anthony Trollope, Joseph Conrad, Henry James, and George Gissing.<\/p>\n
The critic\u2019s remarks reflected the high esteem in which Irving was held at the time. He has even been credited with founding the American short story (a tribute I would think belongs more appropriately to Nathaniel Hawthorne). It must have galled Irving to be praised always for those two gems, each of which he wrote almost automatically, in one or two sittings. He was never able to duplicate that happily inspired, imaginative turn as a fiction writer, though he did insert stories as a device to vary his essay collections.<\/p>\n
__________________________________<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
From <\/i>A Washington Irving Sketch Book: Reflections on an American Writer<\/a>. Used with the permission of the publisher, Princeton University Press. Copyright \u00a9 2026 by Phillip Lopate<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cRip van Winkle\u201d begins with a description setting the scene between the Hudson River and the Catskill Mountains (\u201cthese fairy mountains,\u201d which Irving so loved), then introduces us to the protagonist. 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Sayed tells their stories in the first person in alternating chapters.<\/p>\n There is no concrete number for just how many people have been killed, maimed, and displaced due to the US-led War on Terror (or, as it’s called by so many of its innocent victims, the War of <\/i>Terror). It formally began in 2001, just three days after 9\/11, with the passage of the Authorization for Use of Military Force, which was signed by George W. Bush, approved by every single member of the House of Representatives except one (Barbara Lee<\/a>), and continued under every president and congress since. In 2023, the Costs of War project at Brown University estimated that 4.5 million people had been killed<\/a> by the war, with roughly one million of these deaths \u201cfrom direct combat in war zones across Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Somalia, and Yemen.\u201d<\/p>\n The remaining 3.5 million were classified as \u201cindirect deaths\u201d stemming from the \u201cdestruction of economies, public services, and the environment.\u201d An order of magnitude more\u2014perhaps as many as 37 million<\/a> human beings\u2014have been turned into refugees and \u201cforced to flee their homes and leave their lives behind.\u201d<\/p>\n These refugees are not merely smuggled or trafficked victims. While their lives might be set in motion by U.S. bombs or sanctions, the people who navigate unpredictable life journeys are not merely passive victims. They are sailors, adventurers, poets. They are sometimes horny, sometimes deceitful, and often funny. Life doesn\u2019t just happen to them; they make interesting lives happen\u2014perhaps more so than many people who try to stay put. Sayed dedicates their novel to \u201cto the transgressors of borders.\u201d Similarly to how I wrote about the late Latinx transgender migrants Cecilia Gentili and Lorena Borjas in my book The Viral Underclass<\/i>, Sayed explores the transgressive nature of those who attempt to cross multiple kinds of borders\u2014of nation, of gender, of the concept of individual bodies, and (even if they fail) of class.<\/p>\n If you\u2019ve ever spent any time amongst international NGOs and their white savior employees, you will laugh out loud at Sayed\u2019s depiction of this world.<\/p>\n Two such adventurers are imagined into being in No God But Us.<\/i> Delbar and Mansur both have similarly circuitous but differing journeys from Afghanistan; they both wind up in Turkey in 2014, having been outed to their families. When they meet, Delbar is in his early twenties; his mother, Qandul, had fled Afghanistan for the United States even before the war. Delbar is raised in the Washington, D.C. area and educated at a fancy university in the heart of the metropole, not far from the Pentagon\u2014the building which has played an outsized role in destabilizing his family\u2019s home country. During a very difficult weekend, Delbar is kicked out of his DC share house by a roommate he describes as interlacing his fingers \u201cthe way news anchors and cucks do\u201d and having a \u201cruthless State Department smile\u201d which \u201cgrew even more despotic whenever he spoke of the housemates in the third person.\u201d (I could not help but think of Vedant Petal, Anthony Blinken\u2019s obsequious spokesman for the genocide in Gaza.) When Delbar is outed and rejected by his domineering single mother, he joins his sympathetic aunt, Yosra, and her children in Istanbul to sort out his life.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Mansur, in his late twenties when we meet him, was born in Afghanistan. He travels with his family by foot across the border to Iran, where his father was killed by a sniper (\u201cEvery promise of safety had come at a price\u201d). Mansur lives in poverty with his sister, mother, and aunt, Schaesta Ama, and works as a day laborer. While trying to find other men like him, he briefly connects with Payam, his upper-class crush. When Schaesta Ama outs him and kicks him out of their home, Payam comes to Mansur\u2019s aide (albeit temporarily) but does not invite him up into his caste for more than an afternoon. Instead, he pays to smuggle him out of Iran to Turkey, where Mansur will work as a dishwasher and an informal sex worker.<\/p>\n Delbar and Mansur meet at an organization called PeaceMeals; like much of No God But Us<\/i>, PeaceMeals is riotously funny. If you\u2019ve ever spent any time amongst international NGOs and their white savior employees, you will laugh out loud at Sayed\u2019s depiction of this world\u2014how PeaceMeals workers have a proclivity for patting themselves on the back for trying to fix problems their countries have caused, the way participants are forced to sign an image release form (to get a free meal) and smile on camera. Delbar is appalled by PeaceMeals\u2019s uptight \u201cAnderson Cooper-looking\u201d German leader, Leif\u2014whom I loathed as a person but loved as a character\u2014and is \u201cstruck by the formality of his sermon, the mention of the German philanthropic trust that funded these weekly dinners, and the good work they did to keep refugees alive.\u201d<\/p>\n No God But Us<\/i> is very much a book about Afghan refugees who are trying to forge a future amidst great displacement.<\/p><\/i><\/p>\n In its opening and closing, the novel engages with what the late queer theorist Jose Esteban Mu\u00f1oz called a \u201csense of brown.\u201d (Peppered with Farsi and Turkish words which aren\u2019t translated, No God But Us<\/i> is unapologetic in its brownness ) At the beginning, Delbar is part of a drag show which his drag mother, Kreamy, explains to him has \u201cOriental aesthetic\u201d\u2014a safe space with \u201cbarely any white people\u201d meant for a \u201csea of other Arabs loving what we love\u201d and who are \u201cfucking with the exoticism.\u201d<\/p>\n There\u2019s only one issue: Kreamy (parents from Pakistan) and Delbar (parents from Afghanistan) are \u201cnot even Arab.\u201d By the end of the novel, Mansur also finds himself in a situation in which he\u2019s cast as an Arab despite being Afghan: \u201cI\u2019m not Arab at all, but who cares. It\u2019s not important what I am. I become what they need me to be, a thick-dick machofucker.\u201d (This is a kind of brown corollary to \u201cBBC\u201d tropes and what Ann duCille calls <\/a>mandingoism<\/i>.) This conflation of brownness and Arabness is due, in significant part, to how in the wake of 9\/11, the War on Terror crudely lumped Arabs, Muslims, and people living in countries as geographically and culturally disparate as Indonesia, Afghanistan, and Egypt into the same stigmatized state of brownness.<\/p>\n In The Sense of Brown<\/i>, Jose Esteban Mu\u00f1oz considers \u201cpeople who are rendered brown by their personal and familial participation in South-to-North migration patterns.\u201d While Mu\u00f1oz was primarily writing case studies about Latin identity, his sense of brown can be applied to other parts of the world\u2014particularly to the \u201cbrown commons\u201d forged in Turkey between 2001, and the 21st-century \u201cFortress Europe\u201d<\/a> movement of the mid 2010s. While brownness is a \u201cplace of fractured togetherness,\u201d Mu\u00f1oz notes, \u201cBrown, it is important to mention, is not strictly the shared experience of harm between people and things; it is also the potential for the refusal and resistance to that oft-systemic harm.\u201d<\/p>\n Two forms of kin stand out in No God But Us<\/i>: aunties and children. The aunties play an enormous role in Delbar and Mansur\u2019s outing (and, in ways both positive and painful, in their flight from America and Iran, respectively). They are a kind of Greek chorus who, Delbar says, \u201ccould be mistaken for buxom, aging crows lined up across a power line, each one wrapped in a slightly different, but equally demure, head scarf.\u201d Despite often reinforcing traditional values, No God But Us<\/i>\u2019s aunties have a femme, queer (indeed, almost misandrist) force the scholar Kareem Khubchandani has described <\/a>as auntology<\/i>. When Delbar sees two women at PeaceMeals in Turkey, he says, \u201cIn them, I saw my own aunties, and their dismissiveness of any man bold enough to make a foolish bid for their attention.\u201d It is Delbar and Mansur\u2019s meddling aunts who launch their journeys towards Turkey; but it is also Delbar\u2019s Aunt Yosra who protects him from his family (and confides in him that the other aunties assume she is a lesbian for divorcing her abusive husband).<\/p>\n The other queer figure in No God But Us <\/i>is that of the child. Sayed seems to be very interested in a phenomenon described in the introduction to The Sense of Brown<\/i> as \u201cthe queer and brown experience of childhood.\u201d Children are not always very present in queer literature, certainly not often in the hands of white writers depicting gay men in their twenties. But they abound in queer refugee literature (think of Renaldo Arenas\u2019s childhood in Before Night Falls<\/i>). No God But Us<\/i> is very much a book about Afghan refugees who are trying to forge a future amidst great displacement\u2014and queer and trans Afghans play a vital role in nurturing their communities across generations.<\/p>\n But while living with intergenerational family may bring protection from racism for queers of color as they reach adulthood, it brings another problem. As Mansur says, \u201cPrivacy was a luxury absent from our home\u201d\u2014meaning sex had to dangerously be sought in public spaces. Samuel R. Delany described the cross-class, interracial sexual playground of pre-Disneyfied 42nd Street in Times Square Red, Times Square Blue<\/i>. In a similar spirit, Sayed playfully explores the cross-class connections which happen when yuppies and laborers alike have to cruise for sex in the same Tehran roundabout.<\/p>\n *<\/p>\n Though it is set in a country and society far from the United States, No God But Us<\/i> is not wholly dissimilar from other queer novels which have found large followings in the US. Despite that, the novel has so far not generated anywhere near the same coverage as comparable novels like Andr\u00e9 Aciman\u2019s Call Me By Your Name <\/i>(set in 1980s Italy), Garth Greenwell\u2019s Cleanness <\/i>(post-Soviet Bulgaria), or Madeline Miller\u2019s Song of Achilles<\/i> (ancient Greece)\u2014to say nothing of the Canadian hockey romance Hidden Rivalry<\/i>. Putting the larger issue of decreased books coverage<\/a> aside, I find Sayed\u2019s prose to be in the same league of writers like Greenwell or Miller, and I believe it has not received anywhere near as much attention thus far\u2014at least in part\u2014because it\u2019s a novel by a queer Muslim author that is also a damning critique of American empire.<\/p>\n As someone who lived in New York City for most of my life, I am not immune to the feelings of sadness being expressed by my fellow New Yorkers.<\/p>\n No God But Us<\/i> leaves little room for the reader to avoid confronting America\u2019s (and the EU\u2019s) contemporary violence\u2014and the way such violence destroys queer lives and queer love. It is a direct challenge to pinkwashing as well as a warning about the seductive nature of the diaspora; even when dealing with the most intimate of matters, Delbar is conscripted into imperial thinking. For instance: When Delbar tries to give his mother an ultimatum about how she must engage his sexuality on his terms if she is to stay in his life, Mansur observes that to Delbar, it meant \u201cEither she was with him or against him.\u201d Mansur, who desperately longs to be reunited with his own mother, is appalled. It\u2019s a chilling line, evocative of George W. Bush saying <\/a>\u201cEither you are with us, or you are with the terrorists” or then-Senator Hilary Clinton saying<\/a> \u201cEvery nation has to either be with us, or against us,\u201d in September 2001.<\/p>\n It\u2019s all or nothing with Delbar, a much less deeply drawn character than Mansur. And while Mansur appreciates Delbar’s attention, he also knows that \u201cWith such naive, pure adoration came the stupidity of a juvenile, as well.\u201d Delbar finds any number of things important which confound Mansur\u2014an insistence on terms for identity, an obsession with YouTube videos of famous people he doesn\u2019t know\u2014because, Mansur surmises, Delbar \u201cheld onto his big ideas because nothing had ever been taken from him.<\/p>\n No God But Us<\/i> also made me think anew about the missed opportunity 9\/11 gave the world.<\/p>\n As someone who lived in New York City for most of my life, I am not immune to the feelings of sadness being expressed by my fellow New Yorkers this week. I, too, was there to witness 9\/11 up close. I watched the flames with my own eyes.<\/p>\n And though I remain angry about the war that followed the destruction of the towers , I am touched every year when I see the memorial columns of light\u2014a monument of possibility and luminescence, evoking angels flying into space.<\/p>\n But light, tragically, is not the dominant legacy of 9\/11. America could <\/i>have responded to that tragedy by creating a kinder world, one that truly honors the dead. Instead, we have plunged more of the world into darkness and suffering. We missed the possibility of different futures those days offered\u2014much as we continue to miss\u2014or ignore\u2014the lessons of the Covid-19 pandemic (and its blueprint for creating a more just society). In a preview of the genocide in Gaza, by the fall of 2001, the US was dropping \u201cDaisy Cutters\u201d\u2014a deceptively cute name for 2,000 lb bombs\u2014upon some of the poorest people on earth.<\/p>\n And yet, despite America\u2019s best efforts, in the midst of this horror, millions of artists, travelers, and inventors created love, and light. Sometimes, against all odds, they created life itself.<\/p>\n Delbar, Mansur, their aunties and their lovers remind us that to bring the worlds we want into being in the wake of the war of terror, there is no god but us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As I read Bobuq Sayed\u2019s No God But Us in the waning days of the summer, I realized their debut novel paired well with Jose Esteban Mu\u00f1oz\u2019s final work, The Sense of Brown (2020). Together, the duo made a perfect<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16376,"featured_media":276951,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[43069,6,43101,43070,43095],"tags":[372,7799,112251,59338,8632,12142,48295,112252,8212,7522,1760,93587,61266,10557],"class_list":["post-276912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-craftandcriticism","category-features","category-history","category-literary-criticism","category-politics","tag-372","tag-afghanistan","tag-bobuq-sayed","tag-fortress-europe","tag-gaza","tag-george-w-bush","tag-jose-esteban-munoz","tag-no-god-but-us","tag-queer-literature","tag-refugees","tag-samuel-r-delany","tag-steven-w-thrasher","tag-the-sense-of-brown","tag-war-on-terror"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5rKFr-1a2k","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/war-on-terror.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276912","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16376"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276912"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276912\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/276951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":276920,"date":"2026-09-11T05:09:36","date_gmt":"2026-09-11T09:09:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/?p=276920"},"modified":"2026-09-10T21:03:25","modified_gmt":"2026-09-11T01:03:25","slug":"harlan-coben-answers-the-age-old-question-where-do-you-get-your-ideas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/harlan-coben-answers-the-age-old-question-where-do-you-get-your-ideas\/","title":{"rendered":"Harlan Coben Answers the Age-Old Question: \u201cWhere Do You Get Your Ideas?\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":" This first appeared in Lit Hub\u2019s\u00a0<\/em>Craft of Writing\u00a0newsletter\u2014sign up here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n Cultivating a writer\u2019s mind frame means looking at the world a certain way\u2014that is, as a source of material. Everything you see is a potential writing prompt. Everything you experience should make you ask, \u201cWhat if…\u201d Most fiction writing starts by asking \u201cwhat if.\u201d For that matter, that\u2019s how most scientific advancements begin too. You need curiosity. \u201cWhere do you get your ideas?\u201d<\/em> Think like a writer. Keep the writer\u2019s mind frame. Keep noodling. No excuses. I try to live with this simple credo always in mind:<\/p>\n If it helps me produce pages, good. If it doesn\u2019t, bad.<\/em><\/p>\n The writer\u2019s mind frame means a part of you is always gnawing on a story. I\u2019m obliviously rude sometimes. My mind drifts off because I get caught up in an idea. I seem easily distracted.<\/p>\n I am fortunate enough to know a lot of successful artists, writers, creators, scientists, and entrepreneurs and so I often look for the one trait the best of the best all share: Curiosity. Genuine curiosity. Even better, childlike curiosity. <\/p>\n People close to me are used to it\u2014\u201cOh, Harlan is going off to La-La Land.\u201d They all get it. This doesn\u2019t mean I\u2019m ignoring my friends and family. Well, maybe a little. But my family knows that I love them with my entire being. I have four kids. They are my world, but they also accept that this is a part of me. Dad will sometimes hold up his hand, ask for silence, start writing something down. Dad may go quiet or even vanish for a few minutes.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not as bad as it sounds. The kids get a kick out of it.<\/p>\n The writer\u2019s mindset also has a lot of advantages. You have to go to museums. You must read books. Lots of them. You have to watch movies and go to the theater. You have to travel and try new things and live out loud as much as you can because you need to keep ye olde brain pan stimulated and full.<\/p>\n And you have to be ready.<\/p>\n With that in mind, I carry a backpack with me all the time. In it I have a laptop, a legal pad, a smaller notebook, a potpourri of pens and writing instruments, even snacks. I clear the run- way, if you will, and never let anything get in the way of me wanting to write. I don\u2019t want to give the fickle muse a chance to wander or find another dance partner. I don\u2019t want to give the muse or myself any out. More practically, I don\u2019t want to waste time searching for that perfect pad or pen or electronic device\u2014because it\u2019s there. With me. In my backpack.<\/p>\n No excuses, Coben. You got time.<\/p>\n Write.<\/p>\n Notice a theme here?<\/p>\n That backpack is with me always. If I\u2019m meeting a friend for lunch or coffee, I often get there early and hey, this is a cool place to hang before my friend arrives. Let\u2019s write. Or I\u2019ll stay after the friend leaves the table and jot down some stuff if the caf\u00e9 owner is okay with it.<\/p>\n I was never a Boy Scout, but I feel like the writer\u2019s version of one: Always be prepared.<\/p>\n In case you\u2019re wondering, yes, the backpack is sitting next to me right now.<\/p>\n ________________________________________________________<\/p>\n This first appeared in Lit Hub\u2019s\u00a0Craft of Writing\u00a0newsletter\u2014sign up here. Cultivating a writer\u2019s mind frame means looking at the world a certain way\u2014that is, as a source of material. Everything you see is a potential writing prompt. Everything you experience<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32176,"featured_media":276947,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[43071,43069,6],"tags":[11185,14747,3401,112254,67126,112255,2741],"class_list":["post-276920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-craft-and-advice","category-craftandcriticism","category-features","tag-grand-central-publishing","tag-harlan-coben","tag-inspiration","tag-plot-twist","tag-the-craft-of-writing","tag-where-do-writers-get-their-ideas","tag-writing-advice"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5rKFr-1a2s","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/harlan-coben.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276920","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32176"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276920"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276920\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/276947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":276557,"date":"2026-09-11T05:08:48","date_gmt":"2026-09-11T09:08:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/?p=276557"},"modified":"2026-09-10T14:26:26","modified_gmt":"2026-09-10T18:26:26","slug":"on-the-forgotten-enslavement-of-native-americans-and-its-central-role-in-u-s-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/on-the-forgotten-enslavement-of-native-americans-and-its-central-role-in-u-s-history\/","title":{"rendered":"On the Forgotten Enslavement of Native Americans and Its Central Role in US History"},"content":{"rendered":" On a sun-\u00addrenched day in June 2018, a woman in traditional Native regalia dropped a large wreath of flowers into the Atlantic Ocean. The impact jostled loose a few petals before the circle of blossoms slowly drifted away on the luminescent blue Bermudian swells. All of the one hundred or so people gathered were silent, each absorbed by their own thoughts. In its departure, the wreath commemorated the journey of enslaved New England Native Americans to the island nearly four hundred years earlier.<\/p>\n Within an hour, the somber commemoration by the sea turned into a vibrant two-\u00adday intertribal powwow. Representatives from the Narragansett, Wampanoag, and other nations in New England mingled with Bermuda Natives on St. David\u2019s Island as they participated in dancing, feasting, and communing. Men and boys fulfilled traditional roles around a large circular drum, beating it rhythmically. Dancers in brightly colored moccasins, robes, and headdresses shifted from one foot to the other in a line around the large grassy space encircled by tents. The smell of fry bread and stew wafted through the air, and for hours the singing and drumming drifted skyward as the flower wreath slowly caught a current and slipped out of sight into the open sea.<\/p>\n Native American powwows are important cultural celebrations, but this one in Bermuda memorializes events often hidden in American history: the large-\u00adscale enslavement of Indigenous people and the simultaneous taking of Native land. The ancestors of the Bermuda powwow attendees were part of this buried and intertwined history.<\/p>\n The stealing of Native Americans and their homelands is not just a side story in the grand drama of American history. It is the central river that connects all other streams.<\/p>\n Nearly four hundred years earlier, New England puritans hunted down well over one thousand Pequots, Wampanoags, Narragansetts, Nipmucs, and individuals from other nations and shipped them to Bermuda, Barbados, Spain, Mexico, and other international destinations. This took place during and after two wars between the puritans and local Indigenous populations. The first was the Pequot War in the 1630s, in which puritans tried to completely exterminate the Pequot nation. The second was King Philip\u2019s War in the 1670s, which was a massive uprising in response to the harms of colonialism. During and after both wars, puritans used large-scale enslavement of Native peoples to bolster their labor force and help clear land for colonial settlement.<\/p>\n Native peoples in New England and Bermuda kept alive their family histories and stories throughout the centuries, even when colonial documents suppressed or omitted these connections. In Bermuda, enslaved Native Americans from New England and other regions eventually intermarried with enslaved and free Africans. After British emancipation in 1834, many of their descendants settled on St. David\u2019s Island, in the northern part of the archipelago. There they continued to work, connect, and intermarry into the twenty-\u00adfirst century, and they remain to this day.<\/p>\n When St. David\u2019s Islanders and New England Natives started exploring this shared history in the late 1990s, they realized a vital reunification was taking place. Starting in 2002, the reconnection powwows like the one I attended in June 2018 have served as a meaningful way for Natives in both New England and Bermuda to bring together what the violence of colonialism tore apart. As Nives Filice, whose ancestors were enslaved and sent to Bermuda, told me over lunch in the capital city of Hamilton, \u201cReconnecting with people in New England plugged a hole that I didn\u2019t even know existed….When I first stepped foot on Mashpee Wampanoag tribal lands [in Massachusetts], I instantly felt a spiritual connection, like I was home.\u201d<\/p>\n This book uses the concept of stealing to understand Native Americans\u2019 experiences of losing kin and land\u2014\u00adsomething I gleaned from many conversations with Native American collaborators and friends. Scholarly writing about slavery in the Americas\u2014\u00adwhich has mostly centered on Black enslavement\u2014\u00adhas emphasized its economic value in building plantations, wealth, and American capitalism. But Native Americans experienced slavery as stealing of relatives, as a community loss, and it was always intermingled with the stealing of their land and disregard for their sovereignty. From their perspectives, stealing people, whether for enslavement or by forcing children into boarding schools, and seizing land, in wars or through removals, represented tangible community losses as part of a longer-\u00adterm assault on their very existence.<\/p>\n Although largely erased from public consciousness, Indigenous enslavement was a colossal phenomenon that spanned the entire Americas, ensnaring an estimated 3 million to 6 million Indigenous people between 1492 and 1880 from Canada to Brazil. In the area that later became the United States, as many as 600,000 Native Americans were enslaved during this period, with many more stolen from families into the twentieth century through boarding school, fostering, and adoption programs. In comparison, approximately 530,000 enslaved Africans were forcibly transported to North America (excluding Mexico) through 1865.<\/p>\n These numbers reveal a shocking truth: American forefathers and foremothers enslaved Native Americans in roughly the same numbers as they imported enslaved Africans. Enslaved African-\u00addescended people later came to officially outnumber enslaved Natives through reproduction as well as the erasure of Native Americans from the records when individuals from the two groups intermarried. Still, Native slavery was far more prominent and long lasting in American history than we have realized.<\/p>\n The enslavement of more than a half million Indigenous men, women, and children within the boundaries of what is now the United States is almost unthinkable because it defies what we have been taught about both American history and slavery. The conventional narrative of American slavery goes something like this: After Columbus \u201cdiscovered\u201d the Americas, the Spanish enslaved Native Americans in the Caribbean and South America until 1542, when it was outlawed and they instead started importing enslaved Africans. When the English landed in Jamestown in 1607, colonists first used white indentured servants but soon began importing enslaved Africans in 1619. This inaugurated the transatlantic African slave trade, which lasted until 1808, when it was banned by Congress. Black slavery expanded in the South until the American Civil War, when it was legally terminated by the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865.<\/p>\n But that story is glaringly incomplete. Stealing America<\/em> dramatically expands this history by tracing Indigenous enslavement and land dispossession throughout the full range of American history. This wider story spans five centuries from the first enslavement of the Caribbean Lucayan and Ta\u00edno in 1492 to the Indian Child Welfare Act in 1978, which slowly halted the stealing of tens of thousands of Native children through adoptions. As Alexis Moreis (Chappaquiddick Wampanoag) has noted, \u201cWhen we are talking about Native American slavery, it always involves dispossession.\u201d There is not a time or place in American history when these intertwined stealings were not viscerally present. And yet this book is not a comprehensive Native American history of the continent, nor is it a detailed history of the United States. Rather, it tugs on the specific threads of Indigenous slavery and land loss, demonstrating their centrality to and ubiquity in every colony and state, in every era of American history.<\/p>\n This centuries-\u00adlong saga is one of both persistent colonialism and Indigenous resilience. A vast diversity of Indigenous peoples across the continent have found ways to negotiate and survive the waves of invading Europeans and Americans from 1492 to the present. This resilience has manifested in many forms. Powerful Native nations and smaller communities resisted and limited colonial aggression through diplomacy, alliances, petitions and court cases, and wars of resistance. Stolen and enslaved Indigenous people formed new networks of kinship; learned new skills and languages; retained memories of family, kin, and rituals; and, through it all, continually plotted to return home.<\/p>\n Colonization contained twists and turns. Native leaders and nations did not see themselves as universally on the same \u201cside\u201d as other Indigenous peoples and against all Europeans. Faced with foreign invasions, they made choices for survival and sovereignty that seem unexpected from a modern perspective. In some instances, Indigenous nations played surprising roles as collaborators with English merchants to conduct the large-\u00adscale slave trade of Native peoples, including in the Carolinas, Utah, and even Central America. As Narragansett scholar Mack Scott has noted, \u201cNative Americans had their own histories, networks, goals, and purposes apart from European invaders.\u201d<\/p>\n This double theft was central to the origins, growth, and eventual success of the English colonies and the United States\u2014not just initially but throughout all of American history.<\/p>\n Although Stealing America<\/em> focuses on the history of Indigenous slavery and land loss, this history also frequently intermingles with the story of African slavery. These are not competing histories since at times they connect and overlap. Nor does focusing on Native slavery minimize the weighty importance of Black slavery in US history. The damage and dislocation caused by Native enslavement and dispossession are part of a broader, layered, and \u201cmultidirectional\u201d trauma in American history that involves Native Americans and African Americans, as well as Asian Americans, Mexican Americans, refugees, immigrants, and other historically marginalized populations. These injustices also coalesce with innumerable historical and contemporary global histories of genocide and displacement. Such stories, along with the incredible resilience of populations harmed by colonialism, need to be told and understood to promote justice and healing. And yet this particular history of Indigenous enslavement and land theft in American history has been so obscured that it merits its own telling.<\/p>\n The stealing of Native Americans and their homelands is not just a side story in the grand drama of American history. It is the central river that connects all other streams, coursing through the landscape of this country\u2019s past like the muddy, serpentine Mississippi, which bisects the continent and allows everything around it to flourish. Native American enslavement was not just the \u201cother\u201d slavery, merely adding to the labor pool of the colonies and eventually the United States. Instead, enslaving Native Americans furthered colonization in a more fundamental, two-\u00adpronged way. Stealing and enslaving Native Americans from coveted lands was stunningly effective since it provided colonists with labor and land at the same time. The loss of Native individuals led to the destabilization of Indigenous family units and entire communities. This diminished tribes\u2019 abilities to maintain demographic and vital community presence, making them easier to control, remove, or even legally terminate, or so colonists hoped.<\/p>\n This double theft was central to the origins, growth, and eventual success of the English colonies and the United States\u2014\u00adnot just initially but throughout all of American history. It is a powerful but overlooked process that has helped the United States become the superpower it is today.<\/p>\n How so? The financial strength and geographical spread of the American colonies and the United States emerged from stolen land and enslaved labor. Native Americans were forced to provide both. Fertile lands afforded the capacity to grow export crops that supported farmers and made plantation owners fabulously wealthy. Forests delivered lumber to build ships and barrels for transporting goods that allowed the United States to become a global trading power. A landscape teeming with deer, beaver, and buffalo provided boatloads of pelts and hides that sold for millions of dollars in Europe. Land itself was a commodity, representing wealth and financial stability; for centuries, owning it allowed white men to vote.<\/p>\n Without stolen Native lands, there would be no American capitalism and no nineteenth-\u00adcentury cotton kingdom; no homesteading rush and push for the individual home ownership so central to the American dream; no majestic national parks, which still are sacred to Native Americans; and no prime waterfront locations for twenty-\u00adfirst-\u00adcentury financial and cultural centers like New York City, Miami, Chicago, and Los Angeles.<\/p>\n _______________________________<\/p>\n From <\/em>Stealing America: The Hidden Story of Indigenous Slavery in U.S. History<\/a> by Linford D. Fisher. Copyright \u00a9 2026. Available from Liveright Publishing Corporation, an imprint of W.W. Norton & Company. <\/em>Stealing America has been shortlisted for the 2026 Cundill History Prize<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On a sun-\u00addrenched day in June 2018, a woman in traditional Native regalia dropped a large wreath of flowers into the Atlantic Ocean. The impact jostled loose a few petals before the circle of blossoms slowly drifted away on the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31927,"featured_media":276592,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6,43101,43092],"tags":[111978,13038,6505,60417,71456,109775,65822,41981,2727,109776,12598],"class_list":["post-276557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","category-history","category-newsandculture","tag-2026-cundill-history-prize","tag-american-history","tag-colonialism","tag-cundill-history-prize","tag-indigenous-history","tag-linford-d-fisher","tag-liveright-publishing-corporation","tag-native-american-history","tag-slavery","tag-stealing-america-the-hidden-story-of-indigenous-slavery-in-u-s-history","tag-w-w-norton-and-company","story-type-cundill-history-prize"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5rKFr-19WB","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/native-american-slavery.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/31927"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276557"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276557\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/276592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":276814,"date":"2026-09-11T05:08:34","date_gmt":"2026-09-11T09:08:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/?p=276814"},"modified":"2026-09-10T13:42:59","modified_gmt":"2026-09-10T17:42:59","slug":"on-the-existential-threat-of-palestinian-kites-to-colonial-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/on-the-existential-threat-of-palestinian-kites-to-colonial-power\/","title":{"rendered":"On the Existential Threat of Palestinian Kites to Colonial Power"},"content":{"rendered":" There is an old colonizer adage<\/a> that “the old will die and the young will forget.\u201d In fact, Israel built its future wagering that the Palestinians violently displaced and expelled in the Nakba<\/a> would eventually move on, assimilate, forget the depravity that ripped them from their land. But now, the occupation seems to tremble before Palestinian children holding paper and string.<\/p>\n Khaled Al Khateeb<\/a> and his siblings spent a week making a kite from scraps they found at home, and when it finally flew, it was as if Khaled himself was soaring above the clouds, above the drones and the bombs that loomed over his entire life. This kite, like all Palestinians, suddenly became an existential threat to the colonizers.<\/p>\n Last month, Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz said that kites would be treated like drones; Benjamin Netanyahu threatened<\/a>\u00a0that the people launching them could be killed. Everything but paper and string had already been stolen from Khaled and his friends, yet Israel, after\u00a0vaporizing<\/a>\u00a0thousands of children and burying thousands more\u00a0beneath<\/a>\u00a0the homes it leveled, declared itself endangered by kites. Why? Because colonial powers have always feared the child who survives its violence and continues to imagine a sky beyond its rule.<\/p>\n Hope is rebellion in its youngest form; it is the guileless expectation of a tomorrow the colonizer has already claimed for itself.<\/p>\n Khalid\u2019s kite frightens Israel because Khalid himself does. A Palestinian does not need to take up arms (although they would be within their legally recognized right to do so) to threaten a state built on their disappearance. It is enough that he grows old, remembers, and inherits a right to the land\u2014a right that cannot be erased by the passage of time or by displacement to wherever Israel deems proper.<\/p>\n Hope is rebellion in its youngest form; it is the guileless expectation of a tomorrow the colonizer has already claimed for itself. At the height of Israel\u2019s assault on Gaza, women and children accounted for close to\u00a0seventy percent<\/a>\u00a0of those murdered, proportionally more than any other recorded genocide in the last century.\u00a0A school bus of children every day<\/em>. I will never forget the first time I saw a father collect the parts of his child in a plastic bag. What were their crimes?<\/em> I wondered, I continue to wonder.<\/p>\n In the West Bank, bombs were replaced by bullets and clubs. The IDF shot seven-month-old\u00a0Sam Fahd Abu Haikal<\/a>\u00a0through the head inside his family\u2019s car and\u00a0murdered<\/a> fourteen-year-old Amer Rabee as he picked almonds with his friends. Earlier this month, settlers killed<\/a> two teenagers in a raid on the village of al-Mughayyir. A Palestinian child is Palestine in the future tense. Israel wages war against Palestinian children because it cannot tolerate Palestinian adulthood. Israel wages war on childhood because a Palestinian child at play is already trespassing upon the future Israel has reserved for itself. Israel robs children of their smallest joys because joy is the seed of hope, and that is how the body learns that captivity is not the natural condition of life. That they too are born free, even inside a cage.<\/p>\n Israel wages war against Palestinian children because it cannot tolerate Palestinian adulthood.<\/p>\n Fifteen years ago, more than 13,000 Palestinian children who\u00a0gathered<\/a>\u00a0on Al Waha Beach filled Gaza\u2019s sky with enough kites to claim a world record. Long before those children reached upward, Palestinians had already learned to build freedom from whatever the occupation could not confiscate. When Israel\u00a0closed<\/a>\u00a0schools and universities during the First Intifada, lessons moved into homes, mosques, and churches.\u00a0Popular committees<\/a>\u00a0stored food for curfews, set up clinics, and planted backyard gardens (until Israel outlawed them in 1988). Two decades later, the IDF would storm Palestinian community centers, confiscating flags and shutting down\u00a0celebrations<\/a>. In 2018,\u00a0during<\/a> the Great March of Return, Gazans peacefully protested, baked bread, danced Dabke, and celebrated marriages. Israel responded by killing hundreds and injuring thousands.<\/p>\n This attempt by Israel to muzzle hope and stifle joy keeps repeating itself in all aspects of Palestinian life. During the 2026 FIFA world cup, Israel\u00a0killed<\/a>\u00a0the primary organizer of watch parties in Gaza; in 2014, children were\u00a0bombed<\/a>\u00a0while playing soccer by the beach. Recently, the IDF\u00a0stormed<\/a>\u00a0a wedding in Al Eizariya. In 2013, a bride wearing a white dress and kufiyah traveled from Nazareth toward her groom in the West Bank until soldiers\u00a0stopped<\/a>\u00a0her bus at an\u00a0illegal<\/a>\u00a0checkpoint. In Gaza, last December, Mustafa and Nesma Al Borsh married after waiting two years, then Israel\u00a0bombed<\/a>\u00a0the school shelter where they were expected to live\u2014Mustafa\u2019s eight-year-old nephew was killed in the blast. The groom spent his wedding night wearing his family\u2019s blood.<\/p>\n The soldiers and settlers can be relied upon to stifle joy, waiting at the olive harvests, along the coasts, and at checkpoints where women are forced to give birth on the sides of the road. A settler\u00a0shot<\/a>\u00a0Bilal Saleh while he picked olives besides his wife and children. Israeli forces killed Mohammed Bakr while he\u00a0fished<\/a>\u00a0with his family. Soldiers held back Nahil Ridah\u2019s ambulance until she delivered her stillborn child at a checkpoint. Israel\u00a0destroyed a desalination plant that supplied ten million liters of water each day<\/a>, left\u00a0only three percent of Gaza\u2019s cropland accessible and undamaged<\/a>, and diverted a West Bank spring for Palestinian watermelons into\u00a0a swimming pool for Israeli settlers<\/a>.<\/p>\n The defining feature of Israeli apartheid is to make Palestinian life unbearable until our removal can be recorded as an act of free will. Colonizers call it\u00a0voluntary emigration<\/a>, but there is nothing voluntary about fleeing after your home has been bombed, your fields poisoned, your water cut off and your child buried. Israel offers Palestinians exile or death and expects to preserve its innocence, but\u00a0 innocence is buried with our martyrs.<\/p>\n Who might we become when survival no longer consumes the entire imagination? What lives have been postponed by the labor of remaining alive? Colonialism cannot permit such questions because each assumes that its rule will end, that the people it has confined to grief will one day have the freedom to desire beyond it. Joy asks those questions anyway, allowing us to encounter parts of ourselves that occupation did not author and cannot explain. Our grief keeps the stolen world from disappearing, and our joy keeps the thief from determining the world that follows. What should come after the colonizer? People who have lived even fragments of freedom together are harder to persuade that domination is eternal.<\/p>\n Palestinians possess no natural gift for grief and there is nothing beautiful about enduring destruction and death.<\/p>\n After Israel destroyed Jenin refugee camp during the Second Intifada in 2002,\u00a0a young girl looked into Mohammad Bakri\u2019s camera<\/a> and said that Palestinians would live proudly as eagles and die standing like lions. Twenty-four years after that girl spoke from Jenin, Palestinians in Gaza are still refusing to kneel. During the genocide, children gathered outside Al Shifa and organized their own press conference<\/a>\u00a0to tell the world they wanted to live, mothers found ways to feed their families after Israeli forces\u00a0killed Palestinians waiting for flour<\/a>, and fathers raised tents again after Israel burned down the place it had called a safe zone<\/a>. Now workers are\u00a0crushing concrete and twisted metal into roads, shelter floors, and spaces for community kitchens<\/a>. In Al Mawasi, wood, sheet metal, and solar panels have become six university halls serving hundreds of students each day<\/a>. At the Great Omari Mosque, volunteers use paintbrushes to lift dust and gunpowder from\u00a0the few thousand books that survived from a collection of twenty thousand<\/a>. Hanadi Muhanna and her father are\u00a0rebuilding the Al Qarara seed bank<\/a>, gathering indigenous wheat, spinach and barley. Foreign leaders continue debating who should be entrusted to rebuild Gaza, as though Palestinians will not reclaim freedom with our own hands and rebuild it ourselves.<\/p>\n But do not mistake this with resilience, a convenience that admires the survivor without accusing the person who made survival necessary. Palestinians possess no natural gift for grief and there is nothing beautiful about enduring destruction and death. Admiration is cheaper than respecting Palestinian life.\u00a0Sumud<\/em>\u00a0(steadfastedness) is more demanding. Sumud denies the colonizer their desire to record history in our blood. Hope amid genocide makes no prediction that our killers will one day discover mercy; rather, it begs us to remember that mercy ourselves, to prevent the violence and blood and ghosts from consuming our ability to imagine and fight for liberation.<\/p>\n So please do not celebrate Palestinian steadfastness as though we were placed on this earth to provide inspiring images of survival between massacres. End the siege, impose sanctions and an arms embargo, dismantle occupation and apartheid, and return the land and political power Israel has taken.<\/p>\n In another life, Gaza was never besieged,\u00a0AI-guided guns were never mounted in Al Khalil<\/a>\u00a0to lock onto Palestinian bodies,\u00a0Jaffa was<\/a>\u00a0never turned onto a mass grave, and those\u00a0murdered at Deir Yassin<\/a> grew old in their homes. In another life, Khalid could fly his kite. Palestinian children could be ordinary children\u2014bored, mischievous, happy, alive. But another life is too generous to those who stole this one. We were entitled to the life they destroyed. What can joy give a child inside a cage? The first knowledge that the cage is not the world. The will of the occupied will always outlive the will of the occupier. A child at play has already imagined a life beyond violence and, for a moment, begun to live there.<\/p>\n The sky is still larger than those occupying it, and Palestine remains larger than the violence devoted to emptying it of Palestinians. We have hope because a child in Gaza can look past their cage and still see the sky. In this life, we will be free, from the river to the sea, and kites will fly again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There is an old colonizer adage that “the old will die and the young will forget.\u201d In fact, Israel built its future wagering that the Palestinians violently displaced and expelled in the Nakba would eventually move on, assimilate, forget the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32157,"featured_media":276816,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6,43095],"tags":[112235,8632,13187,1209,40299,6841,1210],"class_list":["post-276814","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","category-politics","tag-ahmad-ibsais","tag-gaza","tag-genocide","tag-israel","tag-kites","tag-occupation","tag-palestine"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5rKFr-1a0K","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Al-Waha-Beach-Kites.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276814","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32157"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276814"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276814\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/276816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":276881,"date":"2026-09-11T05:08:26","date_gmt":"2026-09-11T09:08:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/?p=276881"},"modified":"2026-09-10T13:47:53","modified_gmt":"2026-09-10T17:47:53","slug":"what-should-you-read-next-here-are-the-best-reviewed-books-of-the-week-9-11-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/what-should-you-read-next-here-are-the-best-reviewed-books-of-the-week-9-11-2026\/","title":{"rendered":"What Should You Read Next? Here Are the Best Reviewed Books of the Week"},"content":{"rendered":" Emma Cline\u2019s\u00a0Switzy<\/em>, Francis Fukuyama\u2019s\u00a0In the Realm of the Last Man<\/em>, and R.F. Kuang\u2019s\u00a0Taipei<\/em>\u00a0all feature among the best reviewed books of the week.<\/p>\n Brought to you by\u00a0Book Marks<\/a>, Lit Hub\u2019s home for book reviews.<\/p>\n *<\/p>\n 1.\u00a0Switzy<\/em><\/a>\u00a0by Emma Cline 5 Rave \u2022 3 Positive \u2022 1 Mixed<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cWhat\u2019s hypnotic about this novel is the illusion that we\u2019re watching a mind decaying even as it engineers its own expiration. Cline manages to pull the dramatic irony increasingly tight without letting us see the strings \u2026 She holds out her hand to the essential yearning in every human being, to that desire that persists until the very end.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2013Ron Charles Substack<\/a><\/p>\n 2.\u00a0Taipei Story<\/em><\/a>\u00a0by R.F. Kuang 4 Rave \u2022 3 Positive \u2022 1 Mixed \u2022 1 Pan \u201cIf Kuang\u2019s early books often come across as the product of market research on what a certain type of reader wants in their fantasy fiction,\u00a0Taipei Story<\/em>\u00a0has the authenticity of genuine self-expression.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2013Laura Miller (Slate<\/em><\/a>)<\/p>\n =3.\u00a0The Pirate Queen<\/em><\/a>\u00a0by Ariel Lawhon 3 Rave \u2022 1 Positive<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cImmersive \u2026 Through the novel\u2019s engaging format, readers not only come to know Grace as the formidable historic leader, but also as an ambitious girl, passionate woman, and fierce mother.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2013Patricia Smith (Booklist<\/em><\/a>)<\/p>\n =3.\u00a0The Passing of the Dragon and Other Stories<\/em><\/a>\u00a0by Ken Liu 3 Rave \u2022 1 Positive \u201cKen Liu\u2019s stories are not just about the future: they are the future \u2026 Liu is the kind of writer who can make such topics as viscerally thrilling as a Lee Child action sequence \u2026 The more I think about it, the more Liu reminds me oddly of Dostoyevsky \u2026 Whatever he writes next, I shall be first in the queue.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2013Stuart Kelly (The Scotsman<\/em><\/a>)<\/p>\n 5.\u00a0The Living Realm<\/em><\/a>\u00a0by Jordan Tannahill<\/strong> 2 Rave \u2022 1 Pan<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cSlim but astonishing \u2026 Those expecting the novel to replicate that show\u2019s raunchy titillation will instead find in\u00a0The Living Realm<\/em>\u00a0a far more elegiac, meditative work. Tannahill writes as gorgeously about nature\u2026as he does about bodies \u2026 Extraordinary and sensitive.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2013Christopher Bollen (The New York Times Book Review<\/em><\/a>)<\/p>\n **<\/strong><\/p>\n Nonfiction<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n 1.\u00a0Ambivalence<\/em><\/a>\u00a0by Brian Dillon 3 Rave \u2022 4 Positive \u2022 1 Mixed \u201cDespite the elegance of Dillon\u2019s prose\u2014the book is a page-by-page pleasure\u2014there is a risk of losing the reader. First because the writers he loves are a minority pursuit \u2026 So strong is his passion for his way of finding himself in the world, so dedicated is he to be true to his idols, that we long for him to make it. And this book is proof that he did.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2013John Self (The Financial Times<\/em><\/a>)<\/p>\n 2.\u00a0In the Realm of the Last Man: A Memoir<\/em><\/a>\u00a0by Francis Fukuyama 5 Positive \u2022 1 Mixed<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201che most dramatic passages of his memoir describe Fukuyama\u2019s break with his neoconservative milieu over the war in Iraq \u2026 Less\u2026a personal memoir than as an inner monologue of post-cold war liberalism \u2026 The memoir is not the apologia of a prophet whose prophecy failed. It is the record of a moment when liberalism learnt to live in the present tense.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2013Ivan Krastev (The Financial Times<\/em><\/a>)<\/p>\n =3.\u00a0Frenchman Flat: The Rise and Fall of Atomic Bombs<\/em><\/a>\u00a0by Jon Else 3 Rave<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cThrough absorbing, sharp-eyed prose, the book traces the entire history of atomic bombs \u2026 The historical and scientific narrative is punctuated by personal stories \u2026 Gripping.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2013Eileen Gonzalez (Foreword Reviews<\/em><\/a>)<\/p>\n =3.\u00a0Tower Hill: A Plantation on the Edge of Rebellion<\/em><\/a>\u00a0by Alan Taylor<\/strong> 3 Rave<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cA rich and compelling new study of the Blow plantation \u2026 Reads like a nonfiction version of William Faulkner\u2019s\u00a0Absalom, Absalom!<\/em>\u00a0\u2026 A quietly devastating epilogue brings the story of the scarred landscape around Tower Hill up to the present.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2013Richard Kreitner (The New York Times Book Review<\/em><\/a>)<\/p>\n
\n\u200b
\nEinstein said, \u201cI have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.\u201d
\n\u200b
\nI am fortunate enough to know a lot of successful artists, writers, creators, scientists, and entrepreneurs and so I often look for the one trait the best of the best all share:
\n\u200b
\nCuriosity. Genuine curiosity. Even better, childlike curiosity.
\n\u200b
\nWhat if<\/em> is the question of a curious child.
\n\u200b
\nIt\u2019s also one of the key ways we come up with and develop ideas. Not the only way. We will explore others. But true innovators keep asking \u201cWhat if?\u201d
\n\u200b
\n\u201cWhere do you get your ideas?\u201d<\/em>
\n\u200b
\nSometimes, it\u2019s a simple \u201cwhat-if.\u201d
\n\u200b
\nLet me give you a quick example of how a \u201cwhat-if\u201d led to an idea for a novel.
\n\u200b
\nSo one day, when I was at my neighbor\u2019s house, I overheard their teenage kids talking about drinking and driving. This was in the pre-Uber days. I adored these teenagers. They were utterly fantastic kids. I felt obligated to do something, so when I knew their parents were out of earshot, I quietly pulled the teenagers aside and whispered, \u201cPromise me\u201d\u2014this would end up being the title of the book\u2014\u201cyou won\u2019t do that. Promise me you\u2019ll never get in a car with someone who has been drinking. Here\u2019s my phone number. I don\u2019t care what time it is. I don\u2019t care how far away you are or how drunk or stoned or high or whatever you are. Call me and I will come pick you up. No questions asked. I won\u2019t tell your parents. Just please, don\u2019t get in a car with someone who\u2019s been drinking.\u201d
\n\u200b
\nPerhaps some of you have done something similar. Either way, in the real world, this is the end of the story. These teens never called me. They grew up and are now fantastic adults and parents themselves.
\n\u200b
\nBut we are writers. We have the writer\u2019s mind frame and childlike curiosity.
\n\u200b
\nSo… what if?<\/em>
\n\u200b
\nWhat if a teenage girl\u2014let\u2019s call her Aimee\u2014calls my hero one night at 2 a.m. because of this promise? What if my hero\u2014let\u2019s call him Myron Bolitar\u2014drives into New York City and picks her up on a street corner and heads back into New Jersey and drops Aimee at a friend\u2019s house?
\n\u200b
\nAnd what if the next day Aimee is missing?
\n\u200b
\nWhat if no one at the house where Myron dropped her off even knows who she is?
\n\u200b
\nThat is the opening of my eighth Myron Bolitar novel, Promise Me<\/em>.
\n\u200b
\nThe what-ifs here gave me more than a (hopefully) engaging opening. They gave me conflict and situations and a ripe world that I wanted to explore. How would Aimee\u2019s parents react when they heard Myron made this promise and didn\u2019t tell them? How would Myron feel about his promise now? How would the reader feel? Was the promise a mistake? Should he have still told Aimee\u2019s parents? How would Myron react in the aftermath? There would be anguish and desperation and worry and guilt for sure. Myron would blame himself. He would have to search for Aimee.
\n\u200b
\nI love writing about all those things.
\n\u200b
\nBecause Myron was the last person with Aimee before she vanished, the police would suspect him. That might give me some story, but I wouldn\u2019t want to dwell on that. We\u2019ve all seen the guy we know didn\u2019t do it being made a suspect. It felt too done. I was far more interested in the reaction of Aimee\u2019s parents, of their small community, of Myron himself.
\n\u200b
\nOkay, good start. Now what?
\n\u200b
\nWell, what if I could link Aimee\u2019s disappearance to something else in Myron\u2019s life?
\n\u200b
\nOh, now we are cooking with gas…<\/p>\n
\n\u200b
\nI don\u2019t just tolerate that question. I embrace it.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/PLOT-TWIST-Cover-199x300.jpg\")
<\/a>
\nExcerpted from<\/em> Plot Twist<\/a> by Harlan Coben. Copyright \u00a9 2026 by Harlan Coben. Used by arrangement with Grand Central Publishing. All rights reserved.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"![\"\"](\"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/stealing-america-197x300.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Switzy](\"https:\/\/s26162.pcdn.co\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/08\/e8b00ffc7979b73630caf92e5b645bc1-199x300.gif\")
<\/a><\/p>\n
\n(Random House)<\/strong><\/p>\n![\"Taipei](\"https:\/\/s26162.pcdn.co\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/09\/Taipei-Story-199x300.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n
\n(William Morrow)<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nRead an interview with R.F. Kuang\u00a0here<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/s26162.pcdn.co\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/09\/f5268a904641c3ecbee858b10b465f66-197x300.gif\")
<\/a><\/p>\n
\n(Doubleday)<\/strong><\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/s26162.pcdn.co\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/09\/e19212146fb8c7e345d8ad42fe699004-199x300.gif\")
<\/a><\/p>\n
\n(Saga Press)<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nRead an excerpt from\u00a0The Passing of the Dragon<\/em>\u00a0here<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/s26162.pcdn.co\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/09\/60711adda90be5c5431d566e7d346d7d-195x300.gif\")
<\/a><\/p>\n
\n(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)<\/strong><\/p>\n![\"Ambivalence\"](\"https:\/\/s26162.pcdn.co\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/09\/e40d202861483ebe1d95df4810d7ef02-203x300.gif\")
<\/a><\/p>\n
\n(New York Review of Books)<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nRead an excerpt from\u00a0Ambivalence<\/em>\u00a0here<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n![\"In](\"https:\/\/s26162.pcdn.co\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/09\/d8f33e1089e4daefc704cd880ef55bd6-195x300.gif\")
<\/a><\/p>\n
\n(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)<\/strong><\/p>\n![\"Frenchman](\"https:\/\/s26162.pcdn.co\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/09\/081c684939b42ba061a3c80464e6427b-200x300.gif\")
<\/a><\/p>\n
\n(Belknap)<\/strong><\/p>\n![\"Tower](\"https:\/\/s26162.pcdn.co\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/09\/0911173e581850bf8f1ebf61a020f97b-198x300.gif\")
<\/a><\/p>\n
\n(Random House)<\/strong><\/p>\n
![\"Love](\"https:\/\/s26162.pcdn.co\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/09\/818f607ea26d85daae24105a2184dbfa-195x300.gif\")
<\/a><\/p>\n