Lifestyle

This week’s must-read books

The Owl Who Liked Sitting on Caesar: Living with a Tawny Owl
by Martin Windrow (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Viral kittens are hot, but they have nothing on the tawny owl. That’s the verdict from Windrow, a distinguished military historian who, while recuperating in his London apartment from a skydiving accident, seeks a pet for companionship and finds a soulmate in an owl named Mumble. Mumble tries to share his food (day-old dead chicks) with Windrow; Windrow shares tidbits on owl science and sociology with us.

A Long Way Home: As a Five-Year-Old in India, I Got Lost on a Train. Twenty-Five Years later, in Australia, I Found My Way Back. This Is What Happened in Between
by Saroo Brierley (Putnam)

Young Saroo was separated from his brother at a train station where they were begging for food. Looking on a train for his brother, the doors closed and he wound up 1,000 miles away in Calcutta. There he survived on the streets till he was taken into an orphanage, adopted by an Aussie couple and whisked to a new, middle-class home in Tasmania. thanks to Google Earth, he was able to trace his trip, find his village — and his family. Amazing stuff, and not surprising that the movie rights have been snapped up by the Weinstein Company.

All Day and a Night
by Alafair Burke (Harper)

Current events have made Burke’s newest crime thriller timely. Convicted serial killer Anthony Amaro is serving life without parole when a tabloid-ready murder of a Park Slope shrink — with a possible link to the Amaro murders — calls his conviction into question. NYPD Detective Ellie Hatcher is called on to reinvestigate the earlier murders. All while former Brooklyn DA Charles Hynes is being investigated for false convictions and other crimes.

The Man From Essence: Creating a Magazine for Black Women
by Edward Lewis with Audrey Edwards (Atria)

Essence magazine has been an essential read for millions of black women since its 1970 debut. Lewis’ three male colleagues had no magazine-publishing experience, had only $130,000 in capital, battled a racist advertising community and a dearth of female African-American journalists. Lewis offers a behind-the-scenes look at the mag — Hugh Hefner provided a much-needed cash infusion — as well as his own story, which started in The Bronx.

The Rise & Fall of Great Powers
by Tom Rachman (The Dial Press)

Can you find yourself? Can you escape yourself? This is the predicament the heroine of Rachman’s follow-up to “The Imperfectionists” finds herself in while living incognito, running a used bookstore in the Welsh countryside. It’s a far cry from her childhood, when Tooly Zylberberg traveled the world with her father, was abducted by her mother, and fell in with a band of misfit expats. When an ex-boyfriend from New York sends some startling news, Tooly ventures out to solve the mysteries of her life.