In This Issue

It continues to be an epic year for vibrant discourse surrounding very old works of literature, following first Emerald Fennell's film "Wuthering Heights" and now Christopher Nolan's adaptation of The Odyssey. Critic Emily Wilson invites readers to plunge into the complexities of translating the latter in Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea, 13 "erudite and lively" essays about Homer's classics. But you don't have to be an Oxford alum, like Wilson, to sleuth out the dangers lurking among the stacks of the Bodleian Library in Kate Westbury's "witty, elegant" debut mystery, The Oxford Guide to Scandal and Lies. And Riikka Pulkkinen's Enchantment is a "striking" novel with a "cinematic view" on how divergent perspectives and gossipy mythmaking affect a community after one teenager's suspicious death. If you ask me, impassioned debate is part and parcel to the pleasures of reading.