By Kavita Mistry 
In this issue, we review two works of nonfiction written by novelists that address ongoing wars of occupation. Omar El Akkad’s One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This critiques the response of Western liberals, among others, to Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, while Victoria Amelina’s posthumous Looking at Women Looking at War is an on-the-ground account of life in Ukraine, with a focus on women resisting Russian invasion. Accompanying Beyond the Book articles cover the popular phenomenon of “In This House, We Believe” lawn signs and events preceding the Russia-Ukraine war.
Many of our First Impressions reviewers adored the new Anne Tyler novel Three Days in June, which follows a character plagued with frustrations on the day before her daughter’s wedding. In William Boyle’s somewhat more intense domestic drama Saint of the Narrows Street, a wife kills her abusive husband with a cast iron pan and the event haunts her and those around her in the ensuing years. Alligator Tears, a memoir-in-essays by Edgar Gomez about coming of age as a second-generation immigrant, celebrates non-traditional family in the forms of a loving single mother and queer community. Amira Ghenim’s A Calamity of Noble Houses, now translated into English from Arabic, tells the story of two families with differing values, linked by marriage and brought into conflict by a shocking affair.
Other new translations in this issue are Robert Seethaler’s The Café with No Name, a tale that captures the everyday lives of ordinary people in post-World War II Vienna, and Mayumi Inaba’s Mornings Without Mii, a touching account of the life and death of the author’s beloved cat companion (cat lovers should know that Three Days in June features its own feline friend).
We also bring you additional reviews and articles, previews of many upcoming releases, March Books We’re Excited About, a new Wordplay, and more.
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— The BookBrowse Team