Let’s open with this: a politician, the faux-folksy governor of Wyoming—who harbors presidential aspirations, despite a blatant disregard for the U.S. Constitution—is attacked in a park in Chicago. Various news outlets, in their haste to break the story, do not bother to ascertain any details before issuing a slew of hysterical, speculative headlines. To the utter delight of the media, it gradually emerges that the governor was hit by “projectiles” (i.e. a handful of pebbles)

Lydia Millet’s superb literary thriller, Sweet Lamb of Heaven, has flown under the radar a bit. When it was published this May, it garnered

Note from Kimmery: All Middle Grade books with boy protagonists are reviewed by my ten-year-old son, Alex. I had my doubts about whether he'd enjoy a book of poetry, but I was wrong. He loved this book. We both did. For days after reading it, I couldn't stop thinking about it: the lyrical, tongue-twisting cadence of the words, the immediately recognizable realism of the family portrayed within its pages, the stunning, gasp-out-loud emotional explosion at the end. If you've so