Reviews of notable new fiction and nonfiction.  Ghosts of the Orphanage, by Christine Kenneally (PublicAffairs). In this investigation of abuse and murder in orphanages in North America and Australia during the mid-twentieth century, Kenneally pursues disappearances of children for whom official records are inaccurate or lacking, the main proof of their existence being the memories of their peers. Buy now on Amazon or Bookshop. The Absent Moon, by Luiz Schwarcz, translated from the Portuguese by Eric M. B. Becker (Penguin Press). This memoir from a Brazilian author and publisher reflects on a childhood marked by the ordeal of his father, Andre, who, as a boy in Hungary, managed to jump off a train that was headed to Bergen-Belsen. Schwarcz recounts how he tried to make his father happy, while knowing he would fail. Buy now on Amazon or Bookshop. An Autobiography of Skin, by Lakiesha Carr (Pantheon). In the three narratives that make up this powerful début, Black women from Texas reckon with their complex relationships to their bodies, which are by turns deprived of sex, rendered husk-like after childbirth, and physically battered. One woman finds refuge from a loveless marriage in gambling; another is so undone by news stories of violence against Black people that she endeavors to alter her children’s skin color. Buy now on Amazon or Bookshop. The Dog of the North, by Elizabeth McKenzie (Penguin Press). “I was used to being the object of anger,” the down-on-her-luck narrator of this vibrant picaresque says. In her mid-thirties, she flees a dead-end job and a failing marriage, embarking on a journey that leads to a confrontation with childhood trauma. En route, she contends with her possibly homicidal grandmother; searches for her mother and stepfather, who disappeared years earlier; eludes her abusive biological father; and kindles a promising new romance. Buy now on Amazon or Bookshop. What are you reading this week? Reply to let us know. | 
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