Exciting new book recommendations, PLUS the best chocolate brownie recipe ever! 👍

See our book recommendations including The Prettiest Star, by Carter Sickels, and Dominique Ansel’s new cookbookEveryone Can Bake Our Recommended reads are available from Read on for our suggestions for books on politics, science/health, economy/tech, culture, and memoir. NEW & REVIEWED The Prettiest Star, by Carter Sickels In Carter Sickels' elegiac second novel [The Prettiest Star]( set in 1986, Brian, a prodigal son of a small Appalachian town, returns from New York to die in the home he fled, making the immense loss of the AIDS epidemic real and unavoidable to his hometown and family of origin. Sickels brings into the light a segment of LGBTQ history that has been underexamined in narratives about this era, of gay men who lived and loved and died and survived in rural places, where they were loved and shunned and embraced and feared, some after returning home and some who never left. This final chapter of Brian's life is not without its moments of beauty and solace. "Why does anyone go home?" is a question Brian asks, and the novel seeks to answer without flinching away from ugliness and without demonizing the ignorant as they seek understanding or the weak as they try to find strength. [Learn more]( [Check out the rest of this month’s new fiction highlights from Salon’s culture team...]( IN CONVERSATION | Mark O’Connell author of [Notes from an Apocalypse]( [“The future is really a way to think through the complexities of the present”]( SALON: The rich are building luxury bunkers to survive the "end of days" and to ensure their social and political power in the future. What does that reveal about Western society and culture? MARK O’CONNELL: Those bunkers are a classic, overblown, extreme metaphor for capitalism in the present, not in some imagined future. The rich are building luxury survival bunkers with private cinemas, DNA vaults, wine cellars and other lavish ways of surviving the end of the world. As the saying goes, "It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism." [Read the full conversation at Salon]( FOOD | Dominique Ansel’s new cookbook [Everyone Can Bake]( “I think that baking for me is very emotional. It brings people together no matter how, when, where. . . . Some of my earliest childhood memories actually are family dinners, where we were like 12, 14, 20 people eating together. The food was good, but the food was just an excuse to bring people together. I see that in the bakery now every day. I see it in a different way now, because when people come to the bakery, I see their eyes wide open when they bite into something they really enjoy and the smile on their face — and it's very emotional for me. I bake to bring those emotions to people now, and I bake to make sure that they have the memories of those moments.” — [Dominique Ansel]( [Get Dominique Ansel’s chocolate brownie recipe at Salon]( BEYOND THE BOOK | “The Coronavirus Pandemic and the Rural-Urban Divide” by Marie Mutsuki Mockett, author of [American Harvest: God, Country, and Farming in the Heartland]( Eric Wolgemuth, a 58-year-old farmer who lives in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, called me at my home in San Francisco to check in not long after the school that my son attends officially closed due to the coronavirus pandemic. "You know what folks are saying around here, don't you?" Eric's voice is low, with a touch of a drawl. "What's that?" "It's a Democratic conspiracy," he said, referring to the maelstrom in the news surrounding the virus. Eric and I hail from completely different worlds. He is a devout Christian, from a largely white and rural community where many never go to college; I'm a biracial city dweller and a member of the coastal elite. We might have never crossed paths but for the farm that my family has long owned in Nebraska. Eric is what's known as a "custom harvester": Every year, he hires a crew of young men to work as independent contractors, and they drive semi trucks, tractors and combine equipment hundreds of miles from Pennsylvania to the Great Plains to cut wheat for farmers—including my family. [Read the full essay at Salon]( STOREFRONT SPOTLIGHT | [Carmichael’s Bookstore in Louisville, KY]( Ashlie D. Stevens on Carmichael's: I spent entire Saturdays browsing the shelves when I attended college nearby (and always found myself leaving with a new cookbook or food magazine, despite the fact that I was living out of a dormitory mini-fridge and microwave). Since then, I've grown to deeply appreciate the store's eclectic mix of regional publications, classic literature and poetry, and rotating selections of new releases. When they closed their doors to the public in March due to the novel coronavirus pandemic, they began curbside and local deliveries, and when I opened a box filled with two cookbooks and a copy of "Food & Wine," it was bittersweet knowing someone had browsed the shelves in my place. [Louisville's oldest independent bookstore, Carmichael’s has been in business in Louisville for 42 years. It was started in spring of 1978 by Carol Besse and Michael Boggs (the store name is a combination of their first names.) It is a family business in the best tradition. As the business grew, so did the number of family members involved, and the staff now includes a second generation and employs more than 30 staff members at 3 locations. In 2019, Carol and Michael's daughter, Miranda, and niece, Kelly, took over ownership of the stores with hopes of allowing Carmichael's to be Louisville's bookstore for many years to come.]( [Visit Carmichael’s at Bookshop]( [Where is your favorite bookstore? Find it on our store locator.]( [Facebook]( [Twitter]( [Link]( [Website]( Copyright © 2020, Salon.com, LLC, All rights reserved. Want to change how you receive these emails? You can [update your preferences]( or [unsubscribe from this list](.