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On this week’s Front Table, explore the complex experience of the black prodigy and find out Akira Kurosawa's 100 favorite films. Then, follow a journalist's fraught journey into contemporary Russia, sink into the dog days of an Estonian summer, and find dark comedy and unexpected revelation in a short story collection. Find these titles and more at semcoop.com.

The People Can Fly: The Promise and Perils of Giftedness
(Little Brown and Company)
Joshua Bennett

What does promise cost in America? Especially when that promise is seen as grounds to separate us from the communities we cherish, and framed...

On this week’s Front Table, be seduced and enlightened by a memoir in tales, place a new kind of value on nature, and dive into the joyous comics of Joe Brainard. Then, learn about the history, philosophy and radical call of maintenance, parse what's fact and fiction in the final work of a renowned novelist, rediscover a lost titan of Black fantasy, and introduce yourself to the lyricism and complexity of a major Mexican poet. Find these titles and more at semcoop.com.

One Aladdin Two Lamps
(Grove Press)
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On this week’s Front Table, explore the realities of people who are told their illnesses are all in their head, study the ancient rocks that are the foundation of life as we know it, and embark on a labyrinthine fantasia in a classic Mexican novel. Hear traditional anthems meet songs of protest, frame the immigrant experience in the doorway of an exclusive nightclub, close-read great American films to understand "America" and "film" anew, and rediscover a novel of virus, isolation, and surveillance. Find these titles and more at semcoop.com.

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On this week’s Front Table, meet a modernist publisher prosecuted for obscenity, survive a near-future blackout with teenage girls in crisis, and follow the evolution of the American sentence. Discover bold retellings of Greek tragedy, a bitter rivalry at the heart of the birth control movement, intimate portraits where art and grief intertwine, and the New Deal’s use of historic preservation as political theater. 

A Danger to the Minds of Young Girls: Margaret C. Anderson, Book Bans, and the Fight to Modernize Literature
(Atria/One Signal Publishers)
Adam Morgan

Already under fire for publishing the literary avant-...