First published in 1982 and re-released in late 2017, Rachel Ingalls’ Mrs. Caliban concerns a lonely woman named Dorothy and her brief affair with a kind, gentle frogman, escaped from a local laboratory. Ingalls relates both joy and pain quickly, her prose swift and unsentimental, even when detailing the tragic. Mrs.…

The best meal I ever made was a New Year’s Eve dinner a few years back. Nothing about it was particularly unusual—bacon, a big piece of meat, dark chocolate. I’m not in the habit of preparing heavy, decadent meals, and neither are my friends who’d be eating with me, instead favoring somewhat healthier fare that…