“Death Wish” was the dark New York story of its era—an anti-“Annie Hall” for the armed and aggrieved. An architect sees his wife killed and his daughter raped by muggers and responds by embarking on a vigilante shooting spree. It’s a strangely existential movie, one that conjures the city and misrepresents it at the same … Read more

Lightbreakers, by Aja Gabel (Riverhead). In this thrilling work of speculative fiction, a quantum physicist is invited by a billionaire to participate in a secret project at a laboratory in Marfa, Texas. At first, the physicist’s wife, an artist, is excited to go along—her day job has lost its lustre. But, once in Marfa, the … Read more

In Clayton’s and Josephson’s hands, though, the fawn response becomes something more pliable, less a sign of acute threat than a broadly anxious orientation to the world. “For some people, fawning is about being more of who they are—smart, generous, successful, funny, or beautiful,” Clayton writes. “For others, it’s about being less: vocal, ethnic, creative, … Read more