Connor Harrison

Sometimes a burr is a distraction that sticks to the fur of black bears and the fabric of trousers; other times it is an existential threat that holds a songbird by the wing and kills it. The difference, of course, is scale. To a bear, a burr is the size of one of its molars. To a…

Announcing itself in the spirit of the Cold War thriller, act I of Jonathan Garfinkel’s debut novel sees a Fulbright Student from the United States, Gary Ruckler, arriving at Moscow State University in 1974, there to “follow in the footsteps of my literary idol, Mikhail Lermontov, author of A Hero of Our Time…