You Just Have to Read This: Books by Alumni, Summer 2026
In this series, we review a selection of books by alumni. Copies of these books are forwarded to Olin Memorial Library as donations to the University’s collection and made available to the Wesleyan community.
Amy Bloom ’75, Blunt Instrument (Simon & Schuster)
Amy Bloom’s Blunt Instrument brings her sharp wit and psychological insight to the world of mystery fiction with a campus-set whodunit that blends dark humor, academic intrigue, and classic detective pleasures. The novel introduces a failed professor drawn into solving a murder, moving through the tangled hierarchies, grievances, and secrets of university life with Bloom’s signature eye for human contradiction.
At once playful and incisive, Blunt Instrument uses the machinery of noir and detective fiction to explore ambition, failure, desire, and reinvention. Bloom’s characters are rarely simple, and here the murder mystery becomes more than a puzzle: It is a lens into the bruised egos, hidden histories, and moral compromises that shape institutions and the people who inhabit them. Entertaining and keenly observed, the novel marks a fresh turn from one of contemporary fiction’s most versatile voices.
Amy Bloom ’75 is a New York Times bestselling author of novels, short story collections, and memoirs, including White Houses, Lucky Us, Away, and In Love. Her work has been nominated for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award.
David Perry ’95, The Public Scholar: A Practical Handbook (Johns Hopkins University Press)
In The Public Scholar, David Perry offers an accessible and practical guide for scholars who want to bring their ideas beyond the academy and into public conversation. At a time when expertise is both urgently needed and often mistrusted, Perry demystifies the work of writing for broader audiences, showing how academics can translate complex research into clear, compelling prose without sacrificing depth and rigor.
Part handbook and part call to action, the book argues that scholarship should not be gatekept or reserved for high-brow intellectuals, instead it should be available to anyone seeking to connect academic knowledge with civic life. With candor and encouragement, Perry maps the challenges and rewards of public-facing work—from finding one’s voice to navigating editors, audiences, and controversy. Timely and generous, The Public Scholar is a guide for those who believe their work belongs not only in classrooms and conferences, but in the world at large.
David Perry ’95 is a historian, journalist, and author whose work focuses on history, education, politics, and disability rights. His writing has appeared in CNN, The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Guardian, and The Washington Post.
Virginia Pye ’82, Marriage and Other Monuments (Koehler Books)
In Marriage and Other Monuments, Virginia Pye turns to Richmond, Virginia, in the tense summer of 2020, when the city’s public upheaval of Confederate monuments unfolded alongside private friction within two families. Against the backdrop of the pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests, Pye explores how history presses itself into the personal and the present—not only in civic spaces, but in marriages, families, and inherited ideas of loyalty and belonging.
The novel explores the dynamic of two estranged sisters whose marriages begin to fracture and their relationship meld while the world around them is being remade. As public symbols fall and old narratives are challenged, the characters confront the monuments they have built in their own lives—to family, race, memory, and self-deception. Intimate and politically resonant, Marriage and Other Monuments examines what it means to live through a moment of reckoning and whether collapse can make room for repair.
Virginia Pye ’82 is an award-winning novelist and short story writer, and the author of several previous works of fiction, including River of Dust, Dreams of the Red Phoenix, Shelf Life of Happiness, and The Literary Undoing of Victoria Swann.
