Campaign for the American Reader: What is Linda Kass reading?

Thursday, August 13, 2026

What is Linda Kass reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Linda Kass, author of the forthcoming World News from Waverley High: A Novel.

Her entry begins:

I See You’ve Called in Dead by John Kenney was the latest selection for my personal book club. I happen to love my book club, and all book clubs, because they bring community and connection around books! I may not have picked this book up on my own, but it was one of our selections because one of our book club members read it and was a fan. And isn’t word of mouth the way most of us find the greatest reads?

Anyway, back to this book. With a darkly comedic yet piercing tone, the author (who happens to be he New Yorker’s “Shouts & Murmurs” columnist) tells a story of life and death and the search for meaning through the novel’s narrator, a depressed obituary writer at the world’s largest wire service. Bud Stanely is a middle-aged man who has lost the spirit of his job and wonders the point of life. After one terrible night—a very bad blind date on top of his ongoing two-year depressed state since his wife ended their marriage—he...[read on]

About World News from Waverley High, from the publisher:

A tale of identity, activism, and finding your voice in a world on fire, this coming-of-age novel set at an urban high school captures a singular moment in American history—through the eyes of one unforgettable girl.

1969. Lena Rosen is an intelligent, observant teenager torn between spontaneity and self-consciousness. During her junior year, she becomes attuned to the pulse of her times in her first-period Current History class, where rebellion, social change, and musical innovation of the 1960s dominate discussion. When Lena becomes the associate editor of the school newspaper The Beacon, she is drawn into the swirling discourse surrounding the Vietnam War, civil rights, environmental disasters, and campus protests—while also grappling with her growing attraction to Jack Stone, the paper’s editor.

As the year progresses and the antiwar movement gains momentum, the unrest builds at Waverley High. Lena wrestles with her own cultural and religious identity as a Jewish teen while she and her fellow students struggle to cope with racial discord, a bomb threat, and the emotional toll of a world that seems to be unraveling. When tragedy collapses the distance between headlines and Lena’s own life, she must decide what it means to stand for peace—and to hope for a better world.

Set during one school year against the backdrop of an America on the brink of change, World News from Waverley High reveals the crossroads of personal growth and national unrest.