“People sometimes ask why I want to read horror at all, let alone write it,” says the horror novelist, whose new book is “Lone Women.” “So much writing glances off the hardest and worst experiences, but horror confronts the worst that happens. ... A good horror novel doesn’t lie to you.”
In “All the Knowledge in the World,” Simon Garfield recounts the history of the encyclopedia — a tale of ambitious effort, numerous errors and lots of paper.
Alarmed by the country’s political divisions, Jeff Sharlet embarked on an anguished quest to understand the rise of antidemocratic extremism. In “The Undertow,” he documents his findings.
In “Benjamin Banneker and Us,” Rachel Jamison Webster uncovers Black ancestors she never knew about, and with the help of far-flung relatives assembles her family’s story.
Romance — nostalgic, obsessive or consuming — is at the heart of Madelaine Lucas’s “Thirst for Salt,” Keiran Goddard’s “Hourglass” and Alison Mills Newman’s “Francisco.”
In Cecile Pin’s debut novel, “Wandering Souls,” the tale of three young Vietnamese migrants transforms into a larger meditation about how and why refugee stories are told.
In “The People’s Hospital,” Ricardo Nuila explores the ways in which a space for those stranded by the American health care system serves as an unlikely model.