Gabriel Tallent's devastating debut novel about a young girl and her abusive but charismatic father has memorable characters, the pacing of a thriller, and still manages to work in some light moments.
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Leah Weiss' debut novel — set in a remote Appalachian town — has a strong sense of place and a richly drawn cast of characters, all with their own voices, stories and interconnected relationships.
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Ayobami Adebayo's debut novel follows a young Nigerian couple struggling to conceive and caught between modern medicine and the traditional remedies — like a new wife — pushed by older relatives.
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Michael Poore's new novel is surprisingly goofy for a book about dying. It's the story fishing guide Milo, who's just been eaten by a shark. Oh, and he's in love with Death, who's also named Suzie.
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Orhan Pamuk is almost synonymous with Turkish literature; he's won the Nobel Prize for his work. But his latest, about a well-digger and his apprentice, doesn't reach the heights of his earlier books.
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Karl Ove Knausgaard — famed for his epic memoir My Struggle -- goes for short and sweet in Autumn, a meditative seasonal reflection. But while there are lovely moments, the book strays into banality.
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The 1950 film starring Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Grahame was adapted from a lesser-known 1947 novel by Dorothy B. Hughes, who belongs in the crime-writing pantheon. The novel's just been re-released.
Anne Gisleson was reeling from a series of family tragedies when she began meeting with friends to discuss books and life in post-Katrina New Orleans. Her new book chronicles a year of those meetings.
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Bruce Handy's new book takes an emotional, intuitive look at the world of children's books, from Goodnight Moon to Charlotte's Web, which he calls "a mastery novel of ideas" about life and death.
(Image credit: Christina Ascani/NPR)
N.K. Jemisin won Hugo Awards for the first two volumes of her Broken Earth trilogy. The Stone Sky is a powerful, timely finale to this story of a world built on oppression and exploitation.
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The stories in Jenny Zhang's powerful debut collection center on the violent, sometimes disturbing experiences of young Chinese-American girls growing up in Queens, NY.
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Sex is such an inextricable part of pop music, it's easy to overlook, but NPR Music critic Ann Powers rectifies that in her new book, a portrait of America's obsession with sex as it manifests in pop.
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The lazy days of August call for getaway reading, so we've got three romances that'll take you from old China to the small-town South, featuring couples who learn love is closer than they think.
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Camille Bordas keeps things light in her smart, charming new novel, but there are serious underpinnings to this story about the youngest member of a family of quirky, emotionally closed overachievers.
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Kamila Shamsie's new book — beautifully written and paced — updates the ancient story of Antigone to tell an explosive story of two families tangled together by love, grief and religious radicalism.
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Campbell's second collection of rants and ruminations is just as enjoyably smarmy as his first, though the actor's ruthlessly sardonic outlook has mellowed.
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Benjamin Rachlin's crisply-written new book tells the story of Willie Grimes, who spent 24 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit — and the tortuous legal struggle that eventually freed him.
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A former Paris bureau chief for Time, Tom Sancton is the perfect chronicler of l'affaire Bettencourt — the juicy swirl of scandal, bribery and dark doings that fascinated France for a decade.
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Philosophy professor and avid surfer Aaron James brings his two passions together in his new book, drawing connections between the surfer's state of mind and age-old philosophical conundrums.
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Laura Shapiro has likened her method of biographical research to "standing in line at the supermarket and peering into the other carts." Critic Maureen Corrigan says her resulting book is fascinating.
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