Akashic Books' Noir series continues with a visit to Amsterdam — and finding the shadowy side of a peaceful city where crime is low proves a challenge for editors René Appel and Josh Pachter.
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M.K. England's new novel starts with a bang: A group of space-school rejects must save the universe. It never quite delivers on that premise, but the characters are so appealing, you'll want more.
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Find everything our critics loved this year, all in one place: Maureen Corrigan's book list, movie pairings from Justin Chang, music recommended by Ken Tucker and David Bianculli's must-see TV list.
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Each year, Fresh Air critic-at-large John Powers finds himself haunted by the books, movies and shows that he loved but wasn't able to review on the air.
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We checked in with authors, poets and great literary minds to see what books they think everyone should read this holiday season.
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Get away from holiday stress and crummy weather with our romance picks for December. We've got great contemporary stories and a charming inversion of that classic Regency trope, the forced engagement.
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Fresh Air's book critic recommends the ten best books of the year, including The Great Believers, Rebecca Makkai's sweeping story about the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s.
Performance artist Marina Abramovic is the still point at the center of Heather Rose's new novel, as a motley cast of characters come to see her sitting at a table in New York's Museum of Modern Art.
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Jessica Abel's comic Trish Trash, Rollergirl of Mars isn't just a sports story and a coming-of-age tale, it's a masterful critique of capitalism that stays engaging despite a few wobbles.
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Stefan Zweig's famous book is as much about its own context as an execution 300 years ago; its archness signals a time capsule, except that the rhetoric around women in power has changed so little.
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Prolific crime writer Val McDermid's latest catches up with plainspoken cold-case detective Karen Pirie as she deals with personal troubles, machinations at work and a mystery going back decades.
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Olivier Schrauwen's new graphic novel is cold and rejecting, giddy and uncontrolled, all at the same time. It's semi-autobiographical and loosely sci-fi, set in an unsettlingly minimalist future.
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Author George Howe Colt's choice to delve into the lives of the players and coaches in his new book, as well as the turbulent year itself, makes his writing about the actual game pay off beautifully.
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Cuban writer Wendy Guerra has lived under surveillance in her home country, and she works that experience into her intense new novel about a young poet in Havana whose success causes trouble.
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Anna Burns' new novel — which won the Man Booker prize — follows a never-named young woman who's being harassed by a powerful paramilitary figure during Ireland's Troubles.
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Linguist Gaston Dorren's book is endlessly interesting — and you don't have to have any linguistic training to enjoy it: He has a talent for clearly explaining even the most difficult concepts.
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Mathias Énard's novel — newly translated from French — imagines what would have happened if Michelangelo had accepted an offer from the Ottoman ruler to design a bridge across the Golden Horn.
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Helen Schulman splices together an old-school family drama with high-tech fantasy in her new novel, a rich, closely observed story about regrets and risk-taking in the Internet age.
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N.K. Jemisin's new story collection is a story in itself, a chronicle of her career that has the seeds of her award-winning novels, but also lovely and thought-provoking stand-alone work.
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Gina Apostol's dizzying new novel begin in present-day Manila before diving into the late 19th century — and the tortuous relationship between the U.S. and the Philippines.
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