Women in the Middle Ages were excluded from many realms: the law, universities, and surprisingly, from friendship. Clearly, that's changed — and Kayleen Schaefer's new book examines how and why.
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Natalie Hopkinson's new book takes her ancestral land of Guyana as a jumping-off point for a wide-ranging look at art and the role of the artist in shaping politics, culture and the future itself.
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Janel Kolby's novel about a fairy-tale-loving young girl living in a homeless encampment outside of Seattle is a brutally realist tale, told as if it happened once-upon-a-time.
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As Valentine's day approaches, we bring you three novels that take ideas of romance far beyond flowers and chocolate — from a wicked wager with a hot rogue to a fake date that turns into real love.
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Francisco Cantú's new book about his years in the Border Patrol combines brutal personal reminiscences with detached academic interludes, a dreamlike narrative halfway between memoir and tone poem.
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An artist's photograph of a young boy's death leads to a terrible dilemma in Rachel Lyon's new novel. Critic Maureen Corrigan calls the book a "striking debut."
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Matt Haig's new novel isn't exactly about time travel — it's about a slow-aging man who travels through time just by staying alive for centuries. And yes, he meets Shakespeare (who has bad breath).
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Reading Zadie Smith's big-hearted, eloquent new essay collection is a lot like hanging out with a friend who's just as at home with pop stars as she is with philosophers.
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Maggie O'Farrell's first book of nonfiction is a memoir — by turns thrilling and agonizing — of all of her brushes with death. And there have been many, from childhood illness to deadly riptides.
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Critic John Powers says Mick Herron's latest novel sucks you in from the opening page, and a Netflix series imported from Germany is both fun and binge-able.
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Nina Sadowsky's day job is high-level Hollywood producer, and it shows in the cinematic drive of her new thriller. But the book's nonstop action leaves little time for details of place and character.
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Rape has become a standard feature in crime novels — sometimes treated with nuance, sometimes with voyeurism. Sarah Vaughan's Anatomy of a Scandal approaches it with unexpected attention and care.
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Kim Purcell's new novel is structured as a long, beautiful, despairing letter from a young woman to her missing boyfriend, written as she spurs her friends and neighbors into action to find him.
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Jo Walton says her new collection isn't actually a book of short stories — rather, these pieces are jokes, exercises or odd poems. Either way, Starlings proves endlessly fascinating and inventive.
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Lyndon Baines Johnson was an outsize character who gets a lot of credit for his adminstration's successes — but he didn't do it alone, and Joshua Zeitz' new book looks at his most influential aides.
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Novelists Nella Larsen, Wallace Thurman and George S. Schuyler forged their art in what W.E.B. Du Bois famously called the "double-consciousness" of African-Americans.
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In Melissa Albert's dark take on fairy tales, 17-year-old Alice has spent her entire life on the run from her family legacy: a terrifying mythical world created by her grandmother, a famous author.
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Many of the books of poems coming out this year are sad, but also powerful; full of poets processing their lives, looking into pains both personal and political through the cracked glass of poetry.
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Nnedi Okorafor winds up her saga of a spacefaring Himba girl from Earth in Binti: The Night Masquerade — but she's warned readers not to expect a neat conclusion, and the book bears out her warning.
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Chandler Klang Smith's novel, set in a crumbling far-future metropolis menaced by dragons, is a dizzying, delirious crash of wonders and grotesqueries, spiked with crackling dialogue and detail.
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