Lindsey Fitzharris' new book about the horrors of Victorian medicine and the introduction of antisepsis is a vital, effective history — but perhaps you shouldn't read it with a full stomach.
(Image credit: Jennifer Kerrigan/NPR)
Zach and Kelly Weinersmith's accessible, occasionally goofy new book lays out futuristic fantasies (like matter-printed cocktails) and connects them to projects scientists are working on right now.
(Image credit: Jennifer Kerrigan/NPR)
Malinda Lo's new book sets up a classic conflict — townie kids versus prep schoolers — and adds nuanced queer characters. Despite a flawed second half, A Line in the Dark has much to offer.
(Image credit: Dutton Books for Young Readers)
The Irish novelist is known for his sense of humor — but his latest, about a man abused in his youth by Catholic priests, is distressing and at times almost unbearable. It's also his best book yet.
(Image credit: Jennifer Kerrigan/NPR)
The Irish novelist is known for his sense of humor — but his latest, about a man abused in his youth by Catholic priests, is distressing and at times almost unbearable. It's also his best book yet.
(Image credit: Jennifer Kerrigan/NPR)
Kate Winkler Dawson's new book chronicles The Great Smog of 1952, when moist air from the Gulf Stream stalled for days over London, mixing with poisonous gases and causing more than 12,000 deaths.
(Image credit: Hachette Books)
Tom Hanks' well-documented obsession with typewriters is on display in his new story collection, tales linked not just by typewriters but by a benign, humane view of people and their many foibles.
(Image credit: Jennifer Kerrigan/NPR)
Frances Hardinge's captivating tale follows a girl during the English Civil War who discovers she has the power to invite ghosts into herself — a power that puts her in danger, but can also save her.
(Image credit: Amulet Books)
An FBI investigator once famously said "There are no female serial killers," but Tori Telfer sets out to prove him wrong with this gruesome new account of multiply-murderous women throughout history.
(Image credit: Harper Perennial)
There's one thing romance heroes have in common — whether a duke, a workaholic billionaire or reality TV hunk: They look really good with their shirts off. Here are three of our favorites this month.
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Comic artist Ulli Lust's unique, surreal style proves a bad match for this adaptation of a historical novel about the children of Joseph Goebbels and their last days in Adolf Hitler's bunker.
(Image credit: Jennifer Kerrigan/NPR)
For most of recorded history, men have held power over women. Naomi Alderman's new novel imagines a world where women suddenly have power — actual electrical power — to oppress, hurt and kill men.
(Image credit: Jennifer Kerrigan/NPR)
Peter Manseau skillfully weaves together spirituality, technology and the legacy of the Civil War to tell the story of a "spirit photographer" on trial for claiming he could take pictures of ghosts.
(Image credit: Jennifer Kerrigan/NPR)
Like a hidden NINA, there are great moments in Ellen Stern's hefty new biography of cartoonist Al Hirschfeld — but they're obscured by her off-puttingly glib tone and perpetual present tense.
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Alice Hoffman returns to the world of her best-selling Practical Magic in this new book, a prequel dedicated to the early lives and loves of the first volume's elderly aunts Francis and Jet.
(Image credit: Jennifer Kerrigan/NPR)
Fifteen writers riff on various wild conspiracy theories generated about President Obama over the years. Critic Maureen Corrigan says the sly short stories in The Obama Inheritance pack a punch.
Carmen Maria Machado's new collection takes young female online culture — LiveJournal and Tumblr, ghost stories and urban legends — and reinforce the uncanny power and reach of those stories.
(Image credit: Jennifer Kerrigan/NPR)
Lizzie Collingham's new book takes 20 exemplary British meals, from plain stewed beef to an elaborate Christmas pudding, and uses them to illustrate the way food and empire are inextricably linked.
(Image credit: Basic Books)
Matthew McIntosh's fractured and fracturing 1,600-page tale of a writer with amnesia and a missing manuscript isn't fun, and it probably isn't supposed to be. But it is magnificently weird.
(Image credit: Grove Press)
Jonathan Eig's exhaustively researched new book paints a complex picture of Muhammad Ali, from his Kentucky childhood to his brilliant fighting style, his kindnesses, cruelties and eventual decline.
(Image credit: Jennifer Kerrigan/ NPR)
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