The fabulously louche social scene of the mid-century French Riviera — where socialites and stars mixed with the likes of Winston Churchill — comes alive again in Mary S. Lovell's The Riviera Set.
(Image credit: Christina Ascani/NPR)
Michael Sims' anthology of Victorian science fiction explores the way Mary Shelley's classic novel Frankenstein fit the nervous energy of the 19th century, and shaped the genre that came after it.
(Image credit: Christina Ascani/NPR)
Having watched many colleagues attacked for speaking up, gamer Latoya Peterson offers a deeply personal review "I applaud Quinn for ... accepting that she is messy, imperfect, and, well: Human."
(Image credit: Christina Ascani/NPR)
Once a year, for 51 years, residents of the Tuscan hamlet Monticchielo have staged a play about their lives. A new documentary finds the town's younger generation is losing interest in the practice.
(Image credit: Mark Jenkins /Grasshopper Film)
Sorry, Wrong Nombre: Directors Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, known for stripped-down social realist dramas, bring their spare aesthetic to a surprisingly pulpy murder mystery.
(Image credit: Sundance Selects)
Sigrid Rausing is heir to a packaging fortune and a global philanthropist, but her new memoir describes a painfully ordinary family tragedy: her sister-in-law's drug addiction, struggle and death.
(Image credit: Christina Ascani/NPR)
Ben Loory's new story collection is dreamlike in the best way: both cheerfully surreal and cosmically unsettling, full of lovelorn cephalopods, discontented sloths and the occasional darker touch.
(Image credit: Christina Ascani/NPR)
This collection of essays, poems, and short stories — edited by John Freeman — makes for a gripping and intensely personal examination of inequality, transience and displacement in America.
(Image credit: Penguin Group USA)
Brendan Mathew's The World of Tomorrow follows three Irish brothers having the best (or the worst) week of their lives, in 1939 New York. It's a serious literary novel, but full of madcap flourishes.
(Image credit: Christina Ascani/NPR)
Jesmyn Ward's lush and lonely new novel is set amid the mud, blood and heat of Mississippi. It's a road-trip odyssey complicated by hunger, sickness and the murderous racism that infects the town.
(Image credit: Christina Ascani/NPR)
Journalist Jason Schreier walks readers through the development of 10 recent games, finding marked similarities in the essential infrastructure of their design and production.
(Image credit: Christina Ascani/NPR)
As the weather turns cooler and we start to emerge from summer's torpor, it's time for some faster-paced romances with plenty of exciting twists and turns on the way to the happily-ever-after.
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Robin Sloan's latest is a beautiful, small, sweet, quiet book that takes a deep dive into the world of food, underground restaurants and markets, and the magic power of a good sourdough starter.
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Edgar Allan Poe once wrote that the death of a beautiful woman is "unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world." In her new book, The Burning Girl, Claire Messud responds: Not to us women.
(Image credit: Christina Ascani/NPR)
Writer Santiago García and artist Javier Olivares examine Diego Velázquez' painting Las Meninas and its influence down the centuries with a heady — and sometimes heavy — mix of comics and high art.
(Image credit: Fantagraphics)
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.
(Image credit: Christina Ascani/NPR)
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.
(Image credit: Tanya Habjouqa/NPR)
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.
(Image credit: Christina Ascani/NPR)
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.
(Image credit: Del Rey )
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.
(Image credit: Christina Ascani/NPR)
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