Of the scholars who set out on a 1761 quest to Yemen, only one came back alive. But don't let their looming doom distract from the drama in Thorkild Hansen's hybrid of history, fiction and travelogue.
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Victor LaValle's story of a rare book dealer whose life is torn apart after his wife commits an act of violence and vanishes is by turns enchanting, horrifying, infuriating and heartbreaking.
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Maile Meloy's novel centers on two families whose children go missing during an international vacation. Maureen Corrigan read it in two nights and says it's a "very smart work of literary fiction."
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While the love story in Allegra Goodman's latest novel can seem formulaic, she captures the allure of video gaming and the tension between real-world art and literature and the fantasy worlds online.
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Kit Reed's would-be Southern Gothic chiller starts strong, with an amnesiac man stumbling into a house haunted by family secrets — but is ultimately undone by issues of plot, pacing and voice work.
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By turns funny, shocking and heartbreaking, Everett's new novel follows a painter who's deeply ambivalent about his apparently idyllic life and digs into the moments in his past that shaped him.
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David Weigel is primarily a political reporter, but in The Show that Never Ends he spins his love of prog rock into a detailed, affectionate history of a genre that's never completely gone away.
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Rosecrans Baldwin's new novel probably shouldn't have come out in summer: It's got the trappings of a beach read — a shore town, tourists, a murder — but it strays into some very dark territory.
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Our monthly romance roundup rolls on with four beach-appropriate reads for June, from the supernatural to the astronomical to an old-fashioned tale of family lost and found when you least expect it.
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Sarah Perry's historical novel is gloriously alive, teeming with bugs, moss and marsh, unconventional spirits and a darker undercurrent of fear about a legendary monster haunting the Essex coast.
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Set in 1947, Kate Quinn's novel follows two indomitable women, a math whiz and a retired spy, in a truly fabulous car as they pursue a quest through war-torn Europe in search of a missing relative.
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Charles Taylor's new book collects his writings about cult classics of the 1970s — films like Two-Lane Blacktop, Vanishing Point and Foxy Brown — and what they say about the culture of that era.
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Gabe Habash's audacious coming-of-age novel follows a charismatic, troubled, sometimes repellent college wrestler who comes close to the edge of madness after an injury derails his final season.
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Jenny Allen's new essay collection is sarcastic, funny and astute, finding humor in everything from her battle with cancer to the indignities of aging to her many, many linguistic pet peeves.
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David Sedaris is great company in this new collected volume of his diaries. He buries emotions deep, but describes the world around him (and his love for IHOP) in chaotic and delightful fashion.
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Jardine Libaire's novel — more a series of vignettes — follows two kids from very opposite sides of the tracks who fall hard in love in 1980s New York, and what happens when reality intrudes.
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Brittney C. Cooper's history of black women thinkers traces decades of struggle against racism and misogyny. It's a crucial cultural study and a dense, serious read that rewards close attention.
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John Scalzi's new novel — originally an audio book — imagines the implications of a world where 999 out of 1,000 murder victims pop back into existence, naked, confused and safe in their own beds.
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J.R.R. Tolkien's son Christopher proves an able guide through Beren and Lúthien, his father's haunting tale of a mortal man who falls in love with the daughter of a disapproving Elven King.
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Cartoonist Jillian Tamaki's new book is packed with of-the-moment topics — a pyramid skin-care scheme, a porn sitcom, a bedbug battle — but her existential wistfulness raises them to archetype.
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