Powers climbs down from the treetops of The Overstory in his latest novel, to tell the story of a widowed father and his troubled son who head into the wilderness to try to figure out their lives.
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R.C. Sherriff's recently reissued 1931 novel, which follows a British family on their two-week holiday, is a reflection on how time changes shape in periods like a vacation — or even a pandemic.
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The atmosphere throughout this account is foreboding, darkened by the shadow COVID-19 cast over the country but also by the dangers to democracy the authors perceive and depict.
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Michelle Quach's immensely lovable YA debut Not Here to Be Liked centers on Eliza, who's just been done out of her dream job as editor of the high school paper by an unqualified but very charming boy.
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Amanda Jayatissa's My Sweet Girl is a twisty psychological thriller — but also a nuanced examination of identity as its Sri Lankan American heroine struggles with a murder that may not have happened.
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Historian Fernando Cervantes marshals an enormous array of primary and secondary sources to tell the story of the decades that followed Christopher Columbus' arrival to the New World.
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The versatile novelist moves away from the heavier themes that won him a brace of Pulitzer Prizes in Harlem Shuffle, a heist caper starring a mostly-upright furniture salesman with a criminal streak.
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Writer Margaret Renkl's sense of joyful belonging to the South co-exists with her intense desire for Southerners who face prejudice or poverty finally to be embraced and supported.
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Cassandra Khaw's new novel follows a rag-tag band of criminals who have to pull together for one last heist — but in their hands, what could be an ordinary tale becomes visionary sci-fi adventure.
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Atticus Lish's book opens a disturbing window into a teenager's battle to save his mother, our broken healthcare system — and the power that humans have to inflict harm on one another.
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Beautiful World, Where Are You is a cerebral novel that traces the relationships between four characters, and shifts between themes of sex, friendship and life's dark uncertainty.
On 9/11, it was impossible to connect the dots for adults, nevermind children. Here are some books that can help kids try to understand that fateful date 20 years later.
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Laurent Binet seems to genuinely want to know to what extent conquest and the cruelty it inevitably produces are reducible, redeemable, or escapable. He also plainly wants to play around.
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In On Freedom's allusive, blunt, funny essays, the author of The Argonauts and The Art of Cruelty tries to imagine freedom as it exists in the contemporary contexts of art, sex, drugs, and climate.
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These books provide a detailed accounting of events that have defined the U.S. role in the world in the first part of the 21st century. None makes for cheery reading, but all offer sobering lessons.
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Shruti Swamy has won awards for her short fiction; The Archer, her debut novel, is a coming-of-age tale inspired by the graceful, precise storytelling of India's ancient Kathak dance form.
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More than an autobiography following a strict chronological path and detailing all major events, this book focuses on the role of art in the U.S. poet laureate's life and her development as an artist.
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While the story of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising is well-documented, pockets of Jewish resistance surfaced in smaller ghettos across Nazi-occupied central-eastern Europe too. Zhetel is one such place.
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Ye Chun's new story collection Hao takes its name from a Chinese word meaning "good," or "everything's OK" — but the characters in these stories are sick, afraid, out of time, and anything but OK.
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Lauren Groff digs deep into the past with Matrix, based on the real-life writer Marie de France. Little is known about the real Marie, but Groff gives us an ambitious, complex, striving woman.
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