Artist Michael DeForge's enigmatic new graphic novel is all about ambivalence — belonging, displacement, escape and return. Also, strangely charming, blobby animals with all-too-human feelings.
(Image credit: Beth Novey/NPR)
Mieke Eerkens has written an engrossing memoir on the interesting, even inspiring, stories of her parents after WWII. Yet despite its careful questioning and analysis, it's an uncomfortable read.
(Image credit: Beth Novey/NPR)
Ann Beattie strikes out in her new novel about a disaffected young man who drifts through an unsatisfying series of jobs and relationships until his life is upended by a revelation from the past.
(Image credit: Beth Novey/NPR)
Mark Bowden's account of the unsolved 1975 case of two girls who went missing near D.C. is a riveting, serpentine story about the dogged pursuit of the truth, regardless of the outcome or the cost.
(Image credit: Atlantic Monthly Press )
In his new book, the literary scholar presents an absorbing, necessary look at the "Redemption" era, in which the hard-fought gains of African-Americans were rolled back by embittered Southern whites.
(Image credit: Penguin Press)
Rajeev Balasubramanyam's fourth novel follows a cantankerous yet sympathetic economics professor whose life is upended after he fails yet again to win a Nobel Prize (among other, lesser catastrophes).
(Image credit: The Dial Press)
Beyond the juicy bits, journalist Susan Page paints a larger portrait of one of the more underappreciated, least understood figures of the last century — one with both insecurities and influence.
(Image credit: David Hume Kennerly/Getty Images)
The short chapters in Laila Lalami's novel are narrated by a rotating cast of characters. They conjure a murder mystery, a cross-cultural romance, an immigrant saga, war stories and family dramas.
(Image credit: NPR)
Comma Queen Mary Norris is an uncommonly engaging, witty enthusiast with a nose for delicious details and funny asides that makes you willing to follow her anywhere.
(Image credit: W.W. Norton & Co. )
Nell Freudenberger's new novel is a bittersweet love story — about a lost friend, a missed romance, and an all-consuming career — that uses dense scientific concepts to illuminate everyday emotions.
(Image credit: Petra Mayer/NPR)
Jessica Brody and Joanne Rendell's new novel recasts Les Miserables on a distant — yet French-inflected — planet where a powerful Regime keeps the populace split and oppressed.
(Image credit: Beth Novey/NPR)
Leanne Shapton's new short story collection feels like walking through an art gallery, each piece linked in ways that are ineffable but clear. And many sections use artwork, including Shapton's own.
(Image credit: Riverhead Books)
Laila Lalami's new novel combines riveting police procedural with a sensitive examination of life in California's Mojave Desert region, told through a well-rendered choir of different voices.
(Image credit: Beth Novey/NPR)
Christopher Cantwell's new graphic novel follows teenaged Luna, who's struggling with mental health issues and finds a kind of hope in the appearance of a mysterious flying woman in the Chicago skies.
(Image credit: Berger Books)
Writer and gallery owner Jean Frémon inhabits artist Louise Bourgeois as if she herself were writing this novel-cum-memoir, opening up our understanding of both the artist and her art.
(Image credit: New Directions)
Author Claire Harman writes that one reason François Benjamin Courvoisier gave for why he murdered his boss Lord William Russell in 1840 was that he wanted to model himself on a book character.
(Image credit: Knopf)
There is a universality to Édouard Louis' story — the child's longing for acceptance contrasted with the mature son's painful journey to understand why his father behaved as he did.
(Image credit: New Directions)
Writer, critic and humorist Damon Young chronicles his efforts to endure the battles that come with being black; the beauty of his book is that he never tries to make it comfortable for his audience.
(Image credit: Ecco)
David Wallace-Wells' The Uninhabitable Earth and Nathaniel Rich's Losing Earth offer valuable perspectives on climate change — if we're committed to being adult enough to face the future.
(Image credit: Alexander Gerst/ESA/Getty Images)
Amy Hempel's first book of new material in 14 years showcases her immense talents as a fiction writer. It's a powerful collection of stories about uneasy, unmoored, even desperate people.
(Image credit: Scribner)
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