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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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When Salvador Dalí met Harpo Marx, he was so infatuated that he wrote a treatment for a surreal Marx Brothers film, Giraffes on Horseback Salad. The film didn't fly, but this graphic novel does.
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As he approaches his 100th birthday, the legendary Beat poet and publisher has a new book. Billed as his "literary last will and testament," Little Boy is part memoir, part rambling free-association.
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Reporter Joan Biskupic portrays the Supreme Court chief justice as a dedicated conservative who now "has the court he's always wanted" — and she says the law "will likely be what he says it is."
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Zen Cho's followup to her Regency fantasy of manners Sorceror to the Crown builds solidly on the world she's invented, mixing historical froth with real substance.
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Lillie Vale's new young adult novel follows Babe Vogel, who's perfectly happy in her small town life, even though her friends have mostly moved on — until a "summer boy" arrives to complicate things.
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The depth of Margaret Leslie Davis' research on the tome's history cannot be understated — her writing is straightforward and, at times, heartbreaking, but outstanding reporting lies at the core.
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