One of the foremost writers of the age, Bernardine Evaristo unwinds her career and life — giving us a nonfiction bildungsroman that is a towering monument to the creative life of Black women.
Hanya Yanagihara's much anticipated 700-page novel is a deliberately difficult work, made of up dazzling moments that tend lose their luster when pressed together.
In Gunnhild Øyehaug's novel, a mother and daughter are separated and forgotten to each other, yet continue to exist as thinkers and artists in their respective worlds, each missing something unknown.
While Kirby has a clear predilection for the bizarre, she plays some of her stories in her new book, Shit Cassandra Saw, straight — and those are just as entertaining as the fantastical ones.
Hanya Yanagihara worked three centuries of imagination into this novel — undoubtedly an achievement. But the onslaught of details and stories muddle the narrative, weighing on the reading experience.
Lost & Found is as much a philosophical reckoning with the experiences of losing and finding as it is a record of New Yorker writer Kathryn Schulz's personal grief and love stories.
It would have been easy for the famous journalist to fall into the nostalgia trap with his memoir, which chronicles his earliest years in the newspaper business. Happily, he doesn't.
Set in the claustrophobic world of academia, Mark Prins' debut novel is saturated with references to Classical mythology and, like the best thrillers, is ingenious in its sinister simplicity.
Nikki May's novel captures issues of modern city living: women's evolving roles in home and work, interracial relationships, multicultural identity, and competition that runs under many friendship.
Elise Bryant tells a fantastic tale full of shenanigans and escapades, while also delving into deeper issues of race and the perception of a successful future for young people of color.
In Nita Prose's debut, a guest at a fancy urban hotel lies dead and the main suspect is Molly Gray, a devoted member of the cleaning staff who recognizes she has "trouble with social situations."
Jean Chen Ho's debut work of fiction focuses on a long-standing friendship that rings, sometimes terribly, true, as the girls-turned-women face the trials and tribulations of life.
In a new memoir, the Democratic congressman recounts a year of loss and grief after the death of son Tommy — and a motivation to right the wrongs that occurred on Jan. 6.
Turkish American writer Mina Seçkin's debut is an engrossing exploration of national identity, the meaning of family and loss, and what happens when a family hides its central secret.
Sang Young Park's novel can be read as an anthropological approach to Seoulite queer lives in the 21st century: Its four linked stories capture the experience of being both visible and unacknowledged.
In Claire Keegan's feminist take on Dickens, a boy born to an unwed teen builds a life as a coal merchant, husband, and father to five daughters, and faces crises of faith and conscience.
The 19th century historical fantasy wherein magic is a layer over the already complicated strata of society is a fairly common genre, but Freya Marske makes it feel fresh in this treat of a book.
Wanda M. Morris' All Her Little Secrets is a carefully constructed thriller wrapped in a narrative about racism, gentrification, and being the only Black person in an all-white environment.
Siri Hustvedt's essays bring into focus the profound contradictions of motherhood — often eclipsed by the cultural idealization of mothers as the model of self-sacrificing nurturance.
Tabitha Lasley spent six months in Aberdeen, Scotland, interviewing men who work on offshore oil rigs. Along the way, she had an all-consuming affair with one of the very first men she interviewed.
Fresh Air book critic Maureen Corrigan says 2021 was a spectacular year for literary fiction. As such, her annual Best Books list is exclusively composed of novels and short story collections.
As the year draws to a close, critic John Powers singles out seven revelatory people or things that made 2021 a little brighter. At the top of his list? Basketball star Steph Curry.
A thousand pages is a lot. But there's Ken Liu's voice to hold onto in this third installment of his epic — beautifully deployed and fully in command of the language of his imaginary universe.
Most readers spend a lot of time happily immersed in words. But for a change of pace, these gorgeous art books to provide hours of blissful visual diversion.
