Author Helen Hoang used her own experience on the autism spectrum to build the character of Stella, a straight-laced numbers whiz who falls for the escort she hires to help her work on relationships.
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Zhou Haohui's high-octane cop drama Death Notice aims for Dragon Tattoo-type thrills, but gets dragged down by flat characterizations and odd romantic flourishes.
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Summer is the season for road-trips, and Mariam Sharma Hits the Road makes for a saucy, yet emotional ride, following three Pakistani-American teens on a journey through the Deep South.
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Critic and novelist James Wood has often dinged other writers for what he calls "hysterical realism," but his new novel Upstate — while beautifully written — goes too far in the other direction.
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In Lauren Groff's gorgeous, precise new story collection, Florida is a haunted place, full of eyes in the darkness — and angry, restless women, always on the move, always searching for something.
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Rachel Cusk's trilogy about a peripatetic writer and her many conversational partners winds up with Kudos. The books are essentially plotless — but there's plenty of joy to be found just in talk.
(Image credit: Samantha Clark/NPR)
In a new book, historian Marc Dollinger argues that the conventional wisdom of Jewish and African-American harmony during the civil rights era is flawed. And that the real story has lessons for today.
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The companion piece to this year's Met Gala, Heavenly Bodies functions beautifully as an art object — but it has some odd blank spots, particularly around the contributions of women to Catholicism.
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Lauren Groff sets her new story collection in what she calls the "sunniest and strangest of states." Critic Maureen Corrigan says the tales are "brooding, inventive — and often moving."
(Image credit: Samantha Clark/NPR)
In his new book, Richard Rhodes lays out an accessible and surprisingly optimistic history of energy by exploring the lives of scientists and inventors — and a few unlikely people, like Bard of Avon.
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A divorced couple reconnects after nearly 30 years apart in Stephen McCauley's new novel. Critic Maureen Corrigan says My Ex-Life is a social satire that's "suffused with generosity."
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Helen DeWitt's new story collection seems less like a book, and more like a series of notes from some vast, alien intelligence, capable of picking apart human habits with startling precision.
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A love story between a black Army nurse and a German POW during World War II? You couldn't make that story up — and Alexis Clark, author of the upcoming book, Enemies in Love, didn't.
(Image credit: Courtesy of the New Press)
Claire North's new gut-punch of a novel takes place in a dystopian world where one monster corporation controls England, every service is privatized, and every life has been assigned a monetary value.
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James Pogue — a journalist with his own rebellious streak — gets at the deep-seated anger that led Ammon Bundy to mastermind the ill-fated armed occupation of the Malheur wildlife refuge in Oregon.
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Graphic novelist Nick Drnaso's new book chronicles the aftermath of a murder in tightly-controlled, almost miserly panels that still manage to convey the horror of a senseless killing.
(Image credit: Eslah Attar/NPR)
Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper recalls a lifetime of service in the spy business as he perceives Washington, D.C., crumbling around him.
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Sandhya Menon's new young adult novel follows aspiring filmmaker Twinkle Mehta, who addresses her diary entries to female directors like Mira Nair and Ava DuVernay and longs to change lives with film.
(Image credit: Eslah Attar/NPR)
Following up on her instant-classic Marbles — about her experiences with bipolar disorder — cartoonist Forney lays out her coping strategies in warm, deftly-rendered and densely informative style.
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Kevin Powers' bleak, stunning new book is set in both the 1950s and the Civil War era. It's an intricately plotted look at the ways violence can shape a nation in ways that may not be recoverable.
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