Maureen Corrigan recommends two books that grapple with real-life mysteries: Laura Thompson's biography of the sphinxlike Agatha Christie, and I'll Be Gone In The Dark, by the late Michelle McNamara.
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Mallory Ortberg's hyperliterate new story collection turns familiar fairy tales inside out to comment on gender, relationships and the way people manipulate each other.
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Hollinghurst's new domestic epic leapfrogs across seven decades to examine how the laws of social propriety shape the destinies of a father and son. Critic John Powers says the novel is fascinating.
Tomi Adeyemi's debut novel is a fast-paced hero's quest through a rich, West-African-inspired fantasy world-- and a seamless mix of empowerment and rip-roaring storytelling.
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Pénélope Bagieu's curly, pretty style is sometimes in conflict with her material; it works well when her "rebel ladies" meet happy ends, but she struggles to depict the hardships many suffered.
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Luis Alberto Urrea's latest, based loosely on his own brother's death, follows the members of a vibrant Mexican-American family as they deal with grief and impending death — but also celebrate life.
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Elaine Weiss's new book reminds us how near a thing women's suffrage was — it all rode on one yes vote in the Tennessee legislature, cast by a man who changed his mind after pressure from his mother.
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Author David Gaffney and illustrator Dan Berry bring just the right amount of nuttiness to their new graphic novel, about a woman who keeps the memories of disappointing exes in a cellar in her mind.
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Kendall R. Phillips' new look at early American horror movies is academic, sure — but its central arguments make for great reading about how shifting cultural currents shape what scares us on screen.
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Rachel Hartman follows up Seraphina and Shadow Scale with the story of Tess, a rebellious young woman who runs away to escape being sent to a nunnery, and finds pain and growth along her road.
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Sofia Samatar teams up with her brother Del, a tattoo artist, to create a new take on the fantastic bestiary. The result is a prose poem with jolts of autobiography, spiced with intricate drawings.
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Kent Anderson's new novel is a sequel to 1997's Night Dogs, and it picks up with antihero Hanson, once an English teacher, now working as a police officer in Oakland — bad attitude entirely intact.
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Irish writer John Banville's new book is a shimmering, frequently elusive book about a city, but also an inquiry into memory, shifting attention, and above all time as it passes and becomes the past.
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In his experimental new memoir, Matt Young conveys the chaos of his three deployments in Iraq. Critic Maureen Corrigan calls Young "a frank, funny and mercilessly self-lacerating narrator."
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This tale of an RAF pilot, the Italian woman who rescues him after a crash, and 30 years later, his daughter, is so skillful and comforting that you may not even notice the fact that there's a war on.
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Inside Moebius is the last long-form book the legendary French comic artist completed before his death in 2012. It's a loopy story based on the notes he kept while weaning himself off of marijuana.
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Your parents' favorite travel expert has made his name as a low-key, approachable, optimistic guy. But in his new book he doesn't shy away from trouble and the ways travel makes you an outsider.
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Smith's massive new essay collection covers a wide assortment of topics, but critic Maureen Corrigan says Feel Free is strongest when it focuses on art and identity.
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This new essay, edited by Ernest Drucker, argues that mass incarceration — more than 2 million Americans are locked up — tears at our social fabric and leaves people with no option but to reoffend.
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Kim Fu's new novel about a sleepaway camp sojourn that turns shattering for five young girls. But though the troubles seem tame — thirst and a lack of gummi bears — the horror comes later.
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