In his new book, statistician Ben Blatt loads thousands of books, new and old, into a vast database and uncovers intriguing patterns in how our favorite authors write.
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Daniel Magariel's debut novel explores the fierce love a 12-year-old boy has for his abusive father. Critic Maureen Corrigan calls it a "slim, deeply affecting and brutal story."
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Jim Harrison lived as he wrote — vividly. One year after his death, a new collection of his essays on food, wine, writing and aging brings him roaring back in all his immoderate brilliance.
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David Bellos' new book is a comprehensive guide to Les Misérables, and a compelling story in its own right, packed with detail about the creation and publication of Victor Hugo's massive masterpiece.
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Deb Olin Unferth's story collection delights in going in unexpected directions, and her sensitively-drawn characters feel the full, real, often contradictory and uneasy layering of human emotion.
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Little is known about the real life of Kate Warne, the first female detective in America — but Greer Macallister's romp of a novel paints her as a live wire, an ace in a dangerous man's world.
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Jean Hanff Korelitz's latest is set at a tony New England college rocked by racial unrest. It's a suggestive exploration of tough issues, but lacks the nuance and intellect of the best campus novels.
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Dan Chaon's latest novel suggests that even people who seem kind can lead you down dangerous paths, whether they realize it or not.
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Jean Hanff Korelitz's new novel surveys student life at a New England college in turmoil. Critic Maureen Corrigan says The Devil and Webster is "wittily on target."
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Cartoonist Peter Bagge's new biography of Zora Neale Hurston swoops through her life at breakneck speed, losing some real-life pathos along the way, but sustaining an electric, colorful energy.
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Nell Stevens retreated to a remote corner of the Falkland Islands in an attempt to write a novel. She came away with something better: This oddly winning memoir of deprivation, rain and penguins.
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Erika Carter's intelligent, unpretentious debut follows an aimless group of friends in their 20s, whose lives spin out of control during a supposedly detoxifying trip to a remote house in the country.
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Leonardo Padura returns to one of his favorite characters — broken-down Cuban gumshoe Mario Conde — and puts him on the trail of a missing Rembrandt in his gorgeously written new novel Heretics.
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Kim Stanley Robinson envisions a future that's closer than we like to think in New York 2140. Sea levels 50 feet higher have swamped Manhattan, but there's a tiny thread of hope that we might float.
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Elif Batuman has sung the praises of "long novels, pointless novels," and she puts her money where her mouth is with The Idiot, a tale of youthful confusion that can be both boring and beautiful.
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Kanishk Tharoor's collection of short stories explores the complicated relationship between language and technology. Tharoor's rich voice and immaculate craftsmanship both comfort and unnerve.
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The Inexplicable Logic of My Life is as much a doorstopper as any young adult fantasy novel, but the world it builds is inside the head of teenaged Sal, who's struggling with difficult new emotions.
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Rockabilly singer J.D. Wilkes hints at supernatural happenings in his novel about an unbelievable adventure through a kudzu-infested forest in western Kentucky.
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Leonardo Padura's new novel opens in 1939, when a ship carrying Jewish refugees is turned away from Cuba. Critic Maureen Corrigan says Heretics "spans and defies literary categories."
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Lydia Edwards gives a knowledgeable introduction to Western European dresses. It feels bare at times but Edwards is more interested in providing insights rather than an extensive history.
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