5 new fantasy novels invigorate old tropes
Spell books, dragons, mermaids, fairies and a magic circus all take on new life in the pages of these five enchanting tales hitting shelves in May and June.
(Image credit: Meghan Collins Sullivan/NPR)
Spell books, dragons, mermaids, fairies and a magic circus all take on new life in the pages of these five enchanting tales hitting shelves in May and June.
(Image credit: Meghan Collins Sullivan/NPR)
The 22 stories in Sidle Creek charm, surprise, and convey a deep love of the people and place — the Appalachian plateau of western Pennsylvania — that author Jolene McIlwain has long called home.
(Image credit: Melville House)
We've seen jealous, possessive friends and housewreckers with no boundaries before, though perhaps not quite so thoroughly, unapologetically unlikeable as in Ore Agbaje-Williams's debut novel.
(Image credit: G.P. Putnam's Sons)
In her fourth collection of essays, the bestselling author and TV writer renews her love/hate vows with the human race — as well as her relationship with her own flaws and failings.
(Image credit: Vintage)
R.F. Kuang's first foray outside fantasy is a well-executed, gripping, fast-paced novel about the nuances of the publishing world when an author is desperate enough to do anything for success.
(Image credit: William Morrow)
This is a wonderful novel that expertly combines adventure and terror, sprinkled with The Changeling author's mordant wit and assured prose. It is a horror novel, but it's also a refreshing western.
(Image credit: One World)
Brinda Charry aims to recover, reclaim, and reframe the little-known, barely footnoted history of the earliest Indian immigrant on record to what is now the United States.
(Image credit: Scribner)
In this gripping follow-up to Angeline Boulley's much-lauded debut, we return to Sugar Island and meet the next generation of girls in the Firekeeper family.
(Image credit: Henry Holt & Co. )
Do geniuses get a "hall pass" for their behavior? Or, do we "cancel" the art of artists who've done "monstrous" things? That's the question Claire Dederer tackles in her new book.
(Image credit: Penguin Random House)
By ingeniously weaving improbable and conflicting forces that make up his personal history, Eurovision expert William Lee Adams affirms an idea of home that yearns to transcend space and time.
(Image credit: Astra House)
Tania Branigan, once China correspondent for the Guardian, makes the strongest English-language effort yet to reconstruct what it was like to live through, and then with, this part of Chinese history.
(Image credit: W. W. Norton & Company)
In his new book, the former editor-in-chief of Buzzfeed News lands on his promise to chronicle the rise of digital media through the story of a snowballing, head-to-head competition.
(Image credit: Penguin Press)
A new cookbook offers kitchen techniques that reduce physical exertion. It aims to make home cooking accessible again for those with chronic back pain.
(Image credit: Kobus Louw/Getty Images)
AI may be the topic du jour, but for now only a human can read attentively and sensitively enough to genuinely recreate literature in a new language, as translators have done with these three works.
(Image credit: Meghan Collins Sullivan/NPR)
John Wray's latest novel is a powerful and juicy story about a particular time, subculture, and the ways people can find themselves in — or can deliberately disappear into — fandom.
(Image credit: Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Max Porter's compulsively readable primal scream of a novel offers a compassionate portrait of boy jerked around by uncontrollable mood swings that lead to self-sabotaging decisions.
(Image credit: Graywolf Press)
Much will be written about Abraham Verghese's latest novel in the coming months and years; it's a literary feat that deserves to be lauded as much as those of the likes of Dickens and Eliot.
(Image credit: Grove Press)
While set in Boston's Southie in 1974, the story is incredibly timely. It's at once a crime novel, an unflinching look at racism, and a heart-wrenching tale about a mother who has lost everything.
(Image credit: Harper)
Tyriek White's debut novel is a triumph; it's a gorgeous book about loss and survival that gives and gives as it asks us what it means to be part of a family, of a community.
(Image credit: Astra House)
Sarah Cypher's debut novel ponders how stories can unite or divide as narrator Betty considers a big decision with her great-aunt Nuha's own mysterious life — and the tales she told — in mind.
(Image credit: Ballantine Books)