Hillary Huber takes on human and canine characters with mindful, measured narration. The woman – an unnamed writing professor – lost her best friend and mentor to suicide. When she's summoned postmortem by Wife Three (Wife One is a friend, Wife Two not at all,...
When her 5-year-old twins began practicing lockdown procedures in kindergarten, Rhiannon Navin channeled her fearful helplessness into writing what would become her debut novel. Six-year-old Zach's memories of the "POP POP POP" he hears from inside his first-grade classroom closet remind him of a video game....
An 11-year-old's daring 1934 dip at Brooklyn's Manhattan Beach introduces the tautly twisted threads of Jennifer Egan’s first novel since 2011's Pulitzer Prize-winning A Visit from the Goon Squad. This tripart historical hybrid – part family saga, part noirish mystery, part testimony to women's war-fueled...
After a decade of driving the same bus route, "Mr. Bertram Brown has had quite enough." He resents the old ladies, "old blokes," "dippy mothers," "babies puking," "lovey-dovey" lads and lasses "going coo coo coo," but "[d]on't get Bert started about kids! ...
*STARRED REVIEW Narrator Henry Goodman self-righteously sputters, resignedly accepts, viciously plots, frantically searches, and plays especially well the Fool – all in the service of expertly, effortlessly voicing the latest in the Bard-updated-by-famous-contemporary-authors "Hogarth Shakespeare" series. In Edward St. Aubyn's (Patrick Melrose series) wickedly compelling, guiltily provocative...
The first thing Walter Mosley (Charcoal Joe) devotees will want to know is whether Joe King Oliver is getting a series of his own. That future seems currently unclear, but should King proliferate on the page, then Dion Graham must be conscripted to continue his...
Candace Chen arrives in New York City post-college because "it seemed like the inevitable, default place to go." After a summer of wandering Manhattan wearing her dead mother's dresses – taking pictures and getting picked up – she unexpectedly falls into a publishing job. She...
*STARRED REVIEW Memoirs by North Korean defectors have proliferated, but Masaji Ishikawa's, originally published in 2000, might be the first available in English translation by a Japanese-born escapee. The Japanese bestseller, I Was Kim Jong Il's Cook (2004), by pseudonymous Kenji Fujimoto, could be the only other...
For five preteen Camp Forevermore girls, a simple overnight kayaking trip turns horrifying when their group leader dies mysteriously and the girls must find their way back alone. One insists on remaining with the corpse; the others leave and promise to send help. Interspersed with their...
Continuing the story begun in Kimberly Brubaker Bradley’s 2016 Newbery Honor book, The War That Saved My Life , World War II rages on, and Ada is now 11. She has escaped London and her abusive mother and finally has the surgery to reverse her...
Award-winning poet Dunya Mikhail, an Iraqi exile who fled her homeland in 1996 and eventually settled in Michigan, makes her nonfiction debut with a hybrid text that combines reportage and personal memoir with the intention of giving voice to northern Iraqi women victims of Daesh...
*STARRED REVIEW Leigh and best friend Axel "figure out what the other person's feeling" by asking "'What color?’": "carbazole violet" for silence, "burnt orange" for anger, "Prussian blue" for hurt. Their unexpected first kiss sets off a "whole goddamn spectrum" of feelings Leigh doesn't have time...
Twelve-year-old Jerome was always "the good kid": "I've got troubles but I don't get in trouble." He's the son of a motel receptionist mother and sanitation officer father. His grandmother keeps house, so that he and his younger sister aren't home alone. At school, Jerome...
In Nicole Krauss's (The Great House) first novel in seven years, two untethered American Jews experience parallel epic quests in Israel. One will die, the other will be transformed. The story is told in alternating chapters, and the pair never meet. Jules Epstein, a Manhattan lawyer...
At just two hours, Matthew Weiner's debut novel is more of a novella, perhaps its length (or lack thereof) a reflection of his television expertise. Screen aficionados will certainly recognize Weiner's name: he's creator/producer/director of the wildly successful Mad Men and writer/producer of the groundbreaking...
In her second National Book Award-winning title, Jesmyn Ward returns to Bois Sauvage, MS, where her first NBA winner, Salvage the Bones, played out; Bones’ Skeetah and Eschelle appear momentarily here. Jojo, 13, and his toddler sister, Kayla, live with their African American grandparents. Their drug-addicted mother...
Matt Sullivan, a San Diego–based, bilingual tabloid features writer, arrives in 2003 Havana with ring and wedding dress in hand for his Cuban fianceé, Yarmi, only to find her lifeless body in the bathtub. Considered charming, chatty, and caring by all who knew her, Yarmi,...
Although the "Son of Sam" law prohibited criminals from profiting from their crimes by writing books or creating other crime-based entertainment, the Supreme Court struck down the law in 1991 citing First Amendment violations. Decades later, Dawkins, a convicted murderer serving life without parole, received...
With a name that means "cherry blossom," Sakura's favorite time of the year is understandably spring, when her namesake blooms. Her grandmother gently nurtures her floral appreciation: "Together they sat/ in the shade of pink petals/...
Japan and Korea’s centuries-long, combative history has long made Koreans in Japan second-class citizens. Kaneshiro, who is Korean Japanese, channels his own experiences into his teenage protagonist, Sugihara, a Japan-born-and-raised ethnic Korean. Sugihara decides to transfer into a Japanese high school after attending only Korean...
