NPR Books We Love's Reading List

"The title is hard to wrap your mind around. It comes from a medical textbook’s definition of “life.” Set during Chechnya’s wars for independence from Russia, Anthony Marra’s novel begins in a small village where a young girl’s father has just been taken away by government troops. Her rescuer, the village doctor, seeks refuge in a barely functioning urban hospital run by a brilliant surgeon — a still-young woman whose emotions have been stripped bare by war. These and the other characters whose lives run through this story of life in the midst of war are among the most memorable I have ever encountered. They will break your heart and keep you reading."

"It’s traditional for fantasy heroes to leave their small towns for great adventures. But a series of disasters, from failing crops to falling fairies, keeps Elliot stuck at home. In modern-day Cambridge, England, Madeleine struggles to survive with her mother, and dreams of her rich, world-traveler father taking them back. Elliot’s father is missing, too: He vanished a year ago after an attack of rogue colors. (In Elliot’s fantastical Kingdom of Cello, visible wavelengths are living creatures, variously benign or deadly.) But though Madeleine and Elliot can’t leave, they discover a way to send messages through a tiny rift between their universes. Their conversations are charming, funny, whip-smart and heartbreaking."

"Abigail Harewood never wants to get married, but she aims to live life to the fullest — which includes taking a lover. She sets her sights on the Duke of Wallingford, who has just sworn off women and pledged sobriety for a year. That’s a little problematic, since they share a sizzling attraction and, currently, a Tuscan villa. Loosely based on Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost, the book starts out with a sparkling, irrepressible heroine and a brooding, damaged hero and spins a mesmerizing tale of romance and self-realization around their journey to love."

"This delightful alternate history takes place in a Victorian England where naturalists are eagerly creating phylogenies of dragons. It’s the memoir of a scientist whose books about dragons are the definitive works in the field. But of course, all brilliant scientists have to start somewhere, and this book chronicles how a young woman in a male-dominated world managed to talk her way into dangerous scientific expeditions, and make incredible breakthroughs in the understanding of how dragons reproduce, fly, and speciate. Though a fantasy, this novel is truly a homage to the history of science – and its brave, no-nonsense heroine will win you over with her passionate love for field research (and her love for a bookish young man, too)."

"Jeopardy! champ Tom Nissley has created the world’s least useful, most wonderful reference book, a masterpiece with a wry sensibility. He seems to have read every interesting book ever published — did he have an army of elves to assist him? Does he sleep? Somehow, he’s gathered a half-dozen literary tidbits tied to every day of the year — scenes and plot fragments from innumerable novels, biting or admiring passages from long-forgotten reviews, significant dates from biographies. Whether you browse at random or read a page a day, this book will delight — and seriously up your literary nerd cred."

"A novelist named Ruth finds the diary of a Japanese schoolgirl, washed up in the wake of the tsunami and the Fukushima disaster, on the beach of her island home in British Columbia. Several lives become entangled in a dreamlike way as this exquisitely composed novel unfolds."

"The only thing better than a great book is an amazing follow-up. This year Erica Perl brings us Aces Wild, which matches the magic of her 2011 novel, When Life Gives You O.J. Zelly Fried, like most 11-year-olds, is just trying to fit in, but her unruly dog Ace and her mensch of a grandfather (also named Ace!) aren’t helping. Her grandfather dishes out his gems of wisdom in one volume: ALL-CAPS LOUD. The family is still absorbing the loss of Zelly’s grandma, Ace’s wife, and the ups and downs will have you laughing, crying and trying out your Yiddish! My kids and I just love these characters. (For ages 8 to 12)"

"Mark Twain wrote Advice for Little Girls as a tongue-in-cheek manners manual for young ladies. Now, it’s being published for the first time, along with the whimsical and cheeky illustrations of Vladimir Radunsky. Mischievous girls and boys will enjoy reading Twain’s so-called advice, which includes “You ought never to ‘sass’ old people unless they ‘sass’ you first.” Of course, Twain was never accustomed to writing for young children (or interested in simplifying his language for them), so this book is sure to introduce some new vocabulary. (For ages 6 and up)"

"Who was Michael Hainey’s newspaper-reporter father really with on the night he dropped dead? His sons were told one thing; their father’s obit alluded to another. So Hainey, now a journalist himself, digs into his dad’s life, knowing he may not like what he finds. It’s a beautiful story, but the real reason to pick up this book is its atmosphere — juicy descriptions of journalism in the ‘60s, when editors included “slot men” and they smoked and drank and spat into the wastebaskets, cranking out editions of the local paper late into the night."

"In All That Is, James Salter’s version of a contemporary American War and Peace, the war — World War II in this instance — comes first, as Philip Bowman survives naval battles and returns to the U.S. where, in New York City, he makes his life in the publishing trade. Early marriage, divorce, love affairs and a deepening sense of life’s sweetness and severities make up the lapidary pages of this career-crowning work of fiction."

"A terrifically thought-provoking and entertaining novel — the author’s fourth work of fiction and third novel, it features Ifemelu, a young Nigerian woman who comes to the U.S. to attend college and stays for a number of years, leaving her boyfriend, Obinze, behind in Lagos. As a “Non-American Black,” Ifemelu has a unique take on what she calls Racial Disorder Syndrome, which she writes about in her extremely popular blog, Raceteenth. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has described her novel as being about love, hair (it opens in a hair-braiding salon in Trenton, N.J., far from the bucolic Princeton where Ifemelu lives), and race. And nobody’s written about race in America in quite the way Adichie has, offering readers much to ponder. Book groups will find this to be a great choice — and don’t miss the author’s wonderful TED and TEDx talks."

"In this humorous sequel to The Writing Class (but it’s not at all necessary to read it first), Amy Gallup (who taught the aspiring would-be authors in the previous novel) is still in the midst of a long writer’s block. Early in the morning on the day that she’s expecting a visit from a journalist doing a “where are they now” story on once well-known writers, she stumbles while walking in her garden and hits her head on a concrete birdbath. After the fall (of which Amy has no recollection), her entire personality undergoes a major alteration and, as a result of the interview, she becomes the toast of literati everywhere. Her experiences at writing conferences, academic forums, and meetings with fans are hilarious to read about but sadly all too true. I found myself laughing out loud and nodding in full agreement with much of what Amy says. And if you enjoy this, don’t miss Jincy Willett’s equally sharp and pointed first novel, Winner of the National Book Award.."

"In this thrilling and complex first novel from Ann Leckie, we plunge into a world of astro-political intrigue. Our hero is on a vendetta to destroy the rulers of a colonial empire that destroyed her starship – but as we read, this typical space opera plot turns into a rich story about how imperialism transforms civilizations as well as the most private thoughts of the individuals in them. We find that our ninjalike hero is actually the fragment of a hive mind that once controlled a starship, and her mission has its roots in a political conflict that stretches back 1,000 years. Come for the page-turning action, and stay for the astonishing character development and world building that will leave you in awe."

"In Khaled Hosseini’s best novel yet, nine characters must decide what they would (and wouldn’t) do for the happiness of their family. Among the options: sell a daughter, kill a sister, protect an alcoholic mother, accept a life of lonely desperation. The novel brims with scenes of Afghan cruelty and generosity, but to Hosseini’s credit, there isn’t a single villain in sight. After all, even warlords can be nice daddies."

"A short dog (a dachshund — very short, indeed) looks up — way, way up, at a giraffe so tall you have to lift a flap to see all of him. A quiet white rabbit in the middle of an orange page stares a little apprehensively at the loud lion that pops up from behind the opposing flap. Animal opposites are presented in a fabulously fun and totally interactive way, with colorful, almost childlike illustrations. Children will learn important concepts and maybe be inspired to draw their own animals large and small, slow and fast, heavy and light. (For ages 3 to 7)"

"When it comes to gay identity, race, city life, approaching middle age and family, Aaron Smith is writing some of the best new poems around. He’s got a real ear not only for the music of language but for how music — the kind that comes out of speakers — and poetry intersect. This book got too little notice: You need to read it ASAP."

"This novel is the fifth and last in the brilliant series by Edward St. Aubyn. They are all astonishing in their wit and honesty and virtuosity. As St. Aubyn moves Patrick Melrose, his main character, through life, taking him from boyhood to manhood, a lot of ground is covered, including childhood abuse and neglect, drug addiction and life with small children. At Last, in which Patrick attends his selfish and deluded mother’s funeral, is hilarious, melancholy and even, in the end, redemptive. Some books from December 2012 were published too late to make it on last year’s roundups; they were considered as candidates this year."

"With an enigmatic narrator and constant reminders that this adventure does not end well, Daniel Alarcon’s latest book is his strongest yet. It tells of an earnest young actor who is given the break of his career when he’s invited to be part of the cast of The Idiot President — a notorious political play. Following the itinerant theater troupe made up of Nelson, a self-indulgent young man hoping to escape a failed love affair; Henry, an embittered playwright; and his manager and comrade Patalarga, the book is a moving exploration of fate, destiny, dissent and the artistic imagination."

"It should come as no surprise that the truly subversive Jon Scieszka and Mac Barnett are responsible for one of the funniest (and most problematic to librarians) children’s books of the year. Young Alex wields a devastating pen as he transforms a book about the ooshy, gooshy “Birthday Bunny” into a book about the bloodthirsty, evil genius “Battle Bunny,” whose nefarious plans for destroying the world can only be stopped by one person … Alex himself. This one has everything — Shaolin Bear and Ninja Turtle, a special Evil Plan Place (because everyone needs an Evil Plan Place. Where is yours?) and a cameo by the president of the United States, who finally learns that one determined kid with special birthday powers can beat out an evil genius bunny any day of the week. Of course, we can only hope that young readers won’t be encouraged to start … um, editing library books, because that would be bad. Very, very bad. (For ages 5 to 9)"

"Paul Pope’s art churns on the page with grim intent; it is messily, gorgeously, impatiently alive. With the long-awaited Battling Boy, the first volume in a sprawling coming-of-age tale about young heroes who face off against slavering child-abducting monsters, Pope is in his element, imbuing these vibrantly colored pages with an epic scope — and a singular artistic vision — that the aging, increasingly denuded genre of superhero comics hasn’t seen since Jack Kirby."

"Stephen Burt is the leading poetry critic of his generation, one of contemporary poetry’s most well-known advocates, but he is also a formidable poet himself. In this, his third and best book, he is moved to song by the challenges, whimsies and ecstasies of fatherhood and suburban life. These poems are all kinds of tender; they’re funny, too. Most of all, they’re made wise by a father’s careful attention to all his children know."

"Where did this strange, sad, gorgeous book come from? Matt Rasmussen is a new poet, but also a founder of Birds LLC, one of the hip, up-and-coming poetry micropublishers. His poems trace the lifelong unfolding of the aftereffects of a brother’s suicide in breathtakingly sharp couplets. There are no answers to the questions this book raises, but no one’s ever asked them so clearly."

"Rebecca Lee is a virtuoso — ironic, original, cosmopolitan. Standouts in this first collection are “Fialta,” about a love triangle set at an invitation-only workshop run by the “architect of the prairies,” and the title story, in which the hostess of an elaborate Upper West Side dinner party discovers her husband is cheating. In an eerie parallel, a guest describes a bobcat attack in Nepal: ” … when blood leaks out of a body, the body loses its pulsing internal clock, and all understanding of time is released. The soul becomes loosed from the body and unhinged from time simultaneously and begins to roam freely about … ”"

"He was born into a fabulously wealthy family in 1783. He drove the Spanish monarchy out of Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, Ecuador, Bolivia and Peru. He loved Voltaire and Montesquieu; he died at 47, impoverished and exiled; he inspired generations of dictators and democrats. In Marie Arana’s hands, the life of Simon Bolivar is a rousing adventure, fit for the big screen — a drama of military triumph and Enlightenment ideals blemished by brutal authoritarianism. Popcorn not included."

"It’s probably not an exaggeration to say that most Americans aren’t even aware that Founding Father Benjamin Franklin had a sister at all. But Jane Franklin Mecom and her older brother were frequent correspondents, and though she didn’t have her brother’s education, it’s undeniable that she shared his brilliance and impatience with lazy thinking. Author Jill Lepore does an admirable job of reconstructing the life of a woman who could have been doomed to obscurity — and in learning about Jane, we learn more about Ben and the country he helped build. Book of Ages is an endlessly fascinating look at the sometimes tragic, always spirited life of one of early America’s most interesting women."

"“I worry I broke your kneecaps when I cut you down,” writes the artist Karen Green in her debut book. “I keep hearing that sound.” It doesn’t get any easier from there — Bough Down is one of the most heartbreaking books you’re likely to read, but it’s also one of the most beautiful. A meditation on the 2008 suicide of her husband, the novelist David Foster Wallace, Green’s book combines prose poetry with visual art to create something wrenching, powerful and ultimately unclassifiable. It’s not only one of the best books of the year; it’s one of the most stunning books about grief to come out in decades."

"At first glance, Gene Luen Yang’s clean lines and expressive, humorous cartooning style might make it seem as if his tale of the Boxer Rebellion has been bowdlerized for children. But don’t be fooled — Yang is using his considerable gifts to invite us deeper inside his story, so that its ensuing violence and sadness land all the harder. In one volume, a young boy joins the Boxers, who call on spirit gods to aid them in their fight against foreign interference in China. In the second volume, we see the conflict through the eyes of a young girl who renounces her Chinese name and culture to embrace Catholicism. A nuanced exploration of faith and violence, told with a searching, life-affirming empathy."

"This intimate, dishy biography of the notoriously private and priapic artist Lucian Freud (grandson of Sigmund) is a rare case in which the text and illustrations are equally astonishing. Geordie Greig exposes Freud’s messy life, which was driven by his obsessions with art, sex and gambling. Most of his overlapping lovers modeled for the raw portraits that stripped his sitters bare in every sense. So did seven of his acknowledged 14 children — a circumstance that had journalists aquiver about the Freudian implications."

"What if the X-men were real? They’d probably have powers a lot like Marcus Sakey’s “brilliants” — endowed not with disbelief-straining flight or laser eyes but with accelerated human talents like pattern recognition, programming and strategy. And they’d have a much more destructive influence than guys like Magneto ever dreamed of. Brilliants wreck the stock market, for example, before the book even starts. The government, of course, is hunting down brilliants, desperate to keep them out of sight — but our hero, Agent Nick Cooper, is hiding some explosive secrets of his own. Brilliance is a tightly plotted thriller with classic questions beating in its geeky heart."

"Talk about reflected glory: As Ms. Marvel, Air Force Major Carol Danvers has been kicking around the Marvel Universe for decades, ever since acquiring her amazing powers simply by standing next to male hero Captain Marvel during an explosion. But in this new series, writer DeConnick has Carol assume the title of Captain Marvel herself, ditch her cheesecake getup for a flight suit, and set off on a temporal adventure that allies her with a squadron of female World War II fighter pilots. Publishers like to tout their “strong female characters.” But in the hands of DeConnick, they’ve found something far better — a rounded, compelling, inspirational hero who happens to be a woman."

"I gave this book to every cat-loving friend of mine this year, and to judge by the number of times they’ve quoted it back to me, Cat Sense is an indispensable addition to the cat-lore canon. Even if it did make me feel guilty about having three cats: Did you know most cats really prefer to be alone? Cat Sense is jam-packed with fascinating (and contrarian) tidbits like that, covering everything from why cats purr to why they bring us dead things — and why we keep them around, even though their original purpose as mousers is mostly obsolete. Obligatory cat pun coming up … this book is a purrfect gift for the cat lady or cat dude in your life."

"At 70 years old, poet Nikki Giovanni is loved around the world for her beautiful writing about home, family and food. Chasing Utopia sounds existential and distant, but the title actually refers to her very real search for an exclusive — an elusive — beer. I love that she keeps some humor in the book of poetry and essays, even as she says her mother’s death allowed her to dig deep into the dark parts of her past. My favorite poem in the book is “Podcast for Bicycles,” which you’ll love even if you didn’t major in English."

"Set sail with uptight chef Owen Wedgwood and rowdy pirate “Mad Hannah” Mabbot for a rollicking tale of haute cuisine on the high seas. Wedgwood is a talented but prissy chef to a shipping magnate until Mabbot shoots his employer point-blank and takes him captive. She offers him a deal no chef can refuse: your life in exchange for one magnificent dinner a week, made from whatever’s in the ship’s larders. Skim the family-drama back story, and savor instead Wedgwood’s MacGyver-like ingenuity as he cobbles together bread starters, pheasant mole and brandied mango tart amid the chaos of a pirate ship."

"All those Vikings who’ve been taking over mystery fiction can now go jump in a fjord! Brooklyn-born author, Sara Gran, has reintroduced a distinctive American voice to the mystery in the guise of her 40-ish, bad-girl detective, Claire DeWitt. In this second outing, DeWitt’s investigations into the murder of an old boyfriend take her from the elite Bohemian Grove Club in California to New York’s Lower East Side. Along the way, her narration is infused with tough poetry. About being a teenager, Claire says: “It was a secret world you gained admittance to at fourteen and left at twenty, swearing never to repeat what you’d seen.” Wise readers will zip their lips and stay close to Claire."

"Claire lives in a village by the sea with her beloved father. Every year on her birthday they visit the grave of her mother, who died giving birth to Claire. But on her seventh birthday, Claire runs away when she realizes that her father, fearing he cannot take care of her, is finalizing plans to give her away to a wealthy woman whose own child was killed in an accident. Claire’s disappearance is the catalyst for a series of interlocking stories about the hidden lives and loves of the people in this Haitian village. From the fisherman’s hut by the sea to the hillside homes of the rich, this is a revealing portrait that mixes a touch of magic with the tough reality of life in Haiti."

"Hey, kids! Time to count the monkeys! This turns out to be a little harder than advertised, because first readers must avoid a king cobra, vote on the correct plural of mongoose, confuse three crocodiles, scare off four grizzly bears, and on and on, until they run out of pages and opportunities to count monkeys! (All is not lost — check out the endpapers.) The bright, colorful, Disney-esque illustrations add much to this supersilly, highly interactive, never-gonna-get-‘em-to-sleep-tonight gem that will keep kids and grown-ups amused — and counting — for many readings. (For ages 3 to 6)"

"So what would you do if you knew that Earth was going to be destroyed by an asteroid in less than three months? Would you go through your bucket list and do everything you’ve always wanted to do? Would you kill yourself so you won’t have to go through the apocalypse? Or would you, like rookie detective Hank Palace, formerly of the Concord, N.H., Police Department, go on going on, which means, in Hank’s case, agreeing to try to find an old friend’s missing husband, as well as dealing with the residue of family and relationship issues first introduced in the series opener, The Last Policeman. I always appreciate novels that have new and interesting approaches to traditional genres, and Ben H. Winters’ two novels featuring Hank Palace fill the bill."

"In Counting By 7s, 12-year-old Willow Chance knows that she’s odd. Being a genius, she thinks she has everything figured out. However, when her adopted parents die in a car crash, Willow finds she cannot fathom the depth of her grief. She’s befriended by Mai, a strong-willed Vietnamese-American girl, and Willow moves in with Mai’s family, setting off a chain reaction of unexpected events. Holly Goldberg Sloan’s tender and funny novel is a book of small miracles and will make a believer out of you. (For ages 10 and up)"

"Fourteen years ago, bad-boy hockey star Billy Wilkins ruined his marriage to Maddy, the only girl he ever loved. Now he’s in Dallas, facing the end of his career. Maddy is also in Dallas: she’s a star anchor for a morning news program, and she wants nothing to do with her ex. But when her producer sets up a celebrity makeover series with Billy, Maddy has to make nice with the man who broke her heart. Too bad the chemistry between them is still off the charts. An intense, emotionally poignant “second chance at love” storyline."

"Mason Currey details the work habits of dozens of modern artists (painters, sculptors, composers, choreographers, filmmakers, scientists and writers) from Gertrude Stein to Mahler, Gershwin, Shostakovich, Freud, Jung, Proust, Erik Satie, Joyce Carol Oates, Malamud, Stephen King, Joseph Heller, Darwin and many more. When do they wake up, when do they sit down to write or chisel stone, splash paint, and when do they eat, drink, laugh, love, sleep? It’s all here — from the compulsions of Flaubert to the drug addiction of Ayn Rand — in this amazing and entertaining compendium of how geniuses apply themselves."

"In succinct diary entries set against stark white on black drawings, Edward, a depressive, philosophical hamster who makes Schopenhauer seem cheerful, rails against the emptiness of a life limited to his exercise wheel, seeds and water, and questions the very meaning of existence. “IS THERE NOTHING ELSE?!” he asks in despair. Even his diary fails to comfort him. “Why write?” he laments. “Life is a cage of empty words.” Love provides some solace, but it’s all too fleeting. This penetrating, endearing little book cracks open the cage of existential woe with humor and charm."

"If you’ve ever wondered whether echinacea can really ward off infections, or whether shark cartilage truly prevents cancer, this is the book for you. Physician Paul A. Offit brings a scientist’s precision to his exploration of the vast number of alternative medicines that don’t work, and several that do. He also explains how alternative medicine became a $34 billion-a-year business, and why the companies that sell “alternative” products still face almost no government oversight. Along the way, Offit tells some great stories, including a full chapter about Linus Pauling, the Nobel Prize winner responsible for the nation’s misguided love affair with vitamin C."

"Read this book anywhere … except, say, if you’re alone and snowbound in a vacant, isolated hotel. Yes, Stephen King brings us the sequel to The Shining — and it’s almost as gripping as the original. The book follows Danny, the terrified boy from the Overlook Hotel, into adulthood in New England. King says writing a sequel to such a blockbuster was risky — “being scared is like sex,” the author says, “there’s nothing like your first time” — but he simply couldn’t resist. And neither will you after you open these pages."

"David Rosenfelt is the author of the funny and suspenseful Andy Carpenter thrillers, and he’s just as funny in this nonfiction account of his move from California to Maine with his 25 rescue dogs. Any book that makes it sound fun to drive in a Winnebago for days with 11 volunteers and 25 dogs has to be good."

"Two years ago, psychic Gwen Frazier was nearly the victim of a serial killer in Wilby, Ore. She has returned to investigate the death of her mentor, and once again, she’s become a target. Vulnerable and anxious, she is grateful when Judson Coppersmith joins her. His security expertise and experience with violent crime are the perfect counterpoint to her quiet detection skills, while her psychic abilities may help him heal from a recent accident. The sizzling attraction they share might lead to forever, too — if they can survive. Nobody does romantic suspense or light paranormal better than Jayne Ann Krentz."

"A perfect book for the beach, plane or coffee table — and, most especially, for anyone who loves hanging out in bars but can’t quite put their finger on why. It’s an addiction, Rosie Schaap tells us, driven by the need to meet good people, hear good stories and learn about life — not necessarily drink. As she puts it, “It’s never been hard for me not to drink alcohol. It’s been hard for me not to go to bars.” After reading this fun, honest memoir, you’ll understand why."

"Eleanor & Park is a book about two teenagers who fall in love. But more than that, it’s about feeling lost — because of bullying, because of abuse, because of race — and feeling loved. It captures the pure, visceral thrill of a high school swoon, but it never forgets that those feelings are real and important. Rowell’s willingness to portray real ugliness and real pain means that when Eleanor and Park are daring to hope for something wonderful for themselves, the stakes feel enormous. It’s called a young adult book, and indeed, it’s a fine thing to give a sensitive kid. But there’s nothing unsophisticated or less than serious about this empathetic, beautifully rendered novel."

"Lea Carpenter weaves the story of the love and respect between a mother and her grown son — despite the differences in many of their most fundamental beliefs — into a hard look at the painful realities of war in the second decade of the 21st century. Sara, a left-leaning single mother, is shocked when her son, Jason — spurred by the tragedy of Sept. 11 — becomes a Navy SEAL and is sent to Afghanistan. The 11 days of the title refer to the period between the time when Sara is notified that her beloved son is missing in action and the day that she discovers his fate. This is an uncommonly assured and graceful first novel; the characters are beautifully drawn, and the relationship between mother and son seems utterly true, recognizable, and understandable. As the voice-over for the TV show Law and Order might say, “This is a story ripped from the headlines.”"

"Fuchsia Dunlop’s books on Chinese cooking are authentic, accessible and fun to read. Her latest, Every Grain Of Rice, is sort of like a Joy Of Cooking for homestyle Chinese food, chock-full of delicious, simple recipes. More important, she helps you learn a new cuisine by demystifying the tools and techniques and teaching you how to stock your Chinese-friendly pantry. And because the Chinese diet is often low-meat and flavored with meaty-but-not-meat ingredients like fermented beans, it’s great for vegetarians and vegans. There’s no better introduction to Chinese cooking. I love this book."

"Is it cheating to pick everyone’s favorite book of 1973 as a favorite in 2013? Who cares, when that book is the 40th anniversary edition of Fear of Flying. Erica Jong’s seminal — I know, I know, but can you blame me? — work on female sexuality is worth rereading for two reasons. One, it’s a great book, with a warm and funny heroine — more than a zipless read, if you will. It’s simply fun to read the adventures of the deeply likable Isadora Wing, and it’s sexy as hell. And two, once you’ve read it, you can listen to the inimitable Susan Stamberg’s look back with Jong on the environment that created Fear of Flying and why it’s still important, 40 years later. The icing on the cake? Jong’s seductive alto reading from her work, and Mama Stamberg giggling over the zipless f- - -."

"Early in the 20th century, Typhoid Mary was an iconic figure. In this fictive treatment Mary Mallon, a cook, becomes suspect when families she has worked for begin to die of a mysterious ailment. Blamed for the epidemic, Mary is imprisoned in an isolated bungalow on an island in Manhattan’s East River. Well-researched as it is, Mary Beth Keane’s Fever builds a story of Mallon and her inner life that goes well beyond the facts. In this novel we come to care deeply about Mallon, a woman who’s not especially beautiful or gentle, but brave and headstrong and doomed."

"Eight years after the allegations of possible euthanasia at hospitals in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Sheri Fink grippingly describes the horrible conditions medical staff and patients endured and the tough choices everyone had to make. Regardless of who you consider to be heroes or villains, this book will make you think twice about what you thought you knew about those notorious few days."

"Five people make the journey from Malaysia to Shanghai. One is a rising pop star; another, a businesswoman with a surprising past. There’s the country girl determined to make good in the city, and the wealthy boy trying to discard a family legacy. They all sound like archetypes you’ve met before, but the subject of this wonderful novel isn’t really any of them — it’s the booming city of Shanghai, and the questions it poses to those who move there: In a city of more than 20 million, what do you have to do to stand out, and in the end, do you really want to?"

"Many children (and grown-ups) dream of being able to leap and twirl and pose with the grace of a trained dancer … or, in this case, an amazingly elegant flamingo. Flora, a plump little girl in a pink swimsuit, bathing cap and flippers, approaches the artiste with bravery and wonderful determination. Words aren’t necessary (or included) as the dance commences. Flaps are lifted to show each dancer’s reactions. Midway through it is obvious that the flamingo has resigned herself to teaching this strange new creature, and by the end they share an enthusiastic friendship. This book is graceful, goofy and positive on so many levels. (For ages 4 to 6)"

"The day comic book aficionado Flora Belle Buckman saves a squirrel from death-by-vacuum cleaner, a new superhero emerges … and it’s the squirrel. The aftermath of her parents’ divorce has left Flora a cynic, but Ulysses, the flying, poetry-writing squirrel, makes her a believer. Though their adventures are wild and wacky, the heart of the story is about a girl adrift and how she finds her way home. Pencil illustrations and comic book panels by K.G. Campbell complement Kate DiCamillo’s text perfectly. After reading Flora and Ulysses, you’ll be asking when the next installment is due. (For ages 8 to12)"

"I grew up during the golden era of Broadway choreography, enamored of Michael A Chorus Line Bennett’s leaps and extensions, Gower 42nd Street Champion’s production number overkill and Jerome West Side Story Robbins’ storytelling ballets. But no one fired my imagination like Bob Fosse, whose bumping, grinding, undulating dancers in Sweet Charity, Pippin and Chicago often seemed to be all elbows, shoulder rolls and cocked bowler hats. Sam Wasson’s Fosse tells us how his early days in burlesque (he was performing on the same stage as strippers from the age of 15) informed his choreography, and why the women he cheated on — most especially his wife and muse Gwen Verdon — stuck with him as he was razzle-dazzling every skirt on Broadway and in Hollywood. It’s filled with the kind of inside detail that comes of substantial research, and vivid descriptions that turn that research into a sort of movie in your head."

"The Great Plains narrow-mouthed toad sings “BUZZBUZZBUZZ,” while in northeastern Australia, the Scarlet-sided Pobblebonk says “BONK … BONK … BONK.” Readers are introduced to 11 different frogs and their weird and wacky songs from all around the world in this beautiful illustrated and fun to read book. Songs aren’t the only interesting things about these frogs. The male Darwin’s frog, from Chile, keeps the kids in his vocal sacs for seven weeks, then gives a big yawn, and out they pop! Lots of information packed into a book that reads like a picture book, and one that is sure to have kids clamoring for a visit to the zoo. (For ages 4 to 8)"

"Do you like food? Do you like gossip? Do you like TV? Terrific. Fire up the slow cooker and open up a copy of Allen Salkin’s From Scratch: Inside the Food Network. It’s the behind-the-scenes story of the birth of the network that served up stars like Emeril Lagasse, Bobby Flay, Rachael Ray and the notorious Paula Deen. Sure, it’s bursting with juicy bits — the spliced-in porn on Too Hot Tamales, Rachel Ray almost burning down Emeril’s set — but it’s also the story of how cooking shows went glam, from PBS on weekend mornings all the way to Giada’s lustrous locks and Paula’s butter balls. Bonus: It’s a fascinating primer on the pioneers of early cable television."

"After a global tragedy reveals the existence of paranormal beings, these “Others” must defend themselves against a rising tide of hostility and violence. PR whiz and outed witch Molly Ryan takes on the role of national spokeswoman for the Others, becoming a prime target. Gage Garrity is in charge of Molly’s security, and the two grow intimate as danger escalates. Lauren Dane creates a tense, conflicted world with eerie historical parallels, and I was as mesmerized by humans acting monstrous as by so-called monsters demonstrating humanity. A smart, provocative plot."

"As a writer who knows just how much sweat goes into making even a single joke flow from the page, I can only step back in admiration when someone writes an entire book that makes me laugh my head off. Gorgeous is bizarre, improbable and utterly hilarious, which Paul Rudnick pulls off with the did-he-really-do-that? flair of one of the designer dresses lovingly strewn across these pages. And yet, even choking on various warm beverages did not prevent me from rooting for Becky Randle, who discovers that magically becoming the most beautiful girl in the world doesn’t fix her life after all."

"Popular culture has never really done justice to the brilliant philosophical novel that is Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Yeah, there’s a reanimated corpse, but he reads Milton and discusses philosophy with his creator, who’s in some ways the real monster. Grimly delivers all that, and while he’s completely faithful to Shelley’s text, he brings a visual style that is totally original: Frankenstein chases his creation through a trippy landscape that is by turns Victorian, modern and futuristic. Grimly draws a creature more gruesome than any movie monster, but simultaneously more sympathetic and human."

"In his latest collection of comics mini-stories, the creator of the brilliant Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer gently interrogates the everyday — the click of a light switch, say, or the nozzle on a can of shaving cream — and finds unimagined and uncanny depths within. Ben Katchor sets up an intriguing tension between his rough, riotous, almost impressionistic figures and backgrounds and the voice of his captions, which enumerate salient story points with the dry, implacable plainness of a 1950s plumbing-fixture catalog. Elliptical and mysterious but never abstruse, the picture-poems of Hand-Drying in America celebrate the mundane world around us by revealing it to be anything but."

"Poor Duck has lost his new blue socks. He searches through his toy box, asks various pals, like Fox (who sits beside a grapevine reading a book in a nice nod to Aesop) and the very artistic Mr. Ox, who suggests Duck check out the socks on the rocks, which sadly are more purple than blue. It is the littlest peacock whose sharp eyes find those pesky blue socks. An excellent choice for a newly minted reader, with some fine humorous touches in both the brief rhyming couplets and the somewhat Seussian watercolor illustrations. (For ages 4 to 8)"

"After tween music superstar Elvis Ruby freezes onstage, he can’t face his fans. So he alters his looks, and changes his name to Aaron, and hides out in rural Pinelands of New Jersey to work in his aunt’s Pancake Palace. Almost immediately, Cecilia, a girl who can’t keep a secret, figures out who he really is. However, she is more interested in enlisting Aaron’s help in solving a musical mystery than ratting him out to the paparazzi. Nan Marino’s Hiding Out at the Pancake Palace sings with humor, wit and plenty of pancakes. (For ages 8 to 12)"

"I understand that a book about the role of women in the Third Reich may not be exactly the nonfiction you’re hoping to delve into over the holidays. But Hitler’s Furies is worth reading for several reasons. This isn’t the story of the more well-known murderesses of the movement — Wendy Lower’s study of the women who committed horrors during the Holocaust follows the lives of 13 ordinary women and argues that they were not just swept along by a masculine, nationalistic tide but became monsters themselves. The stories are, of course, chilling — from the women who murdered from behind a desk, typing up deportation lists, to those who murdered in person, shooting children in the Jewish ghetto. But what’s most harrowing is what happened to them — nothing. Only one was tried and found guilty. And if the Holocaust was perpetrated based on one ugly prejudice — anti-Semitism — these women got away with their crimes because of another — a rooted belief that women are somehow naturally more innocent."

"That’s a good question, and the truth is, dinosaurs came in all shapes and sizes. Meet Microraptor, a deadly hunter smaller than a modern-day chicken! Some dinosaurs were the size of dogs or horses or SUVs. Of course, all the way at the other end of the scale, there was Argentinosaurus, as long as four school buses, and probably the largest animal ever to walk on land (but only a predator if you happened to be a tree). This book looks and reads like an adorable picture-book story but is filled with plenty of information, making it just right for the youngest dinosaur fans (and their grown-ups). (For ages 6 to 9)"

"This is a mystery worth disconnecting all electronic devices and staying home for. How the Light Gets In is the ninth novel in Louise Penny’s extraordinary series featuring Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and his troubled sidekick, Inspector Jean-Guy Beauvoir, of the Surete du Quebec. Penny has been working throughout her series to tap into the spiritual dimensions of the genre, consequently, this novel is one part foul play; two parts morality play. Gamache and his skeleton crew of loyal police allies must root out an epic conspiracy and the battle between good and evil that ensues rivals the faceoff between the heavenly army and Lucifer’s fallen angels in Paradise Lost."

"This novel, by Mohsin Hamid, employs the conceit of a how-to book for South Asians. Its exemplar is a country boy on the make, a serious character whose essence remains his own yet who stands as a figure representative of his time and place. Each of the chapter titles offers a sometimes straightforward, sometimes ironic imperative. “Move to the City.” “Get an Education.” “Don’t Fall in Love.” “Learn from a Master,” and so forth. Given the unabashed gimmickry of Hamid’s how-to design, it’s a wonderful surprise to find his book so engaging."

"This is one of the best books about sex, and having babies, you’re likely to read. I’m not saying ignore the Kama Sutra, What to Expect or even Fifty Shades Of Grey. But if you want to know things like why men have nipples or why it takes a quarter of a billion sperm cells to fertilize one human egg, you should take this white-knuckle ride back through evolutionary time, across continents, into science labs and around your most private parts. It will make you laugh. Your jaw will drop. And the sight of the mismatch between the lives we lead and the bodies we live in will start you thinking."

"Even if you’re not part of the enormous following her Web comic spawned, you might have seen Allie Brosh’s instantly recognizable, candy-colored drawings posted here and there if you’ve been, y’know, on the Internet. This collection of her work from her hugely popular blog is autobiographical and immensely inventive — her drawings could be called crude if they weren’t so incredibly sophisticated at the same time. Brosh has a knack for the really, truly, giggle-snort funny — but she’s also painfully perceptive, particularly in her descriptions of her struggle with depression, which are so accurate, they are required reading for anyone trying to understand why depression is so much more than being sad."

"There are memoirs that suffuse you in the events of the author’s life. And then there is the rare memoir that simply soaks you in the soul of the author himself. I Hate To Leave This Beautiful Place is the latter. Howard Norman’s memoir is organized around five events that changed him — some are public, like the death of John Lennon, but most are intensely personal, culminating in a horrifying murder/suicide that occurred in his home and his recovery from the event. I read the book almost the way I would read poetry — reading line by line, making connections, thinking about how the language laid the life bare. To spend an hour or two inside Norman’s head is not only pleasurable; it feels like you’ve been sent a gift — go, make your connections, be human, love."

"Jamie Quatro brings a fresh, frank voice to these linked stories set around Lookout Mountain, Ga. Several feature a character with a husband, family, church — and guilt over a virtual affair involving phone sex and heavy texting. Her obsession takes a surreal turn in “Decomposition,” as her lover’s body shows up when she’s in bed with her husband. The title comes from a story in which she emails a nude selfie to her lover: *”I want to show you more, I said.**”He was silent. Then: So far, we haven’t done anything we couldn’t tell our spouses about.”*"

"Written entirely through letters, this novel chronicles the correspondence of two very different women who help each other through the trials, triumphs and tragedies of war. Rita is a middle-aged professor’s wife in Iowa with a husband and son in battle, while Glory is a young wife and mother in Massachusetts whose husband has enlisted. Despite their differences, the two develop a deep friendship, and readers are treated to an exquisitely rendered snapshot of life on the home front. A must-read for anyone even vaguely interested in the World War II era, with romance woven through the details."

"A religious book for a secular America, this is among the most arresting and inventive collections of the past few years. Mary Szybist turns Christian mythology — her name is Mary, after all — on its head with all the reverence of a true believer. She’s a restless formal experimenter and a humble, compassionate observer of the complicated glory of the world. If you only read one book of poetry this year, you’re not reading enough poetry — but if it *must* be one, this should be it.*This book was also the winner of the 2013 National Book Award for poetry.*"

"The moment this book arrived, I knew it was the real thing: the long-awaited, carefully assembled, comprehensive guide to cooking Indian food on a weeknight. Raghavan Iyer is a terrific teacher — clear instructions, helpful photographs — and his recipes evoke much more complicated dishes with a handful of ingredients and some canny techniques."

"Johnny Cash became a legend long before he died, and there’s no doubt that he’s one of the most iconic American musicians of all time. Figures as beloved as the “Man in Black” present a hazard for biographers — it’s easy for chronicles of their lives to turn into hagiographies. Journalist Robert Hilburn deftly avoids this trap in Johnny Cash, which is as fascinating as it is honest. Cash wouldn’t have been who he was if it weren’t for his capacity for both love and sin, and Hilburn’s portrait of a genius in constant battle with his demons is as absorbing as any biography published this year."

"Lonely in her sepia-colored room, a young girl breaks through the boredom by drawing a door on the wall. The adventure begins as she enters into a world of wonder and excitement. Here, she risks her life to secure the freedom of a mysterious purple bird — and in doing so makes way for a surprising friendship. This absolutely gorgeous wordless picture book is a testament to the skill of author/illustrator Aaron Becker. As Journey ends, you’ll want to immediately return to the beginning to experience it again. (For ages 4 to 8)"

"We’ve seen the character Julio before — he was introduced in the second volume of Gilbert and Jamie Hernandez’s groundbreaking “Love and Rockets” series. Here, Gilbert Hernandez gives him the spotlight, chronicling the events of his singular life from his birth in the year 1900 to his death 100 years later. In between, there are pain and loss, war and disease, and — most movingly — throttled sexual desire that Julio cannot bring himself to acknowledge, much less name. With a quiet, carefully layered mastery, Hernandez shows us the times changing around Julio, while Julio remains unchanged — and alone."

"Good artists make good art; great artists change the way we think and talk about it. Charlie Parker was great, and his effect on jazz was so incredible and outsize, it’s easy to forget that he was only 34 when he died. Kansas City Lightning, by esteemed cultural critic Stanley Crouch, isn’t just a biography of Parker; it’s also a history of one of the most important times in American music. Crouch’s prose is, as usual, perfect — it takes a genius to write about one, perhaps, and Kansas City Lightning is a thoughtful, generous look at one of the country’s most important artists."

"Do you need another book claiming to offer quick weeknight dinners? Well, you need this one. Keepers is highly focused — it’s dinner and dinner only, and not one of its recipes will set you back more than 45 minutes. At the same time, these two former Saveur editors make no compromises on taste or quality. Even their shortcuts — a pack of frozen vegetables, store-bought puff pastry — are in the service of deliciousness (in this case, a fast chicken pot pie)."

"After covering daily news from Syria for more than two years, there are times I read history as a guide to the outcome: In the Middle East, it’s bad, and Scott Anderson’s book tells us why. It’s a group biography that weaves the stories of legendary British officer T.E. Lawrence, who played a key role in the Arab revolt against the Ottoman Turks during World War I; German Curt Prufer, who conspired with the Ottomans; Zionist agronomist Aaron Aaronsohn, who made the desert bloom; and American oil company representative William Yale, who spied for the State Department. Yale is the least accomplished character, but the hapless American gives Anderson the grist to deliver his verdict on U.S. policy then and now. Analyzing a muddled dispatch Yale sent to Washington, Anderson writes: “He was establishing a tradition of fundamentally misreading the situation in the Middle East that his successors in the American intelligence community would rigorously maintain for the next 95 years.” This is a book about muddling and meddling. It couldn’t come at a better time."

"The book should come with a warning label for football fans: Watching a game will never be the same after you read it. The authors tell painful stories of NFL players whose names you may recognize — Mike Webster, Junior Seau, Dave Duerson, to name a few. They introduce you to scientists who fell into researching football-related concussions almost by accident. And they ask tough questions of the NFL, without taking their conclusions too far."

"“You put together two things that have not been put together before. And the world is changed.” In this meditation on love, destiny and loss, Julian Barnes brings his not inconsiderable powers of reflection to tackle a subject that is both personal and yet undeniably universal. It begins as a story of hot air balloons, photography and love in a time of decadence and gradually develops into a profound and intimate account of his grief following the death of his wife. Visceral, exquisitely crafted, thoughtful and heartbreaking. This is an unforgettable book."

"In the latest novel from Australian master of subversive science fiction Max Barry, we get a magical realist take on surveillance and propaganda. Informed by the Tower of Babel story in the Bible, as well as aboriginal myth, this is a strange story about a world where art and mind control are inseparable. Poets in a shadowy group called simply the Organization write personalized propaganda, controlling individuals with words. Beautifully written and funny, this is a fairy tale satire for the NSA surveillance age."

"Ursula Todd is born, lives and dies, and then repeats the process over and over, as even the smallest choices change her fate completely (or not). Life After Life is dark and funny and suspenseful and sad all at the same time. You’ll never think of the Spanish flu the same way again."

"Timothy Hallinan, an accomplished mystery writer (check out his series set in Bangkok, featuring an American travel writer named Poke Rafferty), introduced Junior Bender in Crashed.. Bender, who lives in Los Angeles, makes his main living as a burglar. He also moonlights as a fixer: Southern California criminals know that if they get in a real jam, they can turn to Junior to get them out of trouble. When he’s hired to clear a former music industry talent spotter of murder, Junior realizes that the more he delves into the case, the more complex it becomes. And it’s likely that nobody’s going to be happy with the outcome of his investigation. The third novel in the Bender trilogy, The Fame Thief, also came out in 2013: It was a tossup for me to choose which one to include in this list. I’d recommend reading the novels in order, but you don’t absolutely need to — each one is as splendidly entertaining as the others."

"Love Is Power, Or Something Like That — a collection of arresting stories by A. Igoni Barrett — is so much more than its lyrical language, delicious detail and author’s love of English — Nigerian English and English English. A born storyteller, this young writer melds contemporary Nigeria — Africa’s most populous nation and arguably the continent’s most bewitching — with age-old wisdom. Is Barrett a modern-day sage? His prose may shock and startle; but with anguish, violence and cruelty comes compassion.  Barrett artfully captures humanity in these nine tales, adding layers to characters as memorable as Scrooge and Okonkwo.  A friend gobbled it up in one sitting — through the night.  A scrumptious read."

"Imagine a Jane Austen novel set in one of Philip K. Dick’s media-saturated worlds, and you’ve got the idea behind Love Minus Eighty. Will McIntosh’s terrific novel is set in a near-future world where the rich wear full-body computers and are constantly surrounded by virtual “followers” who hang onto their every conversation — while also rating them for hotness and intrigue. While an online dating coach yearns tragically for her colleague in a series of funny, light scenes, a more sinister story unfolds alongside. A cryogenics company creates a “bridesicle” program, where women who die young and beautiful are frozen until they can ensnare a man willing to marry them and pay for their revival and medical repairs."

"David Rakoff’s posthumous first novel, written in rhyming verse that’s more akin to Dr. Seuss than T.S. Eliot, is a seductive heartbreaker. Its 12 cleverly connected vignettes span much of the 20th century and are filled with the sly, sharp social commentary that made him a perennial favorite on This American Life. Spinning rhymes like “San Francisco” and “Crisco,” “paradise” and “pubic lice,” and “Christian Lacroix” and “bourgeois” while dying at 47 from cancer, Rakoff infused Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die, Cherish, Perish not just with his withering wit but with a piercing, wistful appreciation for life, love and art."

"The final book in a trilogy that began with Oryx and Crake has all the uncompromising indictment and wild, biting wit of Margaret Atwood’s very best work (though readers will need to be familiar with the first two books to make the most of this tale of what happened after the “flood”). The story follows a small group of radical environmentalists after a Viagra-like pill has wiped out most of humanity. The survivors band together in a world cleansed of corporations and carbon emissions and populated by supersmart pigs, genetically engineered sheep and a new breed of humans who will be the future of the Earth."

"Marisa Silver’s Mary Coin pulls you into the story behind — and beyond — photographer Dorothea Lange and the subject of her iconic, Depression-era photo Migrant Mother. As expertly cropped and framed as a fine photographic print, this compassionate historical novel is about steely fortitude, ferocious maternal devotion and guilt, and what it means to really focus and see deeply. It’s a beautiful read, as haunting as the portrait that inspired it, and would make an especially wonderful gift coupled with a book of Lange’s photographs."

"I have a boy, and although I gave birth to him and love him dearly, I sometimes look at him and wonder what alien spaceship dropped him off. So the minute I heard that Rosalind Wiseman was writing a book about boys, I knew I was getting it. (Wiseman also wrote Queen Bees And Wannabes, which inspired the film Mean Girls.)  This book explains so many of the things boys cannot, or will not, explain for themselves. It is based on solid research and, just as important, on the accounts of her “informants” — a diverse (or so she says) group of boys who agreed to answer her difficult questions truthfully. Although I felt at times she glossed over many of the very real racial and class differences that inform the way boys are seen and treated (stop-and-frisk, anyone?) I found much common sense and immediately useful information. Wiseman employs a researcher’s eye, a journalist’s sharp and accessible hand, and a mother’s heart. A rare combination indeed."

"Jesmyn Ward writes to keep her heart from exploding. *Men We Reaped,* an accounting of the deaths, in four years, of five men close to her, is beautifully written and gut-wrenchingly sad. “Grief doesn’t fade,” she writes. “Grief scabs over like my scars and pulls into new, painful configurations as it knits. It hurts in new ways.” Ward writes about her dead brother and dead friends with loving detail: their eyes, their smiles and the color of their skin. Her writing revives the dead men and allows them to speak from beyond the grave: “Hello. We are here. Listen.”"

"One of the great living masters of contemporary poetry, Frank Bidart is at the height of his powers in this extraordinary new book of short, midlength and long poems. With his trademark intensity, Bidart, once a friend and disciple of Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop, revisits his early work in searing new poems. Looking back on a long life, he recalls the pre-World War II music, movies and culture that has sustained his imagination for decades. When Bidart recalls his tortured coming out, the weight of his guilt and anguish is palpable — but so is his faith that art can make hardship not merely bearable, but almost unbearably beautiful."

"Carla Kaplan’s revelatory cultural history explores the lives of white women — collectively known to Harlemites by the nickname of “Miss Anne” — who risked family exile and social ostracism to be part of the artistic and political movements of the Harlem Renaissance. Blacks suspected them of sentimentality, as well as appropriating what was thought of as a more “primitive” culture. The white world, in turn, diagnosed “Miss Anne” as either a lunatic or a sexual vampire. British heiress, Nancy Cunard, for instance, was categorized by the U.S. State Department as a “white woman who had Gone Negro.” Throughout her fascinating book, Kaplan explores the heavy personal price “Miss Anne” paid for defying racial norms."

"Mo the monster has a mustache, and he looks marvelous! Soon all the other monsters are sporting mustaches, too. So Mo gets a scarf, and he looks sensational! Soon all the other monsters are sporting scarves, too. This makes Mo mad. Everyone keeps copying him. When Mo finally confronts his friends, he learns why they want to be like him. Ben Clanton’s Mo’s Mustache may be populated with monsters, but there’s nothing scary in this simply illustrated and supersilly book about individuality. Whether you have a mustache or not, you’ll find yourself sharing a happy “Huzzah!” along with Mo. (For ages 3 to 7)"

"You might know David Wiesner from his slightly off-kilter picture books about strange happenings. In his Caldecott winner, Tuesday, an otherwise normal day turns strange when frogs begin to fly through the air on lily pads. His latest book, Mr. Wuffles, is similarly surreal. At the beginning, we meet Mr. Wuffles the cat. He lives in a normal house — wood floors, striped wallpaper — but behind the radiator, a small spaceship full of little green aliens has crash-landed. Wiesner tells the story of Mr. Wuffles and the aliens without words. The illustrations are intricate and often funny, as the aliens plot to outwit the cat and escape out the window. Very young readers will pore over the pictures, and any child with a cat will never see the family pet in quite the same way again. (For ages 4 to 8)"

"Nevermore shall you wonder what it might have been like to fall deeply in love with Edgar Allan Poe. In 1845 Manhattan, the author was the 19th century version of a rock star, and the poetess who narrates this novel witnesses the smashing success of The Raven even as Poe’s consumptive child-bride languishes. Famous personages, from Walt Whitman to Margaret Fuller to Mathew Brady, make cameos at New York’s literary soirees, its “kissing bridges,” Niblo’s Garden and healthful East River swimming parties. Romance blooms in a city where green meadows are turning overnight into row houses. Lynn Cullen’s Mrs. Poe nails the period."

"My Education can be roughly described as an academic novel, but unlike many books in that category, it’s thrilling and edgy. There’s no school song here, and nobody sits in a study sipping sherry. Instead, Susan Choi’s main character, graduate student Regina Gottlieb, falls madly in love with her sexy professor’s gorgeous wife, and they begin an affair that becomes all-consuming, causing Regina to completely lose interest in everyone and everything else — including her studies. Choi writes evocatively and excitingly about passion, and equally so about youth — that fleeting, fascinating and all-too-recognizable time of life."

"The prolific science-fiction writer Charles Stross is so famous for his speculative economic tales that even Nobel laureate Paul Krugman is a fan. And this book is probably his greatest work of economic science fiction yet, a whimsical retelling of Debt: The First 5000 Years by David Graeber. It’s the tale of a sexbot in a future where humans have gone extinct multiple times, and a financial instrument that could destroy the solar system. Funny and smart, this is the perfect mind-bender for people who are addicted to The Economist."

"Charles Simic is justifiably famous, having taken poetry by storm in the late ‘60s and ‘70s with compact lyrics that combine a wry, Eastern European sense of humor with memories of a childhood haunted by war. Anyone who likes poetry has probably read at least a few of his surreal-seeming poems, which tell more of the truth than they let on. This the first selection of Simic’s poems to span the six decades during which Simic has been writing, making it an essential book."

"Dash Shaw makes comics that set out to unsettle, using the unique tools the medium provides to expose discomfiting truths about relationships both familial and romantic. A proud experimentalist, Shaw often shuns tidy narrative conventions in favor of raw emotion. His striking and enigmatic graphic novel New School, about two brothers who find work at a massive historical theme park called Clockworld, allows him to poke at a host of ideas about foreignness, sexuality and, obliquely, the making of art. It’s a masterful, gorgeous and defiantly odd work that demands close attention — and richly rewards it."

"This exciting debut novel from futurist Ramez Naam is about a group of graduate students who create an incredible new technology called Nexus that allows people to run software in their brains — and even link their minds together like computers in a network. But in Naam’s mildly dystopian future, the US government is trying to shut down any human-enhancement tech that could prove dangerous. Our heroes are in a cat-and-mouse game with government agents, fleeing to Thailand, where they discover that a secret group of Buddhist monks and scientists has plans for Nexus that could usher in a new era of empathy and peace – or generate brainwashed soldiers who do nothing but obey. This is a fascinating look at an all-too-plausible future."

"This big, inventive novel is about the dark secrets of a creepy film director, Stanislav Cordova, his mysterious daughter who has fallen to her death, and the investigative journalist who tries to figure out the whole story. But while it’s called a novel, Night Film wants to be a lot more than that. Marisha Pessl uses all kinds of made-up documents: newspaper clippings, photos, police reports, magazine articles supposedly taken from Time and Rolling Stone, and transcripts of chatter on a highly culty, closed online community called The Blackboard, to tell its thriller of a story."

"Nathaniel Rich focuses on a Midwestern mathematician named Mitchell Zukor, who develops a wild talent for seeing worst-case scenarios about climate and ecology. When a storm bigger than any Sandy we’ve ever known floods most of New York City, Zukor, with the help of a young woman from his office, comes into his own. The scenes of the flooding of Manhattan are as terrifically described as any of the best science-fiction we have. A knockout of a book by a young writer to keep your eye on."

"Curiosity and creativity collide in this exuberant biography of Albert Einstein. Silent as a young child, when Einstein finally did speak up, his curiosity got him in trouble. Yet nothing could stop the young scientist from constantly questioning the world around him. Mocked for being different, ultimately his discoveries brought worldwide acclaim. As an old man, Einstein remained a quirky individual, right down to his love of ice cream cones and his lack of socks. Vladimir Radunsky’s energetic drawings perfectly complement Jennifer Berne’s words. This book is ideal for any child who has ever wondered, “why?” (For ages 6 to 9)"

"The year is 1871, the setting is rural Wisconsin, and the unidentifiable dead body is not Agatha Burkhardt — or so believes her 13-year-old sister, Georgie. Determined to uncover the truth, Georgie runs away, armed with her rifle and her ardent belief that her sister is still alive. Georgie follows the trail of the pigeon hunters Agatha was last seen with, unaware that someone is following her as she heads straight for danger. In One Came Home, author Amy Timberlake seamlessly weaves together history and humor, passenger pigeons and criminals, to create a suspenseful page-turner. (For ages 9 to 12)"

"Former Chez Panisse chef and columnist David Tanis has a gift for sure-footed, pleasurable kitchen moments. One Good Dish is an idiosyncratic volume, with oddball chapters like “A Dab of This and That” (condiments), “Strike While the Iron Is Hot” (seared food) and “Eating With a Spoon” (food in bowls). Yet Tanis’ excitement at a snack of mackerel rillettes on toast or wok-seared strips of lamb is so genuine and so palpable, it’s impossible not to tumble headfirst into sheer gluttony with this beautifully shot, giftable collection."

"Lady Philippa (Pippa) Marbury is headed into marriage with a limited understanding of what is expected in the marriage bed, so she approaches the most notorious rake in London for some answers. She’s a woman of science, after all, and what better way to approach a mystery than through research? Mr. Cross is intrigued and bemused by the intrepid Pippa, especially as she faces down gamblers, blackmailers and other evildoers to stake a claim for love and happiness. This delightful historical romance has a satisfying modern sensibility — and an early-Victorian Ocean’s Eleven spin."

"Following the success of Jerusalem and Plenty, Yotam Ottolenghi’s signature cookbook, originally published in England in 2008, is finally available in a U.S. edition. I rate cookbooks on their IQs — that’s Irresistibility Quotients, or the proportion of recipes I can’t wait to make — and Ottolenghi’s brightly flavored, glistening Mediterranean-Israeli-Arab-inflected recipes score high. How’s this for mouthwatering: “Cauliflower and cumin fritters with lime yogurt,” “Turkey and corn meatballs with roasted red pepper sauce” and “Apple and olive oil cake with maple icing”?"

"Brenna Yovanoff’s previous The Space Between lit fireworks in my heart (two words: demon baby), and she handles the very different material in Paper Valentine beautifully. This is a serial killer story. It’s also a ghost story and an awkward, endearing romance (reminding me of Clarissa and Clifford from a certain formative 1990s TV show.) Hannah is haunted by the ghost of Lillian, her anorexic best friend. Then a serial killer starts targeting young girls around town, and both Lillian and Hannah become obsessed with finding him. The terror builds palpably over the course of a long, hot summer and breaks with a surprising payoff."

"When it comes to British royal history, most Americans’ memories extend from Lady Diana to young Prince George, and not too much before that. But it would be a shame if U.S. readers missed out on Anne Somerset’s wonderful new biography of Anne, the first Queen of Great Britain, whose five-year reign coincided with some of the nation’s nastiest religious and political fights. Even if you don’t know much about 18th century Europe — and let’s face it, not many of us do — you’ll find yourself absorbed by Somerset’s lucid, sharp prose and her balanced portrait of one of Great Britain’s most misunderstood monarchs."

"Benjamin Percy surpasses the considerable promise of his earlier works in this story of werewolves, extremism and revolution. When new regulations further threaten the rights and very existence of the Lycan (werewolf) minority, some elect to withdraw to the designated “homeland,” others to take up arms. In the midst of this upheaval, two young people are slowly drawn together in an unlikely friendship that could hold the key to survival. With a relentless pace from the opening scene onward, this is genre at its best: dark, bloody and compelling — offering comment on the “real” world we live in, and the choices we have made."

"Lucy Knisley’s comic memoir Relish contains a series of stories from her life in the culinary world interspersed with some of her favorite recipes, all of it lovingly illustrated and annotated in her bright, cartoony style. That style is key to the book’s appeal, because Knisley isn’t a food hipster — she’s a food nerd. Which is to say: She doesn’t lecture; she enthuses. Relish isn’t an excuse to lord her expertise over others. It’s a means to connect with them, to get them to understand why she loves what she loves — and, maybe, to get them to love it, too."

"The town of Oakpine, Wyo., doesn’t exist on maps, but in this new book, Ron Carlson has done a splendid job of making a reader feel at home there. It’s also where Jimmy Brand, a successful writer who spent the past 30 years in New York City, returns to die. Long-lost friends gather around him, resuscitating their old rock ’n’ roll band in his honor. The music of everyday human speech and the rhythm section of the human heart resonate in this prairie song of a novel."

"As you read this weird and mesmerizing collection you find Yoko Ogawa ascending into an orbit at least as high as Haruki Murakami’s — as in the story “Sewing for the Heart,” which features a bag designer whose customer is a woman with her heart growing on the outside of her chest; or in the flatly told but utterly bizarre trio of linked stories “Welcome to the Museum of Torture,” “The Man Who Sold Braces” and “The Last Hour of the Bengal Tiger.” Ogawa stands on the shoulders of giants, as the saying goes. But this collection may linger in your mind — it does in mine — as a delicious, perplexing, absorbing and paradoxically singular experience."

"Gregory Orr is a kind of oracular bard, praising, in short lyrics that comprise three long sequences in this book, the enduring capacity of the poetic imagination to make real headway toward healing the wounds of old trauma. Orr himself accidentally shot his own brother in a childhood hunting accident, a memory that permeates all his work and, paradoxically, becomes a source of extreme compassion. In these poems, you’ll find the year’s most convincing case for why poetry matters."

"After Code Name Verity, Elizabeth Wein has returned to the world of civilian aircraft pilots in World War II England. Rose Justice is an American pilot determined do her bit. But a fit of reckless bravery leads to devastating consequences when Rose — just 18 — gets caught by the Germans. She ends up in the Ravensbrueck women’s concentration camp, where doctors operate on political prisoners as experimental “rabbits.” Wein is brutal in her depiction of the last, hellish winter of the war, and the wounds Rose and her friends must learn to live with afterward. No one writes female friendships with as much nuance and subtlety. The bonds formed and sacrifices made in their impossible circumstances will stay with me for a long time."

"Marissa Meyer’s debut, Cinder, retold Cinderella with a resourceful cyborg mechanic who left her foot on the palace stairs. I wasn’t sure how I felt about adding Little Red Riding Hood to the mix, but Scarlet won me over within a chapter. Meyer’s mashup of fairytales with science fictional worldbuilding works its magic again, with French Scarlet searching frantically for her grandmother — with the help of a bio-engineered big bad Wolf, of course."

"Activism pervades Brenda Hillman’s work, nowhere more than in this collection — the fourth and final installment in her series of elemental meditations (previous books have treated air, water and earth). Here, she gathers not only jumpy, experimental lyrics but also scraps of occasional prose and images — anything that will help her make the case that the world is a mess and it’s up to us to fix it."

"It’s 32,000 years ago and an adolescent — Kim Stanley Robinson calls him Loon — who has been orphaned and taken under the wing of his tribe’s shaman hits the road and discovers all he needs to know to survive. Maybe it’s because the world Robinson creates feels so authentic and complete, but for several nights running, something happened: I dreamed I was living in Loon’s world, traveling in the same tribe, trekking along streams and rivers, through forest and over hill in an ancient state of mind."

"Patricia Volk’s grandfather introduced pastrami to America — a story she told in her evocative 2002 memoir, Stuffed. Volk introduces something just as revolutionary and delicious in Shocked, a memoir that focuses on two titanic role models she embraced as a girl: her knockout of a mother, Audrey, and the famous haute couture designer, Elsa Schiaparelli. Volk brings something of Schiaparelli’s surrealist approach to Shocked (whose book jacket is the eye-popping shade of “shocking pink” that Schiaparelli invented). The narrative is exuberantly loopy and the gorgeous color photos of creations like Schiaparelli’s high-heeled, ocelot fur bowling shoes and “lobster dress” don’t just supplement the text, but extend it outward."

"A marvelous, career-crowning, 80-poem anthology with brief essays and headnotes offers Robert Pinsky’s account of how he learned to write (and read) poetry by studying the masters of the form. The poems range from Michelangelo’s lament about the difficulties of painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel to Gregory Corso on marriage; Frank O’Hara, Yeats and Marianne Moore on poetry; Whitman on the Civil War dead; Sappho, Pound and Sylvia Plath on love; and Sterling Brown on a sleeping Harlem."

"Humor, tragedy and beautiful writing mark this series of stories chronicling events in the first three decades or so of professional bird-watcher Nathan Lochmueller’s life. Here’s a good example of his prose, in which Lochmueller compares the ovenbird with the Kentucky warbler: “The Kentucky warbler is more sadistic [than the ovenbird]. She doesn’t feign injury, but she leads you away from the nest until you are ankle deep in mud or rattlesnakes or both.” The cumulative effect of these stories is the realization that although we don’t always get what we want, we somehow end up wanting the things we’ve gotten. Hey, isn’t there a Rolling Stones song that says much the same thing?"

"Alice McDermott’s latest, quietly luminous novel is near-perfect, an extraordinary book about an absolutely ordinary Irish-American woman who grows up in Brooklyn, marries a good man, raises four children and lives long enough to survive the loss of parents, brother and husband. Out of this quotidian stuff McDermott addresses issues of time, mortality, family and vision and composes a moving picture of a life lived small but full."

"Twelve-year-old chemist and detective Flavia de Luce is just fun to read about. In her latest book (the fifth in the series), she tries to unravel a mystery involving hidden corpses, missing treasure, secret passageways, family secrets and a surefire way to scare the heck out of the vicar’s wife."

"Tom Barbash is a master of the intriguing first sentence: “My son, Rajiv, is sleeping with a student from my Dante class.” “Kistler’s second winter in upstate New York was a season of fires, snowstorms, and deaths.” He writes of a newly single mom who invades her son’s love life during his college break, and of a man just deserted by his wife who hosts their annual party to watch “cloud-sized cartoon characters” being inflated for the Thanksgiving parade. “To Amy!” he calls out drunkenly, realizing he is at the start of the “darkest part of his life.” Barbash’s miniature dramas sparkle with grace and wit."

"James More, a British secret agent, has been captured by a Somali desert affiliate of al-Qaida. He is sustained in his captivity by the memory of a brief affair in a hotel on the cold coast of Atlantic-facing France with a scientist named Danielle, who studies currents and life on the ocean floor. We get to study these lovers, both apart and together, and the result is luminescent with joy and hope, and muddied by grief. It’s a lyrical thriller about revolt, love, deserts, oceans, lust and terror."

"It’s hard to talk about J.F. Powers, the Catholic writer who crafted a modern American classic with his 1962 novel, Morte d’Urban, without resorting to superlatives. Powers, who died in 1999, is possibly the most underappreciated fiction author of his generation, and quite likely the funniest. This collection of Powers’ letters to his family and friends is addictive, delightful and alternately hilarious and heartbreaking. Edited by his daughter, journalist Katherine A. Powers, Suitable Accommodations is a fine introduction to the work of the greatest Minnesota writer in history."

"Infographics, which utilize eye-popping design to convey data with cleverness and clarity, are, let’s admit, a fairly nerdy pursuit already. Tim Leong takes the whole thing several steps further, creating flat-out beautiful charts and diagrams to quantify and calibrate the chaotic world of superhero culture with wit and ruthless efficiency. (“A Venn Diagram of Superhero Comic Tropes,” for example, reveals the five heroes and one villain who exist at the nexus of Cape, Tragically Dead Parents, and Underwear on the Outside.) Hugely fun, and impeccably done."

"Bake baklava? Forget it. Mine always comes out gummy and sodden, unlike the crisply perfumed trays I get UPS’d from Detroit’s Shatila Bakery. (There, now you have my best dinner party secret.) That unctuous alchemy of nuts and honey dates from the 10th century, when princes and caliphs wrote cookbooks, sometimes in rhyme. Habeeb, Muna and Leila Salloum’s recipes stretch from the Gulf States to the Levant to North Africa and include both contemporary and historical versions (although sheep fat is thankfully replaced by butter). They also trace the DNA of Arab sweets in food from around the world, including cannoli, tres leches cake and ice cream cones."

"Nothing says spring like baseball, no matter where you are. This little boy is especially lucky — he gets to experience baseball with two grandfathers: Pop Pop in America and Ji Ji in Japan. Some things are very different. The American pitcher throws a 95 mile-per-hour fastball, while the Japanese tousu throws a 153 kilometer-per-hour sokkyu. In America, they cheer “Win! Win! Win!” In Japan, they cheer “Do your best!” Hot dogs and peanuts in America; soba noodles and edamame in Japan. But love of the game and the pleasures of hanging out with Grandpa are universal. (For ages 2 to 6)"

"Who wouldn’t want the opportunity to take a tree from a bare trunk to spring blossoms, to fruitful summer, to loss in autumn, to winter snow, and back to spring beginnings again? Simple instructions in spare, rhyming text encourage readers to add and subtract elements — tap once to add a leaf, touch buds to turn them into flowers, shake the tree to make the apples kerplop to the ground. Christie Matheson offers children the opportunity to help a tree grow and change throughout a year — what a powerful feeling! (For ages 4 to 8)"

"George Saunders continues to reinvent the short story in this rambunctious and compassionate fourth collection. He offers wildly absurd tales like “The Semplica Girl Diaries,” in which “SGs” are trophy acquisitions, live lawn ornaments of young women from places like Laos and Somalia, and “Escape from Spiderhead,” in which a young inmate finds a way out of experiments triggering faux lust and despair. And he captures the strange flow of our disjointed times in tales of a teenage girl threatened with violence and a cancer patient intent on suicide who finds his life spirit uncannily rekindled. The artist’s job, Saunders has said, is to be “a conduit to mystery.” Job well done."

"Award-winning journalist David Finkel’s book Thank You For Your Service is a startlingly intimate and moving portrait of the “after-war” — the enduring emotional wounds of battle for those who’ve returned from America’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Finkel has covered those wars from the front lines for The Washington Post, but here he embeds in the suburban homes and broken families of soldiers living with the ghosts of those battles. There have been many articles about post-traumatic stress disorder and the broken state of mental health care for veterans. But in Finkel’s beautifully written and deeply empathetic book, those issues become individual lives and families, impossible to forget."

"Another book on the financial crisis and its aftermath? To borrow a phrase, “This time is different.” Neil Irwin of The Washington Post reinvigorates a familiar tale by focusing on the partnership of three men: Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, Bank of England Governor Mervyn King and European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet. Worst idea ever for a buddy movie? Not exactly. Each man is fascinating in his own right, and each was prepared to act on the lessons of history. The result is a deep study of the role of central banks in modern economies and the staggering power of the bankers running them."

"Steve Jenkins has written and gorgeously illustrated more than 30 books about the natural world and shares some 300 of the most fascinating creatures — both the exotic and the everyday — in this compendium of the animal kingdom. It’s basically his highlights reel. Here we meet the fastest, slowest, oldest, newest, biggest, smallest, earliest, most deadly and just plain weirdest. We learn about animal families, predators, defenses, extremes and the story of life itself. But it’s the truly beautiful collage illustrations that make this collection so very special. Includes a special section on Jenkins’ creative process, from idea to completion. A treasure that animal lovers will want to browse through again and again. (For ages 6 to 9)"

"Tess Delaney’s life is upended when she discovers a family she never knew she had and a long-lost heirloom that could save their land and the business they’ve built since arriving in California just after World War II. As a treasure hunter on the cusp of reaching all her professional goals, Tess risks it all when she digs into her family’s past, uncovering secrets that may offer understanding, second chances and a shot at romance. Mixed in with the engaging contemporary storyline are flashbacks to Nazi-occupied Denmark and the noble actions of Danish citizens during the war. Intriguing, compelling and lovely."

"Maile Meloy is one of my favorite adult writers, so I was thrilled in 2011 when she published The Apothecary, a book I could read with my daughters. Fourteen-year-old Janie and her friend Benjamin, the son of an apothecary, have to save the world from a nuclear bomb. It sounds far-fetched, but the story feels realistic in Meloy’s able hands. We couldn’t wait to see what would happen next to Janie and Benjamin in The Apprentices, published this year. The beginning is a little clunky, as Meloy tries to catch you up on what happened in the first book, but once again she gives us great characters, action, intrigue and history. (For ages 10 and up)"

"A writer, a painter, a composer. Two of them famous; the third not so much. All died before age 40, leaving masterpieces of art (well, the writer and composer anyway!). Nicholas Delbanco says that Stephen Crane, Dora Carrington and George Gershwin had certain characteristics in common as young creators: All were energetic, exuberant, passionate about their art and received early attention and praise. The book has an academic feel, with literary quotations and helpful analysis. I was moved, thinking about such disparate talents and ambitions emerging in a blaze, then, sadly, dying before their talents could mature."

"After rescuing her abducted sister and two others from a brothel, Abigail Chantry loses her position as a governess. The four women must figure out how to survive with limited skills and no connections. When they discover their elderly neighbor, Lady Bea, is basically a prisoner to her servants, they take over her care and the household. Their actions seem suspicious to Max, Lady Bea’s nephew — so Max and Abigail, who are clearly meant for each other, must overcome mistrust and other obstacles to find happiness. Anne Gracie shines in this historical romance filled with clever plotting and rich, layered characters — especially luminescent Abigail."

"Beyond true crime, Oscar Martinez’s tremendous investigative report on how thousands of Central American migrants travel through Mexico to the U.S. border reads more like true horror. Far from home, in legal limbo, the migrants often fall victim to robbery, rape, torture or mass kidnapping by drug traffickers. Why would anyone undertake such a harrowing journey just to become an illegal gardener, housekeeper or factory employee in America? Martinez has the answer."

"Three years ago, Faith Holland left her hometown after being abandoned at the altar. Now she’s back, summoned by her family to help at their winery, and she’s forced to revisit the unfinished business she left behind. The person she most wants to avoid is Levi Cooper, the groom’s best friend, and the one who forced the couple to be honest about Jeremy’s sexuality. Facing Levi means she’ll have to confront all sorts of emotions she’s swept under the rug, and she might have to admit he’s indeed the best man — for her. Kristan Higgins just keeps getting better and better."

"Don’t think poetry: think biopic. This collection is ripped from the history books, but not limited to the facts; it’s suspenseful, even when we all know the ending; and part of the appeal is watching an artist inhabit a famous figure. The actor here is the poet Adrian Matejka, who masterfully plays the parts of the great African-American heavyweight Jack Johnson and his loving but brutalized women. The grim Jim Crow South, the flashy celebrity lifestyle, the shadowboxing with self-doubt — everything here drives toward Johnson’s legendary Fight of the Century against white champion James Jeffries. These poems are shocking and propulsive, like a prizefighter spitting blood to a soundtrack of Verdi; it’s impossible to look away."

"In Kent Wascom’s The Blood of Heaven, the aging slave trader Angel Woolsack confides his story of coming to manhood on the unruly American frontier in the first days of the 19th century. We travel the bayou-fringed lands stretching from Pensacola to New Orleans with this son of a firebrand preacher, encountering characters and events out of underremembered scraps of U.S. history: the Kemper Brothers’ rebellion, Aaron Burr’s seditious land grab, the birth of Florida. Slaves, plantation scions and dirty politicians throng this cracked-open world, as Wascom’s propulsive narrative takes us into the dark, fomenting soul of the South."

"Jillian Weise, who won this year’s Laughlin Award for an outstanding second book of poetry, is a force of nature. This collection follows up her debut, The Amputee’s Guide to Sex, with what happens when sex becomes love that just won’t go away — no matter how unsuitable the beloved seems to be. This is love poetry for the 21st century: hot, hip and heart-rending."

"When a childless young couple discover an abandoned boy on their porch, they open their home and their hearts to him. Though Jacob does not talk, he manages to speak eloquently through his music and art. As the days turn into weeks, the couple learn to love the boy, and later live in fear that he might leave them. The Boy On The Porch is at once heartbreaking and heartwarming, and a testament to the human spirit. This slim novel is rich in its simplicity, proving once again that Newbery Medal-winner Sharon Creech is a master storyteller. (For ages 8 to 12)"

"A dirty little secret of being an NPR host (OK, for me anyway) is that we read what we have to read, not necessarily what we want to read. But when I saw that Elizabeth Strout had something new, I put it on my personal reading list and devoured it in every spare minute I had. The Burgess Boys is set in Maine and is about two brothers who are bonded by a childhood tragedy. They’ve each grown up and more or less recovered, but they live very separate lives, until they reluctantly go back home to help a nephew who has been accused of a hate crime. If you have difficult relations with a sibling, if you have ever wondered why a seemingly nice kid does something hurtful and mean, if you’ve ever had an internal struggle about new people in your neighborhood … this book offers a gentle but clear-eyed way of thinking about those things."

"In The Circle, David Eggers thankfully doesn’t slam you over the head with WHAT’S WRONG WITH THE KIDS TODAY. Instead, he walks you through a Silicon Valley company — the Circle — so very familiar (at least in its own self-mythologizing) that you feel right at home with his almost-heroine, Mae, the newest Circle employee. Mae doesn’t just embrace this world; she thrives in it. And it’s not just because there are bowling alleys in the employee lounge like a certain tech company we know (cough Google ).  This is about the slow boil of the frog: how one gets acclimated to shifting values about privacy, respect and what makes a meaningful relationship."

"Welcome back the other kind of vampire: Mad, bad and dangerous to know, Gavriel is a worthy successor to Lord Byron (the supposed real-life inspiration for 19th century vampire literature, and certainly an influence on Gavriel, who might have spotted him a few rounds at a Venetian gaming hell). Holly Black never lets you forget that vampires are, before everything else, human predators. The morning after a wild party, Tana wakes up to find everyone dead — except her infuriating ex-boyfriend and a red-eyed boy. To get her vampire-bitten ex to safety, they go on what might be the best (or the worst) road trip in YA history, straight to the heart of Coldtown — a chillingly believable mix of prison camp and old-Vegas glamour."

"Anchee Min’s follow-up to her memoir, Red Azalea, about her life in China under the Cultural Revolution, picks up the narrative 20 years later — when Min arrives in America, with a mere $500 in her pocket and a plan to study art in Chicago. How she goes from terrified student who could barely speak English to best-selling author is a gripping tale — the kind of memoir you’ll find yourself talking about at dinner parties in a fever of inspiration. It’s the ultimate immigrant story — but its power lies in how much it lays bare the odd paradoxes of this country, even as Min struggles to find her place."

"A thoroughly satisfying crime novel — even if you didn’t know it was really written by J.K. Rowling. Set in London, with a private investigator appealing enough that you’ll long for his next assignment, The Cuckoo’s Calling is tightly plotted and faithful to the genre in all the right places. More than this, it’s an original tale with robust characterization and witty, yet forceful criticism of our obsession with celebrity and of the destructive power of the press. The best part is that you won’t be able to guess, until nearly the very end, whodunit."

"This book serves as a portal in prose, through which readers fully enter bloody, raucous England seven years after the undoing of the infamous Gunpowder Plot, when Catholic terrorists attempted to blow up the Parliament of the Protestant King James I. Jeanette Winterson’s bold sentences and pithy but authentic scenes quickly build sympathy for her outlier characters: the naysayers; the mad, violated children; the same-sex lovers. Any reader who crosses over into this novel will remember vividly where he or she has traveled."

"Not so much an encyclopedia as a compendium of funny, sad and surprisingly moving fables from the pre-history of the world, featuring capricious bird-gods, feckless shamans, daring quests and, of course, unrequited love. Isabel Greenberg’s hugely imaginative and sardonically funny mythscapes intersect biblical tales at oblique angles, and her bold visual style captures everything from the most astonishing spectacle (i.e., the roiling chaos of world-creation) to the achingly small and human (i.e., a disapproving glance) with wit and expressiveness."

"It feels like cheating to put Donna Tartt’s extraordinary third novel in a “books of the year” list. And yet, there are few 800-page novels in the world that, immediately after finishing, I have felt the urge to pick up from the beginning again in a desperate attempt to repeat the experience. The Goldfinch begins with a shocking and tragic event that leaves 13-year-old Theodore Decker without a parent and in possession of a stolen Dutch masterwork. Winding its way through Manhattan, Las Vegas, Amsterdam — all dark and druggy and dreamy and bleak — Goldfinch is the rare novel that prompts you to read a beautiful sentence out loud even as you gobble it whole for the plot. A great big Victorian novel that is still distinctively 21st century, it’s a book that practices what it preaches: great art seduces, obsesses, and yet, connects."

"You may know the story of John Brown’s unsuccessful raid on Harpers Ferry, but author James McBride’s retelling of the events leading up to it is so imaginative, and at times comic, you’ll race to the finish. The tale is told by a young slave from the Kansas Territory, Henry Shackleford, who’s around 12 when he’s freed by Brown — who mistakes him for a girl. It’s an error that goes uncorrected, and Henry, dubbed “Little Onion” by his new companion, finds the disguise useful as he travels with Brown and his men. Onion meets more than one historical character on his journey — there’s even an outlandish vignette starring a drunken Frederick Douglass. But through Onion’s eyes, it’s the famed abolitionist he calls “Old Man” who really comes alive — radical and obsessive, and ultimately doomed. This book was also the winner of the 2013 National Book Award for fiction."

"Laura, a middle-aged British woman, buys a quaint holiday home in Gost, Croatia, and arrives one summer to fix it up. She doesn’t ask why the house is empty, nor does she seem to acknowledge the terrible war the country has survived. But the story of the village and of the house is slowly revealed to her by her hired man, Duro. As his relationship with Laura and her children develops, so too does the reader’s understanding of the pity of war and the price of silence. A thoughtful and original work from an author not afraid of asking uncomfortable questions."

"The House Girl’s premise is compelling. It’s easy to get swept up in this quietly dramatic novel, an interwoven depiction of two heroines separated by 150 years. A 17-year-old slave, Josephine, in pre-Civil War Virginia, is a brilliant, overlooked visual artist. Lina, a young attorney in 2004 Manhattan, tackles an unprecedented reparations case that names Josephine’s descendant as plaintiff. As recounted by fresh-voiced debut novelist Tara Conklin, both stories explore our roots, delineating what makes us flee and what makes us whole."

"If Agatha Christie had adored Michel de Montaigne and Honore de Balzac, she might have produced something like this deliciously deep murder mystery. The novel begins with a seemingly random crime: A businessman is stabbed to death by a homeless madman in Madrid. The solution is a humdinger. But the best parts occur in Javier Marías’ hypnotizing meditations on marriage, love, grief, longing, envy, literature and betrayal. As sophisticated as a Bach fugue, The Infatuations is also so intimate that the chapter breaks feel almost like breaths."

"It’s hard to write well about modern friendship — as hard, perhaps, as it is to nurture one. Meg Wolitzer’s latest — and probably finest — follows a group of friends who meet at arts camp in upstate New York, and go on to a mixture of great successes and minor failures. The characters remain friends for the rest of their lives, and the nature of those friendships and how they ebb and flow within those successes and failures are the novel’s most striking achievement. What does it mean to covet a beloved friend’s accomplishment, and to really envy his success? Wolitzer writes convincingly about teenagers, and who they become as grown-ups. And she really captures that magical period where all teenagers thought they would grow up to be as special as they were the night of the school play — only to find that life is less exciting, and more interesting (ha!) than they even thought."

"Laura van den Berg writes risky stories about the secrets we keep from each other, and from ourselves. Her settings evoke mysterious yearnings. A woman trying to learn how her brother, a scientist, died at an isolated expedition site in Antarctica wishes she had shared with him the secret his first love told her years before when they all shared a house in Cambridge, Mass. Two sisters, whose father disappeared when they were teens, set up shop as private investigators in Florida, with disastrous results. Reading these strange, profound noirish stories is a timely reminder: When we act, there will be consequences."

"Foodies and Francophiles alike will relish this debut novel about Jean-Marie d’Aumout, whom we first meet crunching beetles as a starving orphaned son of nobility in 1723. He goes on to be educated as an aristocrat, fall in love frequently and serve as witness to a century of vast changes. Jonathan Grimwood details d’Aumont’s outsized appetites: for the bliss of Roquefort, for raw trout, for the braised heart of a wolf whose neck he has broken in the woods. His many adventures include corresponding with Voltaire and becoming Lord Master of the Menagerie at Versailles, but The Last Banquet always comes back to the faculty of taste. Flamingo tongues cooked “in the Roman style,” anyone?"

"Of all the novels I’ve reviewed in 2013, this is the one that everyone — from my middle-aged friends to my hip graduate student TAs — wants to borrow. Adelle Waldman’s debut is a comic novel of ideas that tracks the loves and literary ambitions of 30-year-old Nate Piven, who lives in Brooklyn. Nate and his smarty-arty friends spend their days writing essays on topics like “Yoga as the New Orientalism” and their evenings flirting and quaffing craft brewed beers. You’d think all that erudition might make Nate a “better” person, but, alas, he’s just another well-read bounder — one his girlfriends and Waldman’s readers find hard to resist."

"Despite its nominations for multiple prizes, including the Booker and the National Book Award, Jhumpa Lahiri’s second novel has provoked decidedly mixed reactions. Unlike her earlier books, which focus on the culture gap between Bengali immigrants and their American-raised offspring, The Lowland is about the abiding grip of the past on a “family of solitaries” bound together more by painful tragedy, bad choices and secrets than by love. It isn’t perfect, but I loved it for her compassion even for her coldest characters, her shimmering imagery of water and light, and her ability to address the essential loneliness of the human condition with assured, muted storytelling."

"Everyone in London is astounded when Felix Rivendale, the Marquess of Wrenworth, pursues Louisa Cantwell — she’s charming enough, perhaps, but a complete nobody by high society’s standards. Secretly, Louisa and Felix share a racy courtship and, soon, a marriage. Lord Wrenworth learned long ago that risking his heart was unacceptable, so he’s determined to keep it safe and sound … even if his fetching wife might be his perfect match and best chance for happiness. With flawless, breathtaking storytelling and subtle, perceptive characterization, Sherry Thomas leads the reader on a roller coaster of heart-wrenching emotion and romance."

"Not many books are simultaneously hilarious and terrifying, but Maureen Johnson pulled off the trick in her previous book, The Name of the Star. In this latest installment, transplanted Louisiana teen Rory is trying to navigate a posh British boarding school. Luckily, Rory has a story for everything, makes friends easily and learns the word “snog” in record time. Unluckily, she chokes on a piece of meat, nearly dies, and discovers that she can see ghosts. After the explosive events of the first novel, neither Rory nor her friends can go back to their old lives. Johnson deepens her ghostly mythos, the story moves in unexpected but believable directions, and the ending walloped me in the teeth."

"Daniel Woodrell is best-known for dark tales of the Ozarks (think Winter’s Bone). This book, also set in the Ozarks, is a fictional account of an explosion and fire at a dance hall in 1929 in the town where Woodrell’s family is from. Many of the characters are based on real people, including the maid who was inspired by Woodrell’s own grandmother. In her version of the events that led to the fire, the rules of class that govern the town and the passion of illicit love prove to be a dangerous and deadly combination. This is a short book, but Woodrell’s writing makes you want to slow down and savor a story told by a master."

"Nora Ephron began her writing career as a cub reporter for The New York Post, and during her lifetime she was a journalist, essayist, novelist, screenwriter, playwright and, even briefly, a blogger. All these sides are on display in this volume, which contains the novel Heartburn and the script to her Broadway play *Lucky Guy, * as well as much more, including her brilliant early essays, which go back to way before she felt bad about her neck. Ephron, who died in 2012, is served well by this collection, which showcases her talent and range and — perhaps most of all — her voice."

"If you’ve grown up with certain ideas — maybe certain bland, beige ideas — about Midwestern food, think again. Food Network host Amy Thielen’s big, generous book shares the stories of the modern-day hunters, foragers and farmers who have brought the heartland’s foodways back to life. She has a free hand with the salt pork, bacon and butter, but we can argue about that after you’ve tried the fancy meatloaf with the mushrooms and the pistachios. (Thielen and I went to cooking school together a long time ago, but I can wholeheartedly recommend this book without regard to that acquaintance.)"

"The rise of Middle Eastern cookbooks in the last decade has benefited few cuisines more than that of Iran. Once-scarce ingredients like pomegranates and sumac are now relatively simple to source, and Louisa Shafia’s fresh, streamlined compositions spill over with bright and sour notes. You can protest, and you can try to refuse, but I bet in the end you will not be able to leave even one piece of lamb pomegranate-walnut kebab aside for tomorrow."

"Even if you are not familiar with the prodigious — and prolific — talent of Neil Gaiman, you’ll want to spend a novella’s worth of time inside the dark world at the heart of The Ocean At The End of the Lane. The book begins with a middle-aged man who goes back to his childhood home after a funeral, where he begins having recollections of a series of curious events. I think it would spoil the pleasure of the book to say more about its plot — there’s a brave girl, and a special boy, and a sacrifice — but at a mere 192 pages, it begs to be read twice to enjoy the sorrow and surprise of its ending. Although it’s been called a book for adults, what Gaiman is most deft at is describing the terrors, large and small, of childhood, and how those terrors linger and shape adults. “Truth is,” Gaiman writes, “there aren’t any grown-ups. Not one, not in the whole wide world.”"

"Belle epoque Paris springs to life under the sure hand of Cathy Marie Buchanan, who delivers a world in The Painted Girls that is earthy, delicate and seductive. Edgar Degas is a central figure during the creation of his signature sculpture, Little Dancer, Aged Fourteen. Two real-life characters, aspiring adolescent ballerina Marie van Goethem and her older sister, Antoinette, narrate the story in alternating chapters, offering contrasting perspectives on a life of struggles and hard-won pleasures."

"Anais Hendricks is only 15, but she’s been in trouble for years. She has a serious drug habit, she’s been in foster homes since birth, and she may have put a police officer in a coma. Now, she’s been sent to live in the Panopticon, a social-work housing experiment for young people. All of the units face inward toward a tower full of guards, watching the inmates. And believe me, it’s worth watching Anais, one of my favorite heroines of the year. The plot of The Panopticon is really secondary to the roller coaster of character that is Anais — her intense, first-person narration illuminates the horrors of a young woman failed again and again by the system in Scotland, but does it by suffusing the reader with her own funny, compassionate, hard-as-nails self. By the end of the book, you’ll know a lot of Scottish slang, which may or may not stick with you. Anais, however, most certainly will."

"I have met the pomegranate lady, and you may have as well. If you’ve ever made a disarmingly intimate connection with a stranger while traveling, you’ve had the experience. Connections and dislocations drive the characters in these stories: dislocations of place — exiles who end up in Paris, but never really leave Iran behind, and dislocations of time — elites who preserve a bubble of the “old,” secular, drinking, partying Iran — upon which modern, revolutionary Iran intrudes, with tragic-comedic results. Constantly moving between cultures is not easy on these individuals — but perhaps because of that, it reveals so much raw humanity, both cruelty and compassion."

"What this nontraditional memoir taught me: My anguish makes others suffer, especially when I can’t communicate. And: Just because I can’t stop doing something doesn’t mean I enjoy it. Turns out this 13-year-old Japanese boy with autism has me figured out. Add his clarity and gentle spirit and you’ve got magic. “Stay close by and keep a gentle eye on us, and while we’re swept up in our torment, please stop us from hurting ourselves or others.” Sounds like a prayer, doesn’t it? What a kid."

"Three kids who run a professional ghost hunting company have been hired to investigate a house that’s so haunted and dangerous, no other team has ever made it out alive. If you’re into gripping and suspenseful ghost stories mixed with dry humor, this book is for you. (Bonus points if you also like murdered monks and walls dripping with blood.) (For ages 8 to 12)"

"In her first book set in the U.S., South African novelist Lauren Beukes defies genre, and she dazzles as she does it. The Shining Girls is a murder mystery, thriller and time travel puzzle all in one. A young girl is left for dead in a brutal and seemingly motiveless attack. An itinerant miscreant steps through the door of a menacing house. As their stories converge (through decades and different locales) to a terrifying climax, the reader also meets a group of women — each ordinary and yet each a chillingly, and fatefully, designated “Shining Girl.”"

"Law professor Antonio Yammara thinks he’s indifferent to Colombia’s history of drug-related violence. Then a motorcycle roars by, a stray bullet pierces his gut and the terror suppressed for a decade comes flooding in. We’ve seen enough morality tales about cops and dealers, victims and addicts. The Sound of Things Falling provides a more sophisticated pleasure: a vision of how drugs have unraveled a generation, one humble life at a time."

"In a far-future, post-nuclear-apocalypse Brazil, artist June and her best friend, Gil, find their lives upended when Gil falls in love with their city’s newly elected Summer King, Enki. Yes, it’s a post-apocalyptic, slightly dystopian teen love triangle, but with a twist: Our heroine becomes the third wheel in a sensitively depicted romance between her two male friends. And the antagonists in the city’s ossified government aren’t entirely unsympathetic. The Summer Prince is that rare young adult title that’s comfortable with ambiguity and nuance — bolstered with solid world-building and well-seasoned with tropical rhythms."

"In the tiny Spanish village of Guzman, there are hill caves dating back to Roman times. And in these caves, the locals built “telling rooms,” places to count the stored casks of wine and the cheeses — and to tell tall tales and family stories. The Telling Room is Michael Paterniti’s deeply personal, deliciously idiosyncratic account of his search for the legendary Paramo de Guzman cheese and the man who created it, Ambrosio Molinos. Molinos had a marvelous story: He had created the cheese, made it a success, and then been betrayed by his best friend and business partner — or was he? It’s a story of love, betrayal and revenge, yes — but also a story about the power of stories to reshape reality. And, of course, really great cheese."

"Ayana Mathis’ debut novel lays out the lives of the Shepherd family — two parents and nine children, each drawn with tenderness and complexity. Hattie and August move to Philadelphia from Georgia in 1923, during the Great Migration of African-Americans. The characters face gritty realities, but the author crafts their stories with pitch-perfect authority and grace. Her language manages to be both luminously metaphorical and down to earth. One tidbit: Franklin, an alcoholic seaman in 1969 Vietnam, recalls, “the seawater was syrup on my body.” Does a much-talked-about book (an Oprah pick) deserve the ballyhoo? In this case, yes.*Some books from December 2012 were published too late to make it on last year’s roundups; they were considered as candidates this year.*"

"Working for Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me! I sometimes forget not everything’s a laugh riot. So to get my fix of the current depressing state of American affairs, I turned to George Packer’s The Unwinding. The gist of the book is that everything we once held dear in America is unraveling thanks to giant institutions and normal-size people who love money too much. Wal-Mart; Oprah; Tampa, Fla.; Silicon Valley; Washington lobbyists; and Jay Z all factor in here somewhere. But with each bad guy comes a tale of someone working tirelessly to undo some of the damage. It’s the community organizer in Ohio or the journalist in Florida who offers the reader some hope. That said, do not read immediately before a holiday party if you don’t want your joyful spirit crushed."

"It’s a shame novelist and nonfiction author Bob Shacochis isn’t already a household name among readers of literary fiction, but I’m hoping that this important and powerful novel will bring him the recognition and readers that he so deserves. Spanning the decades between World War II and the present, from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism, with settings as diverse as Montana, Turkey, the Yugoslav republic of Croatia, Fort Bragg, Haiti, and several deluxe golf courses, this massive (over 700 pages) novel introduces myriad fully realized characters, in five distinct sections whose relationships to one another slowly become clear — though believe me, when you begin the novel you will have no idea where the plot is going and how it’s going to end. I’d have no hesitation in labeling this the first “Great American Novel” of the 21st century — and despite its size and complexity (or maybe because of its size and complexity) I found it riveting."

"Barbara Kerley presents the natural world to children in this beautifully orchestrated book, which marries really good advice, like “Sift. Scrape. Go on — get your hands dirty,” with vividly realized photography (in this case, a close-up of a child’s gloriously muddy hands). And the next spread shows a paleontologist discovering a fossil out in the field. The message is clear — find what you love to do as a child … and who knows? Someday you may be able to use that experience in new and exciting ways. A multicultural cast exuberantly explores the great outdoors, with heart, soul, body and spirit. Readers will want to do the same. (For ages 4 to 8)"

"Forget every stereotype you have about librarians. Josh Hanagarne, who works in the Salt Lake City Public Library, is 6 feet, 7 inches and can tear a telephone book in half. The World’s Strongest Librarian isn’t just one of the most interesting books of the year because of the author’s incredible story — he started weightlifting as a way to manage his Tourette syndrome — but also because of his considerable charisma and charming prose. “I only knew that everything coming toward me had the potential to wreck me, to derail any plan I could make,” Hanagarne writes of his disorder. But he doesn’t let it, and his chronicle of his fight is as defiant and inspiring as the (strong) man himself."

"Billy Miller is a bit of a worrier. He worries that the bump on his head from a vacation accident may make him not smart enough for the second grade. He worries that he inadvertently insulted his new teacher. He worries that people will think him childish for calling his father Papa instead of Dad. He worries when his little sister gets glitter all over his bat cave diorama. But Billy is a lucky kid, with functional grown-ups in his life (especially Papa, who proves he has what it takes to be a good dad even when he has his own worries to deal with). It’s a real-life story with plenty of humor and heart, and a family to root for. (For ages 8 to 12)"

"Storytelling carves a way out of a dead end in the opening story in this award-winning first collection, as a 15-year-old girl and her brother, 16, alternate ever more absurd storylines while walking home after a part-time job bagging groceries. Another pair of siblings communicate in sign language as they scavenge among the treasures in a wealthy family’s house. A young girl in charge of a circus’s rare albino camel; two runaway boys; a broken-down pitcher; and a woman whose finger is pierced by a sewing machine needle converge in the kaleidoscopic “Circus Night.” Tom Kealey honors these marginal and troubled young Americans with fierce honesty."

"Jessica Francis Kane’s second collection is filled with uncertain women adrift in an increasingly complicated world. Kane explores the anxieties and preoccupations of her characters with such empathy that you worry about them as you might about a troubled friend. She offers intimate insights into characters like spiky, exhausted, forlorn Mary Anne Leary, who appears in four stories, before and after the death of her son, and Elizabeth, who takes to her bed with depression. We know these people. We recognize their all-too-human flaws. They are our family, our friends and neighbors. They are us, at our most vulnerable."

"This House Is Haunted draws on some of the great ghost-loving writers of the past, Charles Dickens and Henry James foremost among them. It’s 1867, perfect timing for a Gothic creepfest. A bereaved governess minds two “intelligent” children at Gaudlin Hall in Norfolk, England. Frights close in as no-nonsense protagonist Eliza Caine discovers the string of horrific deaths that have befallen the great house. She suffers “accidents” — attacked by a savage dog, pushed from a window, painfully scalded. “I find human nature to be a very disturbing thing,” she opines. Boyle’s smart dialogue and scene-setting give the book cinematic appeal."

"The classic nursery rhyme gets an exciting makeover. We all know the story of the little piggies who went to market and ate roast beef and so on … but what about the piggies on the other foot? Those piggies were dancing, flying planes and exploring the universe! Now the original wee-weeing-all-the-way-home piggies want to do more fun stuff, too. Soon they are throwing costume parties, chewing gum and secretly becoming Super Toe, the world’s greatest hero! Of course, all this activity is exhausting, so the piggies get ready for bed and go z-z-z … all the way to sleep. Everyone’s toes should have this much fun. (For ages 4 to 8)"

"Over five years, Cris Beam follows 22 foster children as they search for the holy grail: adoption into a stable, loving home. But as the kids and the foster parents can attest, it takes more than good intentions to make a family. A loving couple officially adopt their foster daughter only for her to run away, scared off when she realizes even adoption can’t heal the wounds of a 21-home childhood. Beam, a foster parent herself, delivers an engaging, narrative-driven investigation that centers on one of the system’s most divisive questions: Does separating children from their birth parents do more harm than good?"

"You wouldn’t necessarily expect the story of a dye manufacturing facility to be one of intrigue, insurrection, deception and death. But Dan Fagin’s narrative of the arrival and explosive growth of a chemical plant in New Jersey in the 1950s weaves a complex tale of powerful industry, local politics, water rights, epidemiology, public health and cancer in a gripping, page-turning environmental thriller. Fiercely reported and accentuated with lessons in both historical science and modern medicine, Toms River is a tale of toxic waste, and the families and communities left in its wake."

"Writing well about mental illness is a feat. The writer needs to bring readers into a world that they might be reluctant to enter. Juliann Garey draws us right into her first novel, Too Bright to Hear, Too Loud to See, about a bipolar Hollywood studio executive who leaves his family to go off on a decade-long, wild ramble. Garey, who has openly talked about being bipolar, describes the feeling of being inside an unquiet brain with depth and precision."

"Martha Ronk has been an experimental poetry darling for years, but this may indeed be her breakthrough: It’s a series of prose meditations on objects found in rooms and the pressures they exert on the people going in and out of those rooms. Ronk has a cold, analytical tone that breaks suddenly and surprisingly into feeling in the oddest places. Is this poetry? Who knows, who cares — it’s really, really good."

"It’s not easy being Goat, especially when that stupid unicorn is running around turning things into gold and making it rain cupcakes. But maybe Unicorn’s life isn’t all sunshine and roses either? (OK it is, but maybe that’s not all it’s cracked up to be.) The illustrations are perfect, and I don’t know who I love more — Goat or Unicorn. (They’re actually both pretty great.) (For ages 2 to 6)"

"Peter “Hooky” Hook was a self-described working-class thief who taught himself to play the bass. His Manchester, England, band, Stiff Kittens, sprouted into not one, but two of the most important bands of the post-punk era. You don’t have to be a hardcore fan of Joy Division or New Order to appreciate Hook’s wry evocation of Britain’s 1970s punk scene and his street-level remembrance of the tragedy and ecstasy — if the drug double entendre can be forgiven — that went into building the foundation for the next few decades’ alternative rock scene."

"This singular collection kicks off with a title story that does the near impossible: It makes me care about vampires — a breed more overexposed these days than Labrador retrievers. Other tales are in a literary league far beyond familiar orbits. “Reeling for the Empire,” for instance, imagines a sweatshop in 19th-century Japan where girls spin silk and, as they’re doing so, metamorphose into silkworms. The instant anthology keeper, though, is called “Proving Up.” It’s a Gothic tale of homesteading in Nebraska that dramatizes the payment — in sanity and mortality — that the land demanded from settlers. The daffy-to-devastating sweep of these stories will leave readers reeling."

"One of the great masterpieces of 2013, the latest novel from Jane Austen Book Club author Karen Joy Fowler is based on several experiments in the 1970s where anthropologists raised chimps with their own children to see what would happen. The result is a heartbreakingly recognizable dysfunctional family, whose problem child is sent away to an institution after a series of violent incidents. Except in this case, the institution is an animal experimentation center — and the troubled children who remain behind struggle to understand what it means to be human after growing up with a sister whom the world sees as an animal."

"Shortlisted for the 2013 Man Booker Prize, this astonishing debut is narrated by Darling, a young girl from Zimbabwe. She is feisty, knowing and determined and she narrates in a distinct, powerful voice. Darling must face head-on the social trauma caused by a corrupt and derelict leadership and the ambivalent impact of the international NGO aid business. All this is subtly woven into what is, most important, the story of one unforgettable child who knows there has to be more to life than hunger and want — and of what happens when her dreams come true."

"Meet Elizabeth Blackwell, who was never particularly interested in healing or medicine (she hid herself away when she felt sick, and blood made her queasy) — yet she became the first woman to graduate from medical school in America. It was the challenge that excited her, and even though the one school that accepted her application did it as a joke, she not only made it through the program, but graduated first in her class. Filled with humor, lively text and charming illustrations, this one could inspire many readers to challenge themselves as well. (For ages 5 to 8)"

"It might sound counterintuitive, but there’s at least one way that politics is like art: There are never, ever, any easy answers, no matter how much we wish there were. President Woodrow Wilson was a contradiction of a human being, and historians still fight over his legacy, which has always been somewhat confusing — was he a pacifist or a warmonger, a racist or an early civil rights pioneer? A. Scott Berg, to his immense credit, avoids any simplistic conclusions in his thoughtful, absorbing biography of America’s 28th president. Wilson is a doorstop of a book, but it’s also one of the most fast-paced, readable political biographies of recent times — and it’s essential reading for anyone interested in 20th century American history."

"YOU is a surreal, melancholy character study of a group of high school gamers who grow up to be semi-legendary videogame developers. Austin Grossman turned superheroes into socially awkward neurotics in his previous novel, Soon I Will Be Invincible, and here he turns game development into a dangerous, often-deadly quest. As our hero tries to find a bug in the game he is desperately trying to finish, he is also working through the senseless death of his friend, who created the first version of the game. In part, the book is a stylistic exploration of videogame writing, offering us pages of object and character descriptons just as they would be written before being converted into the code of a game. But it’s also a coming-of-age story about how we never leave our fantasies behind. They become more real, and more powerful, as we age."

"Nathan Rabin, head writer for The A.V. Club, spent a few years immersing himself in the subcultures centered on two of the most different bands in existence: Phish and Insane Clown Posse. It’s easy to write both bands off, as either subliterate violence or noodly hippie nonsense. But if you’ve got preconceptions about either act — and Rabin admits, going in, that he does — prepare to let go and let the delightfully described weirdness wash over you. I cracked open this book thinking I’d rather pry out my teeth with a spoon than listen to Phish, and now … now I kind of want to go see them play."

"The titular phrase of Tom Gauld’s precise and wryly hilarious collection of cartoons (culled from his weekly gig at Britain’s Guardian newspaper) is delivered midblastoff by an astronaut named “Science Fiction,” as he leaves a disapproving crowd of black-clad, tut-tutting shoe-gazers collectively dubbed “Literary Fiction” in his spectacular cloud of exhaust. Gauld’s both a literature nerd and a science-fiction nerd whose deadpan mashups — Dickens and a megalosaur; the Brontes and Super Mario (“Level 02: The Moor”) — belong on the same shelf as R. Sikoryak, Michael Kupperman and Kate Beaton."

"I enjoy the occasional poop joke, and books about living in the moment. You might say I prefer — wait for it — scatology to eschatology. So this was the book for me. The author is a cranky misanthrope who goes to a Buddhist monastery to get some big answers and continually rediscovers that mucking about in the daily grind is the big answer. Works for me. (And I read it on vacation in Disney World, a different kind of Zen retreat.)"

"Ben Lerner (Leaving the Atocha Station) is known for writing fiction that defies categories; he continues to defy — and fascinate — in this latest novel, 10:04. Bookended by two historic hurricanes that threatened New York City (Hurricane Irene and Hurricane Sandy) 10:04 projects our narrator into plotlines that feature a dire medical diagnosis as well as the joy of impending fatherhood with a woman who’s a close friend. Lerner’s dazzling writing connects and collapses these and other storylines into a rich and strange novel of ideas."

"If you’re a young boy and a dead horse falls off a bridge, kills your mother, and leaves you with deep scars — and you’re prone to epileptic seizures — you’d come to expect the unexpected. Still, it doesn’t mean you have to like it. In the shadow of his best friend, the popular and athletic Cade, and forever tied to his fictional namesake in his father’s best-selling sci-fi novel, Finn has trouble figuring out who he’s supposed to be. Then he meets a new girl and for the first time writes his own story. Hilarious and heartbreaking, you’ll be rooting for Finn all the way."

"If this enchanting first novel — which takes place over the course of one eventful day, the eve of Christmas Eve — were displayed as a Venn diagram, the place where the large cast of meticulously drawn characters overlaps is at a legendary Philadelphia jazz club called The Cat’s Pajamas, and the person who connects them all is 9-year-old Madeleine Altimari, whose dearest wish is to be a jazz singer — when we first meet her she’s smoking a cigarette and teaching herself to shimmy. Inventive, gorgeously written and unforgettable, this is a novel that fans of character-driven fiction will treasure."

"When a Bollywood director learns his brother is still legally bound to the child bride he was forced to marry at age 4, he tracks her down in America, determined to procure a divorce. But an accident confuses their relationship, and he finds himself loath to tell her the truth of his identity, especially as he finds himself falling for her. Both romantically intense and emotionally buoyant, with compelling glimpses into the social and cultural complexities of modern India. A stunning debut."

"There’s nothing easy about Eimear McBride’s raw, brutally intense first novel, from its fractured sentences to its shattering story of the young unnamed narrator’s attempt to drown mental anguish with physical pain. This cri de coeur of a girl who is raped by her uncle while growing up with a punitively religious mother and a learning disabled brother who dies of brain cancer certainly isn’t cheerful, and it’s not for everyone. But it’s a devastating, ferociously original debut that pulls you into its vortex."

"At around 5 years old, Saroo Brierley found himself in Kolkata, India, alone, lost and more than 1,000 miles from his family. He lived on the streets until he was taken into an orphanage and ultimately adopted by an Australian couple. Years later, with nothing but his memories to guide him, Brierley began searching for his childhood home on Google Earth — and you’ll have to read the book to find out what happens next. Brierley’s memoir recalls Charles Dickens and folk tales about lost children. The simplicity of his language lets the unbelievable facts shine through."

"David Dawson, Lucian Freud’s devoted assistant, friend and frequent model for the last 20 years and an artist in his own right, has produced a beautiful tome filled with spellbinding, intimate photographs of the artist, many at work in his squalid, paint-encrusted studio. Particularly fascinating are the portraits juxtaposing Freud’s subjects with his paintings of them, eloquently revealing how they were transformed by his art. We see David Hockney sitting, hands folded, beside his fleshier close-up on the easel, while whippet-thin Freud, in characteristic knotted scarf and untied boots, is caught frozen in the doorway clutching a fistful of brushes, as if at the scene of a crime. Fans of this intense painter — who died in 2011 after a lifetime of stripping his sitters bare, often in every sense — won’t want to miss this."

"Always on the move because of her mother’s wandering ways, 12-year-old Felicity lands in Midnight Gulch, where her mother was born. The Southern town was once full of magic, but a curse put an end to that. Yet hints of magic remain, including Felicity’s ability to see words that reveal people’s true thoughts and desires. But in this lovely and quirky novel, the words she needs to understand most are her own. If Felicity can break the spell to rescue Midnight Gulch and heal her mother’s broken heart, she just may find a place to call “home.” (For ages 8 to 12)"

"They say that all technology is truly driven by its black market applications, and this is never more true than in Afterparty, where any kid with a chemjet printer and an internet connection can print his own smart drugs and get freaky. Gregory’s near-future world is a fascinating look at a society where the brain has become the final battlefield of faith, pleasure and commerce, and he puts together a ripping story that’s essentially one long chase sequence as his characters fight to stop the distribution of a new party drug that might just mean the end of the world."

"Maira Kalman’s whimsical, sublimely silly alphabet book celebrates the newly renovated Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum by featuring 31 of her favorite objects from the collection — a quirky companion volume to My Favorite Things, her selection for adults. Flagged items include a medieval Egyptian cap and a 19th century English glazed earthenware poodle. Just don’t look for the dog under D or P. Nope, you’ll find it under E — for “the cutest dog on Earth…(Except for your dog),” with all the e’s printed in red. And don’t look for the letter O in its usual place because — “Oops! We left out O. Oh well. We all make mistakes.” Expect giggles."

"In All Our Names, Dinaw Mengestu explores the nature of loneliness and love, violence and identity. The story is told by two narrators: Isaac is a young man who flees revolution in Uganda to seek refuge in America; and Helen is a white woman, a social worker assigned to his case, who has never left the Midwest. It’s the 1970s and the taboo against mixed-race couples is still powerful, but the two fall into a passionate and secretive affair. Other kinds of secrets emerge as Isaac’s story unfolds and Helen begins to understand that he has left his real identity, and much more, back in Uganda. There is nothing simple about their affair; it is born out of loneliness and complicated by prejudice and war. But it is a love that, in the end, saves these characters and redeems them."

"The stories of blind, French teenager Marie-Laure LeBlanc and German orphan Werner Pfennig move across the convulsing landscape of the last half of World War II and come together, eventually, in a walled Breton town just before D-Day. All the Light We Cannot See has received rapturous reviews, and none of them exaggerate when they describe Anthony Doerr’s novel with words like “haunting,” “beautifully written” and “gorgeous.” It is all that and more. Doerr’s characters stayed with me long after I closed the cover of this luminous book."

"Twenty-four-hour cable; infinite news sources online; tweets and YouTube. It’s hard to remember a time when the political cycle was slower and more deliberate, and when the voter wasn’t exposed to every single twitch of the candidate. When did it all change? According to Matt Bai, it changed with Gary Hart in 1987. You think you know it all: Donna Rice, Monkey Business, Hart taunting the press. You don’t. The combustible mix of new technology and politics was birthed in this presidential campaign, and there was no turning back."

"An Unnecessary Woman is a story about Beirut, but not the Beirut you see in headlines. Told in the voice of a reclusive older woman, it unfolds within the confines of her small apartment. Her family has forgotten her, she is childless and divorced, and all around her are books that she slowly translates into Arabic. It is a quiet book about a lost woman in a loud, violent city. We see the Lebanese civil war through her memories. It’s also a book about literature, and a portrait of a woman living in a volatile time, who shuts out reality and loses herself in the written word until she reaches a breaking point."

"Roxane Gay’s first novel grabs you: “Once upon a time … I was kidnapped by a gang of fearless yet terrified young men. … They held me captive for 13 days. They wanted to break me.” Gay never lets up, describing with force and passion a story that happens to women in cities around the world, making it visceral and real. A young lawyer, kidnapped in Port-au-Prince and held for ransom, returns to her husband and baby son changed, but the intervention of her kind, tender mother-in-law is a healing gift. Powerful work from an original new voice: We’re listening."

"The story of a Kentucky woman coming to terms with her haunted childhood and the disappearance of her little brother, David Connerley Nahm’s debut is unconventional, impressionistic and suffused with deeply poetic language. It’s not sufficient to call Nahm’s novel a book about memory and loss, although he explores those themes gracefully and insightfully. This is a heartbreaking story about real people enduring unspeakable pain, two siblings who “were rippling reflections of one another” — one who’s gone, and one who almost is."

"Anne Leckie’s debut, Ancillary Justice, provided vast distances, sentient spaceships and a galactic empire in crisis. Against this grand backdrop there was a thoughtful examination of loyalty and the fragmentation of identity. Set in the same world of Imperial Radch, her second book finds the protagonist Breq tasked with the protection of the sibling of a friend she fatally betrayed. Once part of the shared consciousness of a mighty warship and all its troops, Breq is now a soldier, reduced to a single body and mind — confined and mortal. Through her, the reader is urged to examine just what it is that makes us truly human."

"Another Man’s War is riveting. It’s an extraordinary story, well-researched and beautifully told — but not about the World War II you might know. Barnaby Phillips writes about humanity and compassion from the perspective of a Nigerian soldier whose forgotten colonial unit fought for the British Empire in then-Burma. Sixteen-year-old Isaac Fadoyebo is one of the “Burma Boys” who found themselves battling determined Japanese soldiers far away from home. Wounded and left for dead in the jungle, Isaac and Sierra Leonean David Kargbo survive only thanks to the goodness of a local villager, Shuyiman, and his family. Phillips delves deep into relationships, identity and much more in this stunning book. I couldn’t put it down."

"Apples of Uncommon Character is a who’s who of apples — 123 “portraits” of different varieties, described and photographed in loving detail. Rowan Jacobson explains how only a handful of apples — of the thousands once available in the 19th century — ever made it to modern supermarkets. He laments the bright but tasteless Red Delicious is a “disaster” that American consumers brought upon themselves. Now, a renaissance is underway as heirloom apple enthusiasts race to save rare varieties before they die out. Jacobson offers resources, recipes, facts and tips to delight any apple geek — and his 300-page Facebook-of-fruit is full of creative descriptions, such as, “Like the Incredible Hulk, Mutsu is huge, green, and strangely lovable.”"

"If the guys who wrote Lost had brought H.P. Lovecraft into the room as a script doctor in the first season, the Southern Reach trilogy is what they would’ve come up with. Haunted landscapes, a mysterious lighthouse, sea monsters, wormholes, insane government agents — Jeff VanderMeer’s three slim volumes have it all. And while it parades itself as a kind of straight-up horror/mystery tale, the Southern Reach trilogy plumbs some deep territory regarding what is real, what is true and how the things we see are not always the things that are there before us."

"This might be the weirdest picture book published this year. Its premise is that in the future (2031 to be exact) birds will be extinct. Or at least, birds as we know them. It begins, “Whether you are looking for a companion, want to make something beautiful, or just want to listen to birdsong, we’ll supply everything you need to build your own bird.” The next 30 pages are an illustrated catalog of wings, legs, tails, combs, and feathers. In the back are “Assembly Instructions” (“Step 2: Attaching The Beak.”) The illustrations are serious art — full-color paintings that would look at home in a museum. At its heart the book is a warning about habitat destruction, but mostly, it will make you laugh, and children with a sense of whimsy will be delighted to imagine building a bird. (For ages 9 to 12)"

"It’s no surprise that Roxane Gay — author, essayist and sharp observer of everything in pop culture we’re supposed to be too cool to like — has written such a winning book. Now in its ninth printing, this best-selling collection of essays manages to be both a cultural biography and a deeply personal story of identity. At its best, the book offers Gay’s distinctive voice as both shield and a weapon against social norms just begging for examination. Perfectly imperfect, Gay is an unforgettable voice, coming at just the right time."

"I rate cookbooks on their IQ — Irresistibility Quotient — and Dorie Greenspan’s latest scores on the Mensa level. Greenspan says the French leave more elaborate patisseries to professionals; she’s filled her new book with the less complicated confections they bake at home. Two simple loaf cakes, one with chopped apples and the other with marbled dark and white chocolate, were both keepers. And you’ve got to love a cookbook that urges you to “cajole the batter into the corner of the pan.” Next up: the French counterpart of the classic American chocolate-wafers-and-whipped-cream icebox cake — made with store-bought Petit Beurre cookies dunked in espresso and layered with an easy mocha buttercream. Ooh la la!"

"Lorrie Moore wields her trademark sardonic wordplay and offbeat apercus to capture the bitter disappointments of romantic relationships in her first story collection in 15 years. Seesawing between facetiousness and earnestness, her bite is right up there with her bark in these eight tales, which include clever, modern twists on two classics by Henry James and Vladimir Nabokov and a caustically funny but ultimately plangent portrait of a lonely, cynical single mom at a wedding."

"A precocious kid leaves his alcoholic father to find fame in the big city. He succeeds. But as his star rises his body falls, leaving him weak, deaf and suicidal. And still he triumphs. No, it’s not an A&E miniseries; it’s Jan Swafford’s extraordinary story of Ludwig van Beethoven. The biography, Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph, is a clear-eyed view of the famed composer’s improbable life, the social and political context that framed it, and, of course, his amazing music. In the end, the book transcends the dark-skinned kid from Bonn, Germany, and sings of the resilient human spirit."

"Anyone who’s had to care for an aging parent knows the difficulty of deciding when it’s time to consider a nursing home or hospice. In *Being Mortal,*the ever thoughtful surgeon and author Atul Gawande asks us to think about what it really means to age gracefully and die with dignity when modern medicine can do so much to extend life. And challenges us to examine the real costs of prolonged medical treatment when the evidence is mounting that we are not necessarily improving life at the end."

"This young adult novel tells the story of a group of teenagers at a special school for kids who have endured traumatic experiences. Their English teacher assigns them to write in journals, and as they fill the pages, each student is transported back to a time just before the awful event happened. Wolitzer writes teenagers in a way that feels authentic, at turns wildly emotional and deeply introspective. It’s a fast-paced, affecting story with a nice twist at the end."

"Tatamkhulu Afrika’s autobiographical novel based on his experiences as a prisoner of war during World War II is as beautiful as it is heartbreaking. Set primarily in in Italy and Germany amid the claustrophobic intimacy of all-male war camps, the novel follows three prisoners as they struggle — and often fail — to make sense of their desire for one another. The intricacies of their impossible relationships reflect the broader struggles of masculinity."

"When journalist Walter Kirn discovers that his friend of 15 years, a man he knew as Clark Rockefeller (wealthy, powerfully connected and, yes, one of the Rockefellers), is really a fraud, a sociopath and a murderer, he can’t fathom how he could have been duped so easily. Kirn’s dogged investigation into Rockefeller’s trail of deceit is the stuff of true crime thrillers, but Blood Will Out’s blunt force impact comes when Kirn reflects on his own moral failings and bravely reveals what might have caused him to get it all so wrong."

"Much has been written about the late writer Roberto Bolaño; over the past decade, interest in his work has reached levels Bolaño himself may not have imagined. Or perhaps he had. Bolaño: A Biography in Conversations does much to add to our culture’s obsession with celebrity and the myths that surround writers in particular. Journalist Monica Maristain interviewed friends and associates of Bolaño in an attempt to offer more insight (and idiosyncratic detail) about his storied life. While, given its multiple voices and perspectives, it may not be the definitive Bolaño biography, it’s a fun and enveloping read for the already initiated."

"Fairy tales get reworked and re-imagined all the time, but the treatment Snow White gets in Helen Oyeyemi’s novel Boy, Snow, Bird is more like a deconstruction of the tale than a mere retelling. Boy is a white woman who realizes her husband is an African-American who has been passing for white only after she gives birth to a black child, Bird. “Passing” in this way is a truly magical ability, but it comes at a price. To explain would mean spoilers, and there are some fantastic yet plausible revelations in this story you’ll want to discover on your own."

"Monica McFawn’s first collection of short stories, winner of this year’s Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, displays her idiosyncratic voice, her flair for distinctive characters and her empathetic power. In these 11 stories, McFawn ranges from fantastic to satiric to poignant. Embedded in her tales of ordinary people — a new employee forced to fire an incompetent co-worker; an actor on his way home after a performance full of improvisations; a mathematical theoretician working for a company that sells butterflies to be released at weddings and other events — are carefully observed human details and momentous surprises."

"Fiercely smart, caustically creative, defiantly feminist, Lauren Beukes has pioneered a new genre: the technothriller set amid crumbling cities. Broken Monsters is a grim mystery that lives at the intersection of cold electronic gadgets and the blood-hot desires of the human beings who wield them. The novel is set in Detroit, where Detective Gabriella Versado is assigned to find out who killed a boy and then attached the top half of his body to the bottom half of a deer. Here, as in her brilliant 2013 novel, The Shining Girls, Beukes writes like a combination of Agatha Christie and Don DeLillo. You’re drawn in by the whodunit and then cold-cocked by the succinct, electrifying prose."

"You had to expect that Parliament-Funkadelic producer-visionary George Clinton would give his memoir a title just as jovial, provocative and kaleidoscope-colorful as his 50-year musical oeuvre (not to mention his trademark rainbow hairstyle). This page-turner gives us real insight into the roots of Clintonian genius: He innovated a new amalgam of funk, rock, metal and pop in the 1960s and ‘70s by bringing together his love for Motown, Jimi Hendrix, mambo, science fiction, Aristotelian philosophy and subversive political humor. The memoir’s last third sobers us up: While hip-hop samplers help extend Clinton’s legacy, the musician finds himself more often in court, fighting copyright infringement, than in the studio. The book is ultimately a parable of a postwar hippie’s creativity hemmed in not by sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll but by the gravity of a cynical and twisted music business."

"Earlier this year, when I spent a day with Jacqueline Woodson for a story, I saw that the realness she brings to her writing is also present in person, allowing her to captivate grade-school students with her stories about life and her lessons about acceptance. In this book, she uses free verse to tell the story of growing up in a segregated South. It’s for children as much as it is for adults; the themes — of aching for home, searching for family support and discovering one’s voice — will resonate with everyone. It’s beautiful and, most important, accessible."

"I read Edan Lepucki’s suspenseful debut novel in two days, but that wasn’t without trepidation. “You’ve covered a lot of natural disasters lately,” I said to myself. “So why are you reading about a post-apocalyptic American West in your spare time?” But the book was too good to give up. Set in the near future, it follows a husband and wife who are forced to flee a crumbling LA after the “big one” hits. The only problem: Melting glaciers have flooded the Pacific Northwest, and the Rockies are devastated by wildfires. So where do they end up? You’ll have to read it to believe it. But maybe wait until the dark, winter months are through before you set out on this page turner."

"Lydia Davis’ stories are like those clown cars you see in the circus stuffed impossibly full of people. Actually, it’s hardly fair to call them short stories. Haiku-like, they seem to call for some other word, like this one, about a vacation: “He could be my husband. / But he is not my husband. / He is her husband. / And so he takes her picture (not mine) as she stands in her flowered beach outfit in front of the old fortress.” In tiny snippets of language, Davis manages to pack every essential element of a good read: characters, history, action, plot and feeling."

"Who would have expected that the most profound meditation yet written on the trials of caring for aging parents would arrive in the form of a graphic book? Chast’s memoir is a masterpiece, describing the exhaustion and absurdity, the anger and heartbreak of this cosmic Life Switcheroo that so many of us boomer-generation readers are experiencing. From the sad looniness of having to clean out her failing parents’ Brooklyn apartment (whose closets are stuffed with toasters — still in their boxes! — and old bank books) to the desperate anxieties over the astronomical costs of end-of-life care, Chast captures the totality of the “adult child of elderly parents” experience. Brava!"

"When I’m looking for a way to get food on the All Things Considered menu, I’m looking for great stories — about meals whipped up with a sister, or recipes that take me far away from my sad desk lunch of lentils — or just stories that teach me something new about what I put in my mouth every day. Caribbean Potluck from Suzanne and Michelle Rousseau satisfies all three. Plus there’s a recipe for Whole Roast Snapper With Lime And Mojito oil. A whole snapper can be hard to find, but the Rousseau sisters make the search worth it. After all, as Suzanne told NPR’s Audie Cornish, “Our food can be extremely sexy. It can be extremely healthy. It can be easily done.”"

"Rappers are the descendants of West African griots who held villages in awe with their artful storytelling. But what inspired them? What environments were they created in? Music fans love a good “making of” (see: VH1’s Behind the Music), but hip-hop history — like the making of Raekwon’s classic debut album, Only Built 4 Cuban Linx — lies tucked away in the artists’, producers’ and labels’ minds. Music journalist Brian Coleman, with a second volume of Check the Technique, is out to tell the stories of the storytellers in their own words, giving hip-hop heads the background to the making of the albums we hold so dear."

"Though Claudia Rankine’s poetry, by turns lyrical and narrative, is always stunning in its ability to speak to the present American moment, Citizen feels especially necessary. A finalist for the National Book Award, this collection examines everyday encounters with racism in the second person, forcing the reader — regardless of identity — to engage a narrative haunted by the deaths of Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin and Renisha McBride."

"Granted, a 600-page history of the early video game industry isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but Blake J. Harris does for Nintendo and Sega what Doris Kearns Goodwin did for Abraham Lincoln — gives them the thoughtful, enlightening and exhaustively researched biography they deserve, cementing their histories in the modern cultural conversation."

"There’s a reason you’ll recognize many of the international foods in this book — they’re the ones that made it to this country and became American favorites: pizza, pad thai, chicken tikka masala, moussaka, bulgogi, baklava. Veteran cookbook author David Joachim has translated them all into culinary adventures you can take at home. Take note, though — because they’re ostensibly Cooking Light recipes, the calorie counts, and in turn, the portion sizes, are austere. And they’re too good not to have seconds. If it says “Serves 4,” invite just one very, very good friend to share with you."

"One of the founders of OKCupid pored over tons of data collected on the dating site and came up with this book. I loved sharing his observations about how different groups typically use words or phrases: One never misspells words, another is totally into campfires and yet another is likely to have an interest in some form of bachata. There is truth here, elusive though its applicability may be. Mostly it’s just great for bar discussions."

"Among my favorite novels are David Lodge’s Small World, Richard Russo’s Straight Man and James Hynes’ The Lecturer’s Tale: all academic satires. I also greatly enjoy epistolary novels like Steve Kluger’s Last Days of Summer; Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn, and 84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff (arguably, not a novel). And when I discover an epistolary academic satire — a collection of letters of recommendation from Jason Fitger, a literature and creative writing professor at a second-rate college — I feel as though I’ve hit the reading jackpot."

"I’m a Walter Mosley fan — I have several signed copies of his books, mostly from his Easy Rawlins detective series — but Debbie Doesn’t Do It Anymore isn’t crime fiction. Or, at least it doesn’t seem that way at first. You see, Debbie Dare is a porn star. The book begins with a vividly described scene of what is, for many people, a pretty private moment — just not for Debbie. There is a crime in this book — several, in fact — and there’s also self-discovery, recrimination, retribution, reunions and sex — all kinds and many flavors of sex. If you’re at all curious about the inner workings of the porn industry, or if you’ve ever dreamed of doing a life makeover, give this novel a read."

"It was a miracle watched around the world on live TV. On Oct. 13, 2010, 33 Chilean miners trapped for 69 days inside the San Jose mine were raised to the surface of the earth — resurrected — through a freshly drilled escape tunnel into which a capsule was lowered and raised by a giant crane. Before they escaped, all 33 men agreed to share the proceeds of any book or movie made about them. The movie is in the works. The book, written by Héctor Tobar and which came out in October, is called Deep Down Dark. As extreme adventure tales go, this one is a doozy — the equal, if the geographical inverse, of Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer’s 1997 blockbuster about the Mount Everest climbing disaster."

"Definitely Maybe, originally published in the 1970’s as A Billion Years Before the End of the World, is a gem of the dystopian order. Arkady and Boris Strugatsky — brothers and celebrated Russian geniuses — take us into the mind of Dmitri Malianov, an astrophysicist simply trying to get his work done while his family is away on holiday. As he tries to make headway on his experiments, however, Malianov keeps getting distracted. Soon, he becomes a suspect in a terrible crime and is threatened with prison. Definitely Maybe, further proof that knowledge can be a dangerous game, is a work of towering wit and intelligence."

"Molly Wizenberg’s second book is the story of opening a restaurant with her husband, and she pulls no punches about the difficulties of entrepreneurship and making dreams real. She’s also very frank about her unhappiness with their new venture, until she finds a way to carve out a place for herself. It’s the kind of book I want to hug — a cozy, quick read about reinvention, marriage and, of course, food."

"The 78 rpm record is “not a medium that invites dabbling,” Amanda Petrusich writes. No kidding. It’s hard to even find a turntable that will play the antique, 10-inch pieces of shellac, let alone lay your hands upon the discs. So when Petrusich finds herself in the Milwaukee River, hunting for 78s downstream from a demolished record pressing plant, you get a sense of both the stubbornness and the scraping desperation of the obsessive hunters of 78s she profiles in her book. Petrusich is an outsider — a young woman among (mostly) older men who admits in the book’s prologue that her job as a music critic in the 21st century made collecting physical records feel like a pose. But she’s an amazingly sympathetic writer with an eye for the detail that makes both her eccentric collectors and the objects they fetishize step out of caricature into idiosyncratic truth."

"When the government coerces former Navy SEAL Ian Dunn into planning a complicated rescue of two kidnapped children to avoid an explosive international incident, it puts everyone around him in danger — including Phoebe Kruger, the unsuspecting attorney who’s been assigned to help him negotiate terms. Ian has powerful allies and enemies, but it’s hard to tell who’s who when he’s forced into a mission that draws unwanted attention from every direction. Brockmann’s thrilling novel brilliantly combines an elaborate plot, nonstop action, taut sexual and emotional tension, humor and poignancy."

"It’s a bracing premise: Indirect messages centered on stereotypes about minorities have persuaded middle-class and poor white people to support a government controlled by wealthy elites. While obvious racism is repudiated today, public life is filled with covert messages about who uses welfare more or who commits more crime, calibrated to reach white voters. Ian Haney López traces stereotypes of black criminality to the end of slavery, when Southern states used criminal convictions to lease black convicts out as forced labor. But his most depressing thesis is simple: Many who believe these messages are not hate-filled bigots but decent people, simply misled by the dog whistle."

"The conceit of this beautiful, wordless picture book is simple — a little boy is drawing in his bedroom and imagines himself on safari, interacting with the animals he has only seen in books. The way Colón captures how it feels to be engulfed and transported by your artistic endeavor, the way he evokes the perfect endlessness of solitary afternoons spent working hard on what you love best — that’s anything but simple. His warm-toned, dreamy illustrations invite you into the story, and the special details — like who the protagonist shares his sandwiches with — reward repeated readings. (For ages 4 to 8)"

"When this book was first published, a cacophonous kerfuffle erupted over its criticism of President Obama. Lines were pulled out to suggest that Robert M. Gates — the only defense secretary ever asked to stay on by the next president — had turned on the boss. But at its core, Duty is so much more than just a report card on the current administration. It’s a heartfelt — and sometimes heartbreaking — account of a challenging time in American history. Gates does indulge in a bit of score-settling — Vice President Biden probably won’t be buying extra copies of Duty to use as stocking stuffers this Christmas. Yet what shines forth is Gates’ fundamental decency, his respect for military bigwigs as well as common soldiers, and his love for his country."

"It’s been a banner year for children’s graphic novel memoirs — and the best of the bunch is Cece Bell’s El Deafo. Profoundly deaf after a bout with meningitis, Cece starts first grade with the help of a new hearing device, a Phonic Ear, which is big and clunky and strapped to her chest. The Phonic Ear makes her different, sure, but it also transmits her teacher’s voice directly to her hearing aid, which makes her feel like a superhero: El Deafo! Cece has a tough time connecting with her peers — this is, of course, difficult whether you’re hard of hearing or not. The book portrays some heart-wrenching struggles, but what’s notable is Cece’s authentic positivity throughout the experience. The book is wonderfully detailed about the emotional and practical challenges she faces, and it’s also laugh-out-loud funny at times. (A lip-reading Cece mistakes a student telling her “my grandma may die” for “my grandma makes pies.”) The art is charming — all the characters have bunny faces and ears — and despite its length, it’s a book that a variety of ages can enjoy."

"“In a company town, everything wore The Company insignia. ‘Live better electrically!’ the slogan said. Everyone believed it.” Elizabeth Rosner’s poetic and nuanced historical novel centers on Thomas Edison’s power company in upstate New York. She weaves together stories of mathematical genius Charles Steinmetz, who came via Ellis Island in 1888 and was known as the man who caught lightning in a bottle, and Native Americans along the Hudson and Mohawk rivers who watched the changes. And she tops that with a complex love triangle in a new generation, disrupted by the social upheaval of the 1960s."

"In Betsy Woodman’s first Jana Bibi book, the Indo-Scottish violin teacher hires the town bagpiper to scare off wild monkeys from the home she inherited in the imaginary Indian town of Hamara Nagar. In Emeralds Included, the series’ third book, Jana has another problem: Her stodgy son, Jack, and his fiance are coming for a visit and Jana is determined to fix up the wonky house before they arrive. She somehow manages to get it all done — and during the visit learns that Jack is much more endearing than she thought. Woodman’s character development is so good that by the end, the memorable townspeople of Hamara Nagar felt more like good friends than characters from a book."

"Empress Cixi — a low-ranking consort who became regent for her son and ruled for four decades — is often perceived as a viciously insular ruler who brought down the Qing dynasty, China’s last emperors. Jung Chang is out to change that, with a biography that takes on elements of the best political thrillers. Chang’s sympathy for Cixi is strongly in evidence in this fascinating story, and her ability to assemble context unobtrusively in the background makes her exhaustive research seem effortless. Cixi is one of those necessary biographies that illuminate an era, as well as recounting a life."

"Lily King’s fourth novel (after the award-winning Father of the Rain) was inspired by a moment in 1933 when the lives of three young anthropologists — Margaret Mead and her second and third husbands, Reo Fortune and Gregory Bateson — intersected along the Sepik River in New Guinea. Using this as a point of departure, and changing the actual story line drastically, King weaves together a tragic love triangle and an exhilarating description of three rivals working to shape a new social science discipline. Atmospheric and sensual, with startling images throughout, Euphoria is an intellectually stimulating tour de force."

"Teju Cole is the master of the meandering nonfiction novel. The story is set in Lagos and narrated by a young man whose name we are never told. It is both a celebration of one of the world’s most vibrant cities and a lament over what can be one of the most frustrating and difficult places to live. It is also a story of family breakup and an uneasy homecoming — the narrator has been away for 15 years and must relearn how to navigate a place that was once home. Never an easy read, Cole is nonetheless always hugely rewarding."

"Celeste Ng’s compelling debut novel, Everything I Never Told You, is set in 1977, a time when races in America tended to be categorized as “black,” “white” and “other.” The Lee family — Chinese-American father, white mother and mixed-race kids — falls distinctly under “other.” And while existing outside the black/white racial tension might seem nice, it has allowed the Lees to avoid asking difficult questions about who they are and how they fit in to their small Ohio town. When the oldest Lee daughter dies under mysterious circumstances, the standard police questions — was she happy, did she have issues in school, were there family problems, secrets — reveal how little they know about themselves, and each other."

"Long after their father heeds a hypnotist’s advice to make his most secret dreams reality and in the process abruptly deserts his wife and young sons, the three brothers, now grown — and all failures in their various professions (a priest who doesn’t believe in God; a painter who specializes in forging the work of great artists; and a financial wizard who compulsively cheats his clients) — take turns describing their particular road to self-understanding. Or not. This beautifully written, funny, savage, character-driven novel is for readers who don’t demand easy answers (or any answers at all) to hard questions."

"The citation for Alice Munro’s 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature calls her “the master of the contemporary short story.” Generations to come will relish the 24 celebrated stories in Family Furnishings — and study them for clues to the fine craft and mysterious wizardry that make Munro’s stories work. It’s a fitting companion to her *Selected Stories (1968-1994) * — a superb introduction for those new to her work, and a reminder to longtime fans that Munro is a writer to be cherished."

"When one of his scams goes seriously amiss, not-very-successful con artist Frankie Abandonato goes on the run from the Mafia. A chance encounter gives him the perfect disguise: pretending to be reclusive novelist V.S. Mohle, who has agreed to teach a course to a hand-picked group of young writers at the University of Texas. Only trouble is, Frankie is neither a writer nor much of a reader. And he has to deal with former literary wunderkind and wealthy philanthropist Rex Schoeninger, who had a very public falling-out with Mohle years ago. Think Donald Westlake, another master of humorous caper novels."

"A raven-haired dame with a mysterious power over men flees from a cult in this virtuoso noir tale. Ed Brubaker’s fiendishly addictive story unspools in three different time periods: When the intoxicating Josephine is working her magic in the 1950s, Sean Phillips gets to splash out on classic clothes and vintage spaces. Then, when we’re transported to the ‘70s, he captures the change in atmosphere without missing a beat. Josephine is an irresistible cipher trapped by her own seductive web, and the H.P. Lovecraft-inspired baddies incite real shivers."

"Ballerina Misty Copeland is having a moment that extends far beyond the stage: Her memoir came out this year, she has blown up on social media and she has published a children’s book, Firebird, named for her signature role. The book is for very young dancers who may not see many people who look like them in the world of ballet. It’s illustrated by Christopher Myers, whose collagelike work is painterly, vivid and emotional. Copeland’s writing and Myers’ art draw you into a beautiful world, rich with color, texture and drama. For all budding young artists who maybe don’t have role models they can relate to, this little book provides some inspiration. (For ages 5 to 8)"

"Put this book into the hands of the right reader and you may never get it back. Lizi Boyd takes a simple idea — a little boy exploring a dark wood with the spare illumination of a flashlight — and creates a completely engrossing, wordless story. Her intricate illustrations brim with the kind of details that demand to be revisited again and again, from gradually introduced woodland creatures to tiny cutouts on each page that bring elements from one drawing forward into the next. (For ages 2 to 6)"

"Brian Morton’s superb novel Florence Gordon features a 75-year-old woman — an icon of the second wave women’s movement — as its heroine. She’s a self-described “difficult woman,” in the intimidating Lillian Hellman, Susan Sontag, “Lioness in Winter” mode. When a glowing review of Florence’s latest book appears in the Sunday New York Times, she’s showered with the popular acclaim that has eluded her most of her life. Suddenly, Florence is embarking on her first-ever book tour, dealing brusquely with fawning female fans of a certain age, parrying with some patronizing younger feminists and, along the way, sensing the chill of mortality on her skin."

"Ike embarks on an ill-fated journey from New York, where he barely makes a living driving a taxi, to his village in Nigeria. There he tries to steal the clan’s ancestral god, planning to smuggle the statue to a New York dealer for a high price. With deft plotting and sharp characters, this is an exploration of identity and belonging; desire and thwarted ambition. Ike’s homecoming is a disaster and he is a man in whom there is little to admire, but Okey Ndibe imbues him with humanity and pathos that has the reader rooting for him to the bitter, unhappy end."

"A young bear finds a lost stuffed bunny and thinks the toy is “the most special thing he has ever seen.” But Bear worries that Bunny’s family might be sad and miss him, so he dutifully posts “found” fliers all over the forest. No one claims Bunny; Bear has grown to love him and hopes to keep him. Then Moose finds “Floppy, my bunny!” and Bear, though heartbroken, hands him over. But Moose has other ideas. The utterly charming illustrations and clever visual details add volumes to this tale of friendship and sharing. (For ages 3 to 6)"

"When I was a little kid in the late 1970s, my parents moved our family to rural western Montana, which happens to be the same time and setting for Smith Henderson’s debut novel. Thankfully, Henderson’s Montana is a good deal darker than that of my childhood; his characters and vivid portrayal of the state and all its poverty make for a fascinating read. The plot centers on a social worker who involves himself in the life of a reclusive family just as the father starts to attract the attention of the FBI. The fact that parts of this book are also set in two of my favorite cities — Missoula, Mont., and Austin, Texas — in a sleepier era didn’t hurt either."

"Ever want to quit your job, move to the country and start a farm stand? Susie Middleton, former editor of Fine Cooking magazine, did. Fresh from the Farm is partly the chronicle of an eat-local startup and partly a farm cookbook, liberally strewn with sunlit snapshots of chickens and garden beds in full production. And because Middleton is a flavor fanatic as well as a cook and farmer, her recipes are memorable even if you don’t get to cook with still-warm eggs, or just-picked tomatoes blushing from the vine."

"Texas is a huge, complicated state, and it’s sometimes a difficult one for authors to get right. Not so for René Steinke, whose Friendswood does a near-perfect job capturing the feel not just of the titular city but of southeast Texas as a whole. Steinke’s chronicle of the residents of a town dealing with — and denying — a recent environmental disaster is disturbing and thought-provoking, and one of the most interesting novels to be set in the Lone Star State in quite a while."

"Three things happened to me when I read this enchanting picture book about a mixed-up French bulldog raised by a family of prim, proper French poodles: First, I wanted to crumple up the whole world and commission a new one painted by Christian Robinson. Second, I wanted a French bulldog even more than usual, which is saying something, because I already dream of owning one with an intensity usually reserved for diamonds or beachfront property. And third, I wanted to hug the book to my heart and never, ever let it go. I’ve only done the third — for now. (For ages 4 to 8)"

"Geek Sublime is a primer for those of us unacquainted with HTML, Github and logic gates, elegantly assembled by a masterful novelist with a surprising obsession. “My writing life and my life with computers … seem mirrored, computer twinned,” writes Vikram Chandra. “Both are explorations of process, of the unfolding of connections.” He describes the seductiveness of DOS, his own journeyman coding, and how “hard-core” programmer Steve Wozniak single-handedly set off the personal computer revolution. And he waxes poetic about the algorithmic nature of Sanskrit."

"Adopted as a toddler by an American couple, Lily Firestone is the only Asian student in her Kansas City high school. It’s 1951 and, with the Korean War raging, she has become a target for prejudice disguised as patriotism. When her younger brother discovers a box of Chinese artifacts, Lily’s once-faded memories are jolted as she attempts to unravel the mystery of her “Gone Mom.” Her search for the answers leads to more questions, yet Lily persists, unable to rest until she knows the truth, however painful it may be. This gripping novel is for anyone who has ever felt out of place."

"This book has amazingly surreal vignettes from one of the many former East bloc countries that were trying to live an enforced lie. From the starlet who was Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels’ mistress (an affair Hitler himself put an end to) to the man who modeled for a statue of Stalin and then took to drink from being identified as him, these stories are presented with plenty of breathing room for the reader to make inferences. I love that kind of writing."

"John Grisham’s latest novel is set in a small, poverty-pummeled Appalachian town shadowed by not only the mountains but also the sweeping power of the big coal companies. The prose is undistinguished, yet Gray Mountain resonates because of the force and importance of its story. When Samantha Kofer loses her job with a New York City law firm, she heads south to work for a legal aid clinic. As Samantha quickly learns, the coal companies fight dirty. Despite trite phrases such as “the intern’s heart skipped a beat,” the novel is a solid depiction of scrappy legal Davids going up against ruthless corporate Goliaths."

"Half a World Away by Cynthia Kadohata will hit you right in the heart and gut. We meet Jaden, who’s 12, obsessed with electricity and adopted from Romania four years earlier: “When his mother left him, he’d been so out of his mind that he hadn’t even screamed and cried; he’d howled.” Jaden is trying to decide whether he loves his adoptive parents, who are on the verge of adopting another child — a process that Kadohata shows in grim detail. As in her National Book Award-winning novel, The Thing About Luck, Kadohata takes readers to such a particular place — a story like none you’ve read — while hitting universal nerves. Just terrific. (For ages 10 to 14)"

"This is a marvelous, brilliant, un-put-down-able book that swings between dark whimsy and harrowing bleakness with dexterity and skill. At the very end of the grimy borough of Filching squats Heap House, home to the Iremonger family, uniquely suited to tending the Heaps — mountains of refuse and salvage so immense that they’ve created their own microclimate. Each Iremonger has a birth object, a seemingly random item to which he must always be near, lest he sicken and fade away. But why can Clodius Iremonger hear the birth objects speaking their own names? Why are those names so strange? And who has stolen Aunt Rosamud’s brass door handle?"

"Rarely does a conceptual work seize the emotions like Here. Expanding on his influential 1989 comic, Richard McGuire depicts life in a single place at different points in time — 1989, 1637, even 1,000,000 B.C. While the characters on the main page chat, dance or vacuum, windows appear showing what’s going on decades or centuries distant. The device tugs the reader in two different directions: Every moment seems insignificant compared with the massive sweep of time, and yet the most trivial actions take on an aching poignancy."

"Broke and desperate, ventriloquist puppeteer Annie Hewitt takes sanctuary on a remote Maine island. Though determined to ignore her rich neighbor (Theo Harp, a former teen crush with a dark past, now a successful, reclusive horror writer) she finds herself drawn into the lives around her, including a wounded child who responds to Annie’s friendly puppets. Secrets abound on the island, and as Annie digs through decades of hidden truths, she may release Theo from a life of undeserved guilt and convince him he’s a worthy hero, especially for her. An intriguingly gothic direction for Susan Elizabeth Phillips."

"Not so long ago, designers dictated how women would look from season to season. Now, celebrities — and people who think they’re celebrities — are setting the sartorial pace, and designers have taken a back seat to the glitterati. Teri Agins covered the fashion industry for The Wall Street Journal for years and now writes its popular “Ask Teri” column. Her extensive research has given us a fun, gossipy read packed with fashion factoids that both fashionistas and business people will enjoy."

"Martin Duberman deftly navigates the biographies of two gay artists — Michael Callen and Essex Hemphill — to illuminate what he describes as the “battlefield of AIDS” during the early years of the epidemic. Callen, a white musician based in New York, and Hemphill, a black poet based in Washington, D.C., were crucial members of their respective communities. Based on countless interviews and letters as well as Callen’s extensive archives, Duberman personalizes history to devastating effect."

"Hooray for Hat! is practically the Platonic ideal of a picture book. It uses simple, repetitive language to tell a simple story with a simple message: Bringing happiness to others makes you happy, too. Elephant wakes up GRUMPY — until he finds an amazing hat on his doorstep! But can his hat delight his grumpy friends, too? Where a lesser writer might preach, Brian Won manages to simply delight with his elegant story and bright illustrations. On top of that, the book’s many characters and repeated lines invite both (1) the use of funny voices and (2) the shouting-along of familiar phrases; i.e., the two BEST THINGS to include in a read-aloud. (For ages 4 to 8)"

"Ever felt lost and disoriented in a huge imported furniture emporium of Scandinavian design? It’s a little sinister, right? So why did it take so long for someone to set a hilarious horror novel in what’s essentially a haunted Ikea? (It’s called Orsk in the novel.) Horrorstör’s grimly funny pleasures include the novel’s sendups of Ikea catalogs, complete with advertisements for Potemkin armchairs, Müskk beds and Lågniå water glasses. The plot — wage slaves up against corporate indifference and a gruesomely vengeful ghost — is mostly an excuse for such lines as, “There is a dead man on the Frinjk!” But author Grady Hendrix’s wit and trenchant observations about retail culture exceed Horrorstör’s silly concept. The book’s been plucked up for TV by the executive who developed Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel."

"Marilyn Nelson describes her book, How I Discovered Poetry, as a “personal memoir, a portrait of the artist as a young American Negro Girl.” I say it’s a gorgeous introduction to 1950s America, told through poems and snapshots that reveal a writer coming of age. For young readers, it’s the perfect entrance point to this era and to this genre. Many of the poems are accompanied by photos taken by the author’s father, who was an Air Force officer. And as with a photo album there’s a wonderful cumulative effect. “I flee into the arms of poetry. / I take my books to bed. I read so late / Daddy shouts, “Lights OUT!”… I lie in the dark. My head whirls with words.” (For ages 12 and up)"

"In a follow-up to Alan’s War, his celebrated book about an ordinary man’s experiences in World War II, Emmanuel Guibert illustrates a second installment of Alan Cope’s reminiscences about mid-20th-century life. Once again, Guibert renders the ordinary extraordinary: He depicts youthful scenes that are perfectly familiar, even though they occurred three-quarters of a century ago, such as rolling around the neighborhood on metal skates or playing with local kids in a vacant lot. As in the previous book, Guibert’s silky ink lines and delicately juxtaposed grays make the most quotidian moments feel special."

"You’ll never look at a period piece the same way again. Ruth Goodman, a historian who lives her studies, takes the “Dawn to Dusk” approach seriously. Her re-creation of Victorian life begins with stepping out of bed — a vastly different experience depending on your social class — and spreads out into an immersive explanation of social history, whether buying a train ticket or dressing for dinner. Ably encompassing a wide range of class experiences across decades of unimaginably swift social and economic change, Goodman’s book is the cheapest time-travel machine you’ll find this year."

"There are two published editions of this odd, bifurcated novel. Depending on which copy you end up with, you’ll either start with the story of the artist Francesco del Cossa, a Renaissance Italian fresco painter, or that of George, short for Georgia, a ‘60s teenager who recently lost her mother. Either way you will have the delightful experience of reading something truly innovative. The stories illuminate each other differently based on the order in which you encounter them. And the writing isn’t outpaced by the inventiveness of the structure — it’s vivid and tender and funny. And what a feat! — a book so tightly constructed that it contains not just two narratives that themselves explore duality, but two wholly different encounters with the book itself."

"Eleanor Davis doesn’t really tell readers how to be happy. Instead, she draws comics full of hilarious surrealism, gut-tugging tropes and eloquent despair. Her characters, on the other hand, do strive for happiness, or at least safety. Many aim to control their emotions with the aid of workshops, technology or even artificial societies. Rich colors and elegant line work elevate their efforts. Members of one inventive crew zip themselves up in a giant bag, protected from the world. Another, wiser character says, “Find the stories that make you stronger.” That’s good advice — and there are many right here."

"Halfway through How To Build A Girl I put the book down, sighed, and wondered if I should just barrel through and finish it in one night, or savor it for another day. There’s something about Caitlin Moran’s mixture of noisy fun and social commentary that’s a very happy place for a reader to hang out. The book follows the misadventures of Johanna Morrigan — an awkward, hilarious teen who decides that the path to reinvention will entail becoming a hard-drinking, oft-sexed rock critic. Her adventures are hilarious, and oddly relatable even when they’re sitcom-zany. If anyone knows how to build a girl, it’s Moran — she’s put adolescence on the page in a book that’s humming with authenticity. You’ll wish you were besties."

"Xiaolu Guo’s novels are bold expressions of individual will in the face of state control. In each, she explores, through idiosyncratic, quirky characters, the challenges and consequences of exerting identity. In her new book, Iona Kirkpatrick, a translator living a lonely, dissolute life in London, is handed a mysterious bundle of papers by her publisher. The bundle contains the diarylike letters that Kublai Jian, a Chinese dissident rock star in exile, has written to his absent lover, Deng Mu. As Iona translates the letters, she unravels the mystery of Jian — leading to a devastating conclusion."

"New York poet Roberto Montes is still a few years away from 30, but he has already written one of the best, most original poetry books of the year. Montes’ language is almost otherworldly, and his poems are, by turns, disturbing, sexy and sometimes surprisingly funny. It takes a rare talent to make sense (or something like it) of the basic weirdness of human relationships: “My world is a structure I build in such a way that when it falls apart it falls apart gracefully. You helped in the following ways. You were there. You weren’t.”"

"This book is many things at once, all of them engrossing. It’s a book where teenagers think in almost indulgently poetic language while still sounding genuinely adolescent. It’s two separate but equally intoxicating love stories. It’s the story of Noah at 13, falling for the magic boy next door. And it’s the story of his twin sister, Jude, three years later, haunted by her mom’s spiteful ghost and barely speaking with the twin who used to feel like half of her own self. And, most of all, it’s the mystery of what happened to tear Noah and Jude apart, and what — if anything — can bring them back together again."

"Editor Amy Scholder had two questions for her contributors when she started assembling these meditations on a spectrum of famous women. “Who do you think about (maybe a little too often), who challenges, inspires, or outrages you? Who are you obsessed with?” Her writers answer in provocative, deep and revelatory ways. Author Mary Gaitskill’s essay on sex superstar Linda Lovelace becomes a profound inquiry into the nature of victimhood and truth-telling, and the self-described “trans-fabulous performance-activist” Justin Vivian Bond tells of growing up besotted with the Estee Lauder cosmetics model Karen Graham. Other writers — novelist Rick Moody, historian Hanne Blank, musician Johanna Fateman — explore how the presence of a famous person in one’s mind can torment, transform and inspire. Together, these essays defeat the vapidity of celebrity worship and raise the question: Who obsesses you?"

"This dazzling first novel by British-Bangladeshi author Zia Haider Rahman follows two old friends, one a child of Pakistani privilege, the other born into poverty in Bangladesh. Both work in finance and meet in London after a long separation; and both of their lives are disintegrating in different ways. As the book tells their stories, it addresses exile, love, mathematics, religion, the war in Afghanistan and the financial crash of 2008. Don’t be put off by the length of the book (more than 500 pages) or its breadth — the writing shimmers."

"Will Walker is a young Englishman who has gone to war with the noblest of intentions. Ray Marfione is an Italian-American whose war will take him to the land of his ancestry. Adam Foulds’ third novel is set in North Africa and Sicily during World War II as the Allies attempt to liberate Italy. Neither of the two protagonists is well-suited to the horrors of combat, and through them Foulds explores, with wisdom and delicate control, the messy, lasting consequences of the conflict. With prose that is distinct and diligently crafted, this an intimate soldiers’ tale of the inescapable brutality of war."

"Music producer J Dilla had a way of stretching a sample that wrought sorrow from joy, noise from melody and the other way around. In this entry to the “33 1/3” series, in which authors pick apart one album in one short book, Jordan Ferguson digs deep into Dilla’s beat sources for Donuts and builds resonant, biographical context for the album’s moments. Donuts, after all, would be Dilla’s last record, a 2006 masterpiece written from the producer’s hospital bed that wrangles with his imminent mortality. And Ferguson illustrates it with ache and celebration."

"It would be nearly impossible to write a bad biography of Josephine Baker, civil rights activist and superstar. Glamorous dancer, spy, sparkplug and owner of a pet leopard named Chiquita — not even the driest prose could make these facts seem dull. But to create words and pictures that match her electric crackle — that’s a challenge. Patricia Hruby Powell’s vivid, rhythmic poetry and Christian Robinson’s arrestingly bold acrylic paintings accomplish something special by simply doing justice to Baker’s remarkable journey from segregated St. Louis to performing in Paris. Your kids will be dancing around in banana skirts after reading this one. (For ages 7 to 10)"

"This anthology is perfect for teens who are interested in science fiction and fantasy — but who don’t want just stories about white, straight, able-bodied rich kids and their vampire problems. And who also don’t want to read diversity narratives that are all about how being not white, not straight, not able-bodied, and not rich are the problem. The characters’ differences don’t drive the conflicts in Kaleidoscope; instead, they inform the way each person deals with meeting gods or legendary creatures, gaining superhero-level powers, and gazing into the future and all its challenges."

"Eleven-year-old Jarrett deals with a constant flow of foster babies shuffling in and out of his home. His mom is a foster parent and the book begins with a toddler and her 12-year-old brother coming for a much-longer-than-usual stay. Coe Booth perfectly captures the two boys in their backstabbing antics, their arguments over girls and, eventually, their transition from strangers to enemies to “kinda like brothers.” Before Booth was a writer, she was a caseworker with Child Protective Services in New York. She told NPR: “I was always wondering: What would it be like for those kids to have these new kids come and leave and come and leave and not want to attach to them?” (For ages 8 to 12)"

"Yanique spins a series of seductive tales covering six decades and three generations living in the Virgin Islands in her first novel, which draws upon her own family history. The cast includes legendary ship’s captain Owen Arthur Bradshaw of St. Thomas; his wife, Antoinette, who comes from a coral island known as “the drowned land”; and his mistress, Rebekah, whose child sets in motion a primordial curse. “Men who spend their lives on water understand that magic is real,” Yanique writes, as she invokes her own mystical tale."

"It’s been eight years since The Lay of the Land was published — the novel Richard Ford said would be the last in his Frank Bascombe trilogy. Luckily, Ford had second thoughts. Frank is now a 68-year-old retired real estate broker. The four stories herein all take place in the early winter of 2012, soon after Superstorm Sandy slammed into the Jersey Shore. The cover of Let Me Be Frank With You features a photo of the Seaside Heights roller coaster that was washed out into the Atlantic Ocean. It’s the most iconic image of Sandy’s wrath, and it’s also an iconic image for Ford’s achievement throughout his Frank Bascombe books — books that chart the whole wild roller coaster ride of life."

"This isn’t a love story; it’s the story of a marriage that’s no longer easy. Five years ago, Gus (short for Augusta) had an affair. Her husband, Owen, knows about it and hasn’t moved on. The couple moves to a farmhouse in the country hoping to escape their past, but once there Gus finds she can’t avoid her betrayal and Owen can’t shake his resentment. “It wasn’t our solitude that had shut down so much of our history,” Gus says. “It was our history that had produced our solitude.” Eventually, a new neighbor moves in next door, disrupting that solitude and transforming Life Drawing from an honest portrait of a marriage into a thriller."

"This anthology-size special issue of Lightspeed magazine was edited and written entirely by women — and the original fiction, reprints, essays, articles and interviews included here are a master class in all the ways women are writing — and have written — some of the best science fiction available. Within these pages you’ll find a wide range of speculative explorations: purist-pleasing “hard” science fiction, near future, dystopia, space opera, plus stories that mix horror and SF, mystery and steampunk, and even Jane Austen-style Regency sensibility with far-future tech."

"Marilynne Robinson first introduced readers to Lila as a minor character in the novel Gilead. In this book, Robinson fills out the details of Lila’s life. She is the wife of John Ames, a minister whose family has a long history in his hometown of Gilead, Iowa. Lila by contrast has no roots: She was abused as a child, then rescued by a woman who brought her up as part of a makeshift family of migrant workers. As an adult, Lila finds herself alone and adrift when she happens into Gilead and meets the reverend. Lila questions Ames about faith and salvation. He is both challenged and attracted by her unflinching honesty. She is touched by his tenderness. Robinson, a writer known for the spare beauty of her prose and a finely honed moral sensibility, has created an unlikely but moving love story that is filled with unexpected moments of grace."

"A little boy is looking for Lion. Lion is looking for lunch. There’s only one outcome that seems likely when the two meet in Miriam Busch and Larry Day’s book — an inappropriately gruesome one. But never fear! This little boy has backup: snapping turtles, hedgehogs, skunks, hummingbirds and a sneaky plan. And there’s a Lion inside this lion that you might not see coming. A killer combination of twisty wordplay, kid-perfect watercolors and characters that demand funny voices, Lion Lion is a read aloud sure to leave your audience delighted and you just a little hoarse. (For ages 4 to 8)"

"Gary Shteyngart is a memoirist not out for revenge but for truth, and his quest takes him to various interesting places in this lively and forthcoming book. An only child who immigrated to Queens from Leningrad with his parents in 1979, he not only gives the reader an intimate look at his own self but also puts his parents under the very strong memoirist’s magnifying lens. The results can be uncomfortable, to say the least, but are always compelling. This is a mature book in all the important ways: evenhanded toward the parents who raised him, and not trying to score points or twist the knife but just trying to understand."

"Little Nemo in Slumberland creator Winsor McCay might blush to see the awe-inspiring tribute his successors have assembled. On massive, 16-inch-by-21-inch pages (the same size as those on which McCay drew his seminal newspaper cartoon), some of the most exciting artists working in comics have created wildly diverse interpretations of Nemo and his exploits. Some contributors update Nemo; others subvert his Edwardian-era cheeriness; many simply send him on new adventures, re-creating McCay’s style with startling facility. They’re not very dreamlike, but these comics, like McCay’s, are more enjoyable than the sweetest slumber."

"Charles D’Ambrosio’s essay collection Orphans became a cult classic not long after its 2004 release by a small Portland, Ore., press. Tin House has reissued the long-out-of-print book this year, with a new title, introduction and a few more essays. D’Ambrosio is one of his generation’s most talented writers, and this collection — featuring essays about housing developments, mental illness, Native American whaling and much more — is his masterpiece."

"Recently widowed Kate and her 8-year-old daughter escape the machinations of her politician mother-in-law by fleeing to her Great Aunt Eby’s declining resort, Lost Lake. Eby is ready to sell the property, much to the chagrin of a handful of loyal regulars, but Kate’s visit reunites her with her preteen summer love, Wes — and changes everything. Populated with a quirky cast of characters, most of whom have haunted pasts, Lost Lake is Sarah Addison Allen’s most emotionally complex book to date, but it maintains her signature ability to weave enchantment seamlessly into an already rich storyline."

"This novel was inspired by a photograph of a lesbian couple taken at a Paris nightclub just before World War II. One of the women pictured is Violette Morris, a cross-dressing athlete and race car driver who became a Nazi spy and torturer. Morris is Lou Villars in Francine Prose’s novel, which tells Lou’s story from several perspectives, including the photographer’s. When her racing license is taken away because of how she dresses, Lou becomes easy prey for the manipulations of Adolf Hitler. It doesn’t end well for Lou, who winds up in the hands of the French Resistance. Prose’s book is a strange ride through the glittery, shallow world of Paris in the shadow of war. It’s also a cautionary tale that probes both the roots of evil and the nature of gender."

"When a collection like Malaria, Poems comes along, the world must take notice. In the spirit of social consciousness, Cameron Conaway does the work of calling our attention to a disease that kills over 627,000 people a year. Call it the poetry of awareness: Through beautifully realized and scientifically sound lyrics, Conaway educates us on subjects ranging from the Anopheles mosquito, which transmits the disease, to the gray market in false remedies. The work, while deeply cerebral, manages to get to the heart of the issue with intense power."

"Well aware that memory and identity rarely follow a linear path, Thomas Page McBee attempts to answer the question, “What does it really mean to be a man?” Weaving past and present to do so, the book’s journey connects violence, masculinity and forgiveness. McBee has an intelligent heart, and it beats in every sentence of this gorgeous book."

"If you’ve ever cooked from a collection of recipes from different sources, you know how frustratingly inconsistent they can be. But do not underestimate the power of a firm editorial hand! In this (rather oddly titled) book, Food & Wine editor Dana Cowin adapts dishes from dozens of the country’s best-known restaurant names, soliciting pro tips and snapping a selfie or two. The end result is gorgeous, simple recipes that even a rank beginner can manage. Plus, you get to see some of your favorite celebrity chefs hamming it up in Cowin’s kitchen."

"This is the first-ever all-Latin American issue of McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, featuring 13 stories by some of today’s most exciting voices. In the hands of Alejandro Zambra, Juan Pablo Villalobos and others, we have crime fiction at its strangest and most artfully complex. There’s an urgency that permeates each offering, and while there are death and bloodshed throughout the pages — as is characteristic of the genre — there are also wisdom and beauty, and an understanding of what it takes to make the ugliest things, somehow, palatable and a joy to read."

"Mexican chef and food activist Margarita Carrillo is an enthusiastic and comprehensive guide to her country’s cuisine in Mexico: The Cookbook — which looks daunting at nearly 700 pages — but the purposefully simple recipes provide a stress-free introduction to Mexico’s vast culinary history. While the food has evolved through the centuries, Carrillo says, “you can eat the same tortilla that Moctezuma ate 500 years ago.”"

"Chinese heroine Catherine Blade and English hero Leighton Atwood, two star-crossed lovers who originally met in disguise and were torn apart by differing political loyalties, run into each other years later in London. She is chasing a powerful enemy, and he is engaged to be married — but once again they find their personal and political goals muddled and their mutual attraction irresistible. Romance star Thomas effortlessly blends historical romance essentials with breathtaking elements of mystical martial arts heroism and sets the dual timelines — 1883 and 1891 — in imperial China and Victorian London. A unique, fascinating, culturally textured romance."

"The thing about chef books is that usually chefs have a lot of things you don’t — for example, squads of prep cooks, access to specialty ingredients, and hours of time to do nothing but cook. Geoffrey Zakarian has them too, but in this book he doesn’t use them. He sticks with the stuff everybody has — canned beans, pasta, vinegar, jam — and turns them into food everybody wants. In other words: Now there’s no excuse."

"What’s a perfect pet? For the little boy in Bob Staake’s charming, rhyming picture book brightly illustrated in his rounded, cartoonish style, it’s “a frisky red hardcover” that doesn’t shed or drink from toilet bowls, and “didn’t even poop.” All’s well until the maid (the book’s one odd move) cleans up the house and gives the beloved book to charity. Fortunately this paean to bound books in an age increasingly dominated by screens ends well: “And now the boy and his pet book / Had their very own tale to tell.” (For ages 3 to 7)"

"One of France’s most revered crime writers, Didier Daeninckx delivers an arresting, fast-paced detective story with Nazis in the Metro. After the novelist André Sloga is attacked and left to die alone in a basement, private eye Gabriel Lecouvreur decides to take on the case. Everyone considers it a robbery gone wrong, but Lecouvreur thinks the attack may have been politically motivated. And although Sloga is in the hospital and in no condition to speak, he does repeat one phrase, over and over again: “Max, the bank, the loudspeaker on the square.” This one will keep you guessing."

"At last, an espionage thriller set in China that works. With Night Heron, former BBC China correspondent Adam Brookes has produced a masterful debut novel. It has all the hallmarks of a great page-turner, but with a richness of detail that feels authentic. There are a prisoner escape, an unwitting conduit between the prisoner and the British Secret Intelligence Service, and competition between British and U.S. spy agencies that doesn’t feel obligatory. The richly textured picture of modern Beijing is a bonus. You will be captivated by it all. This is the must-read thriller of the year."

"Armed with his sticky ninja (dishwashing) gloves, unbreakable ninja (jump) rope and bouncy ninja (pingpong) paddle, Ninja Maxwell is ready and able to tackle all obstacles in his path and accomplish his ninja goal (getting milk and cookies). Arree Chung’s dynamic layouts — evidence of his background in video game design — make the action in this book feel positively cinematic, while the contrast he creates between Maxwell’s ninja narration and the reality of his mundane surroundings leaves each page dense with visual jokes that both adults and kids will adore. But beware! This is one you’ll have to read over and over — and the Ninja Way might be contagious. (For ages 4 to 7)"

"Colm Tóibín’s quietly moving quasi-autobiographical novel, set at the beginning of the 1970s in his hometown of Enniscorthy, Ireland, charts his titular character’s brave, incremental steps toward forging a new life for herself after the premature death of her husband, a beloved local schoolteacher. Left with paltry finances, two daughters away at school and two pre-adolescent sons still at home, Nora is forced to return to the dull office job from which marriage liberated her. As always, Tóibín’s tone is subdued, but there’s solace for the reader, as Nora discovers new sources of contentment and strength, including a deepening involvement with classical music."

"Deftly translated by Kareem James Abu-Zeid, Najwan Darwish’s Nothing More to Lose is a passionate collection of short poems written between 2000 and 2014, uniting a wide range of subjects with a heartbreaking love for people, places and poetry. Traveling from Brazil to Palestine, Darwish explores matters of family, tragedy and identity in a marvelously flexible voice suited to both celebrations and laments."

"There’s been a lot of traffic in dystopias recently, but when a great literary novelist takes on the genre, it’s worth paying close attention. Chang-rae Lee’s On Such A Full Sea is a desolate vision of the future, which begins in the former Baltimore, now known as B-mor. A young woman named Fan sets off in search of her vanished lover, across a highly stratified society, strange and immoral. Lee’s writing is gorgeous and the literary device of a kind of Greek chorus — the community voice of B-Mor — feels fresh, but also timeless. Like most dystopias, the book is an allegory, but it never seems obvious or on-the-nose — it’s more like a fable, simple and cautionary — an important critique of a world we’ll hope we don’t see."

"I tried reading Heartsick, the first of Chelsea Cain’s thrillers featuring Archie Sheridan and Gretchen Lowell, but it was way too scary for me; I never tried another in the series. So I had no reason to even start One Kick. But begin it I did, and then found that I couldn’t put it down. After suffering from five years of sexual and emotional abuse by her kidnapper, Kick Lannigan was rescued at age 11; now, 10 years later, she’s determined to rescue other kidnapped children. This page-turner has a terrific heroine, a satisfyingly twisty plot and a boffo ending."

"Richard Powers hits lots of high notes in this exuberantly intellectual road novel about a 70-year-old avant-garde composer obsessed with creating transcendent music via a far-fetched homegrown genetic engineering experiment aimed at instilling notes into bacterial cells. In paranoid, post-Sept. 11 America, Powers’ eccentric protagonist runs afoul of the law. Dubbed the “Biohacker Bach,” he goes on the lam, hopping on a “carousel of catastrophe” as he visits key turning points from his past."

"While teaching in Stanford’s writing program and rooming together, Michael McGriff and J.M. Tyree cooked up the idea of binge-watching the entire Criterion collection of classic movies and writing stories inspired by them. Their nonlinear flash collaboration bounces between points of view, offering two stories per film. Our Secret Life in the Movies is made up of 30 of these “double takes” about growing up in the late 1980s, a time of Space Age toasters, doomed astronauts and the specter of nuclear annihilation. From its start in the early 1970s, riffing off Carlos Saura’s Cria Cuervos to its final homage to Andrei Tarkovsky, this collection is genius."

"If I only had a dollar for every cookbook that’s come out from a Brooklyn bakery in the past five years! Here we have what at first looks like yet another compilation of sweets and treats — but with flavors just odd enough to seduce and intrigue. The muffins are blueberry cornflake, or feta, basil and scallion; the tarts are caramel bacon, or sour cherry almond. Everything’s made with ingredients you can easily find at the supermarket — and yet I’ll bet you wouldn’t have thought to combine them before."

"Are you crazy busy? Stressed out? Then you’ll love Brigid Schulte’s deep dive into how our days have been shredded into “time confetti.” (Full disclosure: I know Schulte through her husband, my colleague Tom Bowman.) She finds one researcher who uses Christmas cards to pinpoint when busyness became a badge of honor, and another who insists that American women have loads of unappreciated leisure time — 30 hours a week, in fact. My favorite scene is a focus group lamenting harried lives and lack of leisure — in Fargo, N.D. It’s all enough to make you cry, but Schulte’s perspective on our modern-day malaise will also make you laugh out loud."

"Akhtiorskaya’s debut novel is set in Brooklyn, but you won’t find any kombucha-clutching hipsters here. Her novel follows the members of the Nasmertov family, recently arrived from Odessa, Ukraine, as they adjust to life in a new country. Akhtiorskaya’s patient, understated prose is absolutely remarkable — she’s a deeply perceptive writer, and her observations about the family’s experience as immigrants to America are sharp and sometimes heartbreaking."

"James Ellroy is back in 1940s Los Angeles with Perfidia, the first book in a new series. It covers just a few weeks around the bombing of Pearl Harbor, when all of America (and LA in particular) is descending into madness and xenophobic fury. The plot revolves around the ritual murder of a Japanese family, but the big draw for Ellroy fans is the opportunity to see some of his already famous characters (like Dudley Smith, most notably) in the hotblooded viciousness of their youth. It’s a beautiful, violent, epic novel about a dark time in America that’s too often made glossy and bright in our memories."

"Whether the new biography of poet Philip Larkin is for you will depend on two things: whether you adore the poetry (you do? Let’s be friends!), and if you’re interested in hearing more about the softer side of Larkin. The other side is well-known — there is plenty of evidence to suggest Larkin was a real jerk: a bigot, a misogynist, a drunk. This biography is by James Booth, who knew him for almost two decades and accentuates Larkin’s kinder attributes. Even as a die-hard fan of the poetry, I don’t know enough to weigh in on who he really was — and in many ways, Booth may seem like an apologist — but there’s still pleasure in the argument itself, and in the many detailed critical passages. Is Booth’s funnier, affectionate Larkin the real man? Maybe, maybe not — but no matter who he was, he’s still the man who wrote An Arundel Tomb. “What will survive of us is love.”"

"The great chef Yotam Ottolenghi, who had such a phenomenal success with the vegetarian cookbook Plenty (as well as the nonvegetarian Jerusalem), now brings us Plenty More, which once again is all vegetables, all the time. With recipes for dishes like Squash With Labneh And Pickled Walnut Salsa, and Green Beans With Freekeh And Tahini, you may find yourself incidentally getting a crash course in ingredients you never heard of, and then spending a lot of time running around trying to find them. But the end results are worth it, and as an added inducement to read this book, the photographs will put you in a hungry stupor."

"If you enjoy podcasts like Marc Maron’s WTF and J.R. Havlan’s Writer’s Bloc, or if you just enjoy being serious about comedy, then this book is for you. It’s filled with intelligent conversations about what comedy writers do but also about how hopeless it is to be one — so if you’re not doing it to fill some deep emotional void, run away. Each interview and essay in here says (shocker): Write what you find funny. Even if you’re not interested in a comedy writing career, at least you’ll get great suggestions for your Netflix queue."

"This is a glittering collection of poems that move across the page with the fierce grace of a corseted dancer. Saeed Jones’ sharp rhythms and powerful images are choreographed to perfection, telling the story of Boy, a queer African-American growing up in the South, and his experiences with family, gender and desire. Smoke, booze, music and sex are all stitched together into a fabulously controlled performance."

"The Western genre is a veritable myth factory, and writer Kelly Sue DeConnick and artist Emma Ríos are making the most of it. The first volume of their Pretty Deadly series layers the detached life-and-death surrealism of Greek legends over the sweeping landscapes and grittily human towns of our shared cinematic memory. The art alternates scratchy chaos and arresting tableaux, and the crisscrossing stories, built on other stories and folded within yet more stories, become a dream-logic commentary on the West’s construction of its own mythology."

"I am almost loath to tell anyone about this magic book. If too many people notice it, Hollywood is bound to come knocking and turn this transporting, elegant story — a wordless picture book that’s Harold and the Purple Crayon raised to the power of The Lord of the Rings — into something airless, bombastic and murderously trite. But to read this book once is to want to personally distribute one to every bored kid you’ve ever seen, Hollywood be damned. “Here,” you’d say. “Flip through right now and spend the rest of your day trying to climb right into the pages. I’ll wait.” (For ages 4 to 8)"

"By the far-reaching tentacles of N’Rygoth! Look up “rowdy” in the dictionary and you’ll probably find portraits of Hannah, Dee, Violet and Betty, the butt-kicking, name-taking (OK, also drug-taking) band of mercenary fighters known as the Rat Queens. This medievalesque swords’n’sorcery sendup has a massive following among women — and for good reason: The Rat Queens are the very best kind of strong female characters. Their flaws are believable, their friendships are solid (if liberally peppered with expletives) and they can rid your town of trolls — for a hefty price, of course."

"You don’t have to be a fan of the world’s most popular sport to enjoy David Peace’s “fictional biography” of soccer coach — uh, “football manager” — Bill Shankly, whose tenure at Liverpool Football Club was one of the most successful in British history. Peace’s novel has echoes of James Joyce, but it really resists any comparisons — sprawling, ambitious and heartbreaking, it’s one of the best sports novels in recent years."

"Phil Klay, a former Marine who served in Iraq, delivers perhaps the finest literary account of this generation’s wars. In one story, soldiers shoot dogs — not for fun, but because they feel they have to. In another, a soldier who “collected remains” in Iraq tells his stories differently back home depending on whether he’s talking to men (“funny, with lots of gore”) or women (“sad, with a thousand-yard stare”). The book’s 12 narratives bristle with the horrors of war, its effects on ordinary people and the challenges of coming back home with the scars of battle."

"When your big brother sets the rules, no matter how arbitrary they may sound, you’d better follow them — or the consequences could be dire. Lush, surreal paintings of one-eyed robots, odd creatures and uninvited strangers will leave you marveling over the art and searching the details for hidden messages. A simple edict like, “Never leave a red sock on a clothesline” is accompanied by an image of a giant rabbit looming over the brothers huddled together. Though the text is spare, the paintings reveal an astonishing depth of emotion and insight into a child’s fears and imagination. (For ages 4 to 8)"

"Fresh-faced robbers, lighthearted humor and celebrations of reading aren’t usually found in R-rated comics — as to what is usually found in R-rated comics, that will have to wait for another day — but Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarsky seem determined to upend every stereotype about carnal entertainment. Sex Criminals bubbles over with joyous energy. Fraction provides a charming concept and brisk storyline, and Zdarsky’s art is luscious and varied. There’s even a cheeky tribute to The Family Circus. You might not want to read Sex Criminals in public, but do read it."

"What happens when you’re a freshly adopted dog, desperate for a permanent home full of belly rubs and nose kisses but afflicted with a tragic, irresistible need to chew not boring old bones or squeaky old toys … but shoes? An age-old battle between ego and superego is what — and one to which many wee beasties (and exasperated parents) might relate. Megan McDonald’s language is infectious — you’ll be personifying your pets with her quotes in no time — and Katherine Tillotson’s chaotic, vibrant scribbles are full of subtle nuance. Just watch how Shoe Dog’s lines change when he becomes well-behaved. (For ages 4 to 8)"

"Shigeru Mizuki endures much in Showa 1944-1953: A History of Japan, the third volume in his autobiographical graphic novel. Stationed in New Guinea at the end of World War II, he’s at the mercy of superiors who lust psychopathically for heroic death (both their subordinates’ and their own). He’s laid low with malaria and even loses an arm, then faces the privations of the postwar period. Mizuki has plenty of bitterness, but the overarching mood is one of gratitude. He owes his survival, he says, to “some magical thread of destiny.”"

"Often I find that “simple Thai” cookbooks are either not so simple or not so Thai. But blogger Leela Punyaratabandhu (shesimmers.com) has a way of marrying convenience with high flavor. Store-bought curry pastes mingle with fresh aromatics like Kaffir lime and lemongrass, and substitutions are welcome. Once in a while, there will be a real stumper — fingerroot or young green peppercorns — in the mix. But mostly, these dishes are fragrant winners that can be sourced and cooked even on a school night."

"Raina is convinced that being a big sister will be awesome … until she actually becomes one. During a road trip to Colorado, flashbacks reveal a contentious sibling relationship with her younger sister, Amara, spiked with misunderstandings, fights and rivalry. As family dynamics unfold in this bright and energetic graphic novel, unspoken truths are revealed and the complexity of life is underscored but never preached. Though this is a follow-up to Smile, Sisters, can stand alone with its humor, wit and deep insights. (For ages 8 to 12)"

"Michelle Fischer, Desma Brooks and Debbie Helton all joined the Indiana National Guard prior to Sept. 11. Although they signed up for different reasons, came from very different backgrounds, and were born in different decades, their lives intersected over the next 12 years, both stateside and on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan. Illuminating and thought-provoking — these are three women you won’t soon forget."

"Actually, the best tag for this book is “Funny Stuff From The Dark Side For Art Lovers.” This is a Chicago noir: smart, edgy and profane (very profane) yet with the endearing quality of a major city that embraces the Cubs. Author Lenny Kleinfeld brings together a smart cop, a sleazy art dealer, outlandish artists and a hilariously stupid knuckle-breaker (and the capo who hates him) in a rollicking caper that you constantly think you’ve got figured out until you don’t. This book is fun. Loads of fun."

"Some Luck is the first book in a trilogy that will follow an Iowa farm family over 100 years. The story begins in 1920 when Walter and Rosanna Langdon are just setting out on their own. Eventually, they will have five children. The oldest, Frank, takes center stage early on, but author Jane Smiley gives all the Langdons their moment in the spotlight — so much so that you may wonder at first why she spends so much time on the details of each character’s life. But as members of the family enter adulthood and some of them move away from the farm, you realize that Smiley is creating a rich universe rooted in the intimate details of family life and set against the all-encompassing sweep of history."

"This book isn’t exactly a feel-good romp, but for a post-apocalyptic novel, Station Eleven comes remarkably close. It follows a theater group traveling through the Great Lakes region years after a pandemic has wiped out most of humanity. Emily St. John Mandel delivers a beautifully observed walk through her book’s 21st century world, as seen by characters who are grappling with what they’ve lost and what remains. While I was reading it, I kept putting the book down, looking around me, and thinking, “Everything is a miracle.” And also: “Survival is insufficient.”"

"This isn’t one of those collections that go to great lengths to show you their writer’s range. We already know that Margaret Atwood can do many, many things very well. But here, she often focuses on the side of her writing self that might be called “wicked,” both in the nature of some of her characters and in the pleasing slyness and cleverness that inform the whole book. The character Verna in the title story is a serial husband-killer who goes on a cruise of the Arctic, where she sets her deadly designs on someone from long in her past. As usual, you want to follow Atwood anywhere."

"Deceit, politics, bravery, courage, heroes and villains are all the makings of a great novel. However, this isn’t a work of fiction but the true story of the creation of the United Farm Workers. While most people may have heard of Mexican-American activist Cesar Chavez, lesser-known is the plight of a group of Filipino-American farmworkers who set off one of the longest and most effective strikes in the history of the United States. This meticulously researched narrative captures the atmosphere and intensity of the times with compelling text, photos and sidebars and brings the struggles of these brave men and women to life. (For ages 10 and up)"

"Thank You, Octopus is a wonderfully wacky tale about a mischievous octopus helping his charge get ready for bed. When the boy grumbles, the octopus tries to tempt him with a warm bath. “Thank you, Octopus,” the boy says — until he realizes the bath tub is full of egg salad: “Gross! No thank you, Octopus.” It has some of the same naughty, talk-back-to-the-book fun of <a href= “http://www.npr.org/books/titles/320708999/dont-let-the-pigeon-drive-the-bus “target="_blank">Don’t Let The Pigeons Drive the Bus! another modern-day toddler classic, and it’s funny enough for adults to enjoy rereading again and again. The illustrations are insanely detailed and I especially appreciated the New York Harbor setting. (For ages 3 to 5)"

"Beekle, an adorable marshmallow-like fellow sporting an orange paper crown, lives on a magical island. Here, he patiently waits his turn for a child to “imagine” him into his or her life. But when no one does, lonely Beekle dares to venture across the ocean to a big city in search of a special friend. Warm, whimsical artwork beautifully conveys his sadness, innocence and ultimate joy as it draws you in — and Beekle’s heartfelt story keeps you turning the pages. A testament to hope and the power of imagination, you will welcome Beekle into your world — as does the child of his dreams. (For ages 3 to 6)"

"Matthew Palmer’s The American Mission is a can’t-put-it-down thriller. The novel kicks off in an arid, bloodstained refugee camp in Sudan’s southern Darfur region, but spends most of its time in the unruly Democratic Republic of the Congo. There, big money colludes with big power to go after a valuable mineral in the lush interior. Held in the balance is a village that happens to sit on a rich vein of that valuable mineral. Marie is one of the village leaders — a beautiful chieftain’s daughter who uses mad survival skills as well as her engineering degree to try to save her people. Meanwhile, protagonist and U.S. Foreign Service officer Alex Baines juggles his growing interest in Marie with a career-saving mission that puts them at odds with each other. Palmer’s 20 years in the U.S. Foreign Service helps infuse this book with authenticity. A great beach read."

"This ongoing anthology series allows English-language readers the opportunity to explore speculative visions of the future, past and present from writers around the world — including those who don’t publish in English. This year’s volume is another fantastic collection of stories, though this time around, editor Lavie Tidhar cast his net wider to include more of the many flavors of speculative fiction beyond simple science fiction. That extra facet of diversity means that not every story will suit, but working out which are your favorites is that much more exciting."

"The Ballad of a Small Player centers on “Lord Doyle,” an English lawyer who’s on the run with some ill-begotten money and gambling it all away in the casinos of Macau. With echoes of V.S. Naipaul and Graham Greene, author Lawrence Osborne’s portrayal of a man at the end of his rope, in a foreign land, descending into his own private hell and attempting to find salvation are pitch perfect and ultimately captivating."

"So you don’t think you could ever make banh mi, your favorite Vietnamese sandwich? Andrea Nguyen begs to differ. Her highly focused book has everything you need to pull it off: the pickles, the pates, the sauces, even the bread — all written in the meticulous, foolproof style that’s made Nguyen one of my favorite cookbook authors. There are easy variations and alternatives and shortcuts, and a whole lot of droolworthy protein. Would it be easier to just scrape together your pennies and head to the nearest banh mi joint? Possibly. But the point is, now you don’t have to."

"A riveting dystopia set inside a beehive, The Bees tells the story of worker bee Flora 717, from her lowly hatching to her hive-saving heroism to her inadvertent leadership of a revolution against the hive’s Sage priestesses. With lovely prose, fast-rising stakes and a wonderfully effective rendering of a hive’s life cycle, The Bees is a beautiful book."

"If you’re a fan of intelligent, complex and gorgeously written fiction (the sort that Iris Murdoch wrote), you won’t want to miss this tale of artist Harriet Burden, who — tired of having her work ignored or belittled by critics — asks three men to show her pieces as their own. Written as a collection of texts from and interviews of a wide cast of characters, including critics, family members and Harriet herself (we read her journals), this novel offers much food for thought and sentence after sentence that you’ll want to savor."

"We public radio people are generally spoiled by free books. After years of living off the “giveaway pile” at the office, it takes a lot for me to buy a book. But I bought David Mitchell’s latest. In hardcover. And it was totally worth it. The novel, which blends realism and fantasy, traces the life of a woman who gets caught up in a war between two groups of ancient, near-immortals. I read it flying from D.C. to London, and it carried me much further than that — across centuries, continents and genres. I’m not enough of a Mitchell fan to attend his conferences or read critical essays about him; I am enough of a fan to read nearly everything he’s written. And The Bone Clocks ranks among his best."

"Michel Faber writes books you lug around — in your bag, in your head, in your conscience. The author of the giant Victorian novel The Crimson Petal And the White has bounded across genres in his new book, straight into fully realized science fiction. Peter, a Christian pastor, takes a missionary gig — introducing Jesus to the aliens of the planet Oasis. Trouble is, he is separated from his wife, Bea, for the first time and things are not going well on Earth, where he has left her. If you’re feeling bad about the state of the world — and if you’ve heard a newscast, you probably are — you should be warned that parts of this book are bleak, and the future isn’t just dark, it’s lonely. But like all the best books that dare to speculate about new, foreign lands — be they alien, human or animal — this one leaves you with a warmth and gratitude for what we’ve got in our own."

"In The Book of Unknown Americans, Cristina Henríquez captures the immigrant experience with style and grace. A love story at its core, it begins with teenage Maribel and her family, who are happy and contented in Mexico. When Maribel suffers an accident, they decide to uproot to Delaware in search of better opportunities. And there, in a beat-up apartment building, they form close bonds with other families from all over Latin America. We witness their struggles and triumphs as they all seek not only to survive but to find a place in the world. This stunningly beautiful novel will keep you flipping the pages."

"This is the very long awaited conclusion to Patrick Leigh Fermor’s unforgettable, three-part travelogue, which describes his adventures during a walk from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople (a name he romantically preferred to Istanbul) as a young man in the early 1930s. The first volume, published in 1977, astonished readers with its picaresque cast of characters and vast, seemingly effortless erudition about between-wars Europe and the myriad shifting empires that preceded it. The second volume, published in 1986, was equally celebrated, but the end of the tale lay unfinished for decades, as an aging Fermor suffered from writer’s block. Finished posthumously by travel writer Colin Thubron and Fermor biographer Artemis Cooper, The Broken Road describes Fermor’s arrival in Istanbul and his push on to Greece, where he eventually made his home. Occupying a place somewhere between fiction and nonfiction — Fermor was said to have had a prodigious memory, but admitted later that he’d taken some liberties filling in the blanks — the trilogy stands out for its lyrical prose and piercing intelligence, both lightly worn."

"In his best novel since Saturday, Ian McEwan gives us another compact, propulsive morality tale about a professional in crisis mode. Fifty-nine-year-old Fiona Maye, a family High Court judge, struggles simultaneously with her husband’s determination to swing for a last passionate fling with a much younger woman, and a gnarly case involving the right of a remarkable, not-quite-18-year-old Jehovah’s Witness to refuse a lifesaving blood transfusion on religious grounds. Rational Fiona, upset by her marital rift, is unmoored by an onslaught of bewildering emotions. The Children Act raises intriguing questions about both religious and romantic devotion, legality versus morality, and where professional responsibilities end and personal ones begin."

"Wow! Fantagraphics has assembled a box set of every issue of Zap Comix ever produced, from 1968 to 2004? Including all the covers in full color, candid snapshots from back in the day, fake ads and even a never-before-published issue? That’s not just a piece of history; it’s a hunk of crackling, unquenchable subversion! R. Crumb flings id bombs, and his merry men — Rick Griffin, Paul Mavrides, Victor Moscoso, Spain Rodriguez, Gilbert Shelton, Robert Williams and S. Clay Wilson — contribute bursts of surreal hilarity. Never has a library-worthy volume been so incendiary."

"This year I discovered Peirene Press, a London publisher who sends me a work of translated European fiction every four months in exchange for an annual subscription. The first book sent was Hamid Ismailov’s melancholy tale of nuclear testing and an environment so damaged that it can no longer nourish life. The story begins on a train journey, and from the first page this lyrical love song to Kazakhstan and its people is deeply affecting — journeys on horseback across the steppes; long, cold winter nights. It is a book that makes the reader want to sing her own praise song in gratitude for the journeys translation allows us to make."

"To me, the best way to describe this novel is to say that while I was reading it I frequently had to remind myself to breathe. Society woman Charlotte Alton has a secret life — as Karla, someone who helps criminals “disappear” into new identities. But when Simon Johanssen, an ex-military sniper turned gun for hire, re-enters her life and asks for her help, danger and complications follow, not least because Simon is the one person who knows Karla’s real identity. To say any more would be a crime: This occasionally violent, page-turning novel gives the term thriller a good name."

"We are becoming three nations — one for the wealthy, one for the poor, one for those caught in between — and Matt Taibbi provides a compelling, depressing road map. Readers who know Taibbi’s work for *Rolling Stone* may be surprised by the lack of curse words and attitude here. Instead, he methodically explores how wealthy business people are often allowed to break laws with little personal consequence (including more than $26 billion in mortgage fraud), while poor people are relentlessly policed and punished. It’s the tale of how mindless bureaucracy grinds down one class and exalts another, enabled by the politics of the moment and Americans’ near-instinctual worship of society’s winners."

"The Empathy Exams is a trove of treats for those who enjoy a genre I’ll call “travelisophical”: traveling to a strange world and trying to make philosophical sense of it. It has essays on imprisoned marathoners (“What happens when you confine a man whose whole life is motion?”), a contagious skin condition that’s likely imagined (“Doubting Morgellons hasn’t stopped me from being afraid I’ll get it.”), poverty tourism and a delightful jag on sweetness called “In Defense of Saccharin(e).” Thanks to Leslie Jamison’s sharp mind, questions that could be butchered in somebody else’s hands are executed with such rigor that you emerge candle-dipped in an intelligence you do not possess."

"In Fordlandia, historian Greg Grandin chronicled Henry Ford’s attempt to establish a utopian version of small-town America in the middle of the Brazilian rain forest. In The Empire of Necessity, Grandin shows readers the hell of the slave trade. His touchstone is the true-life slave revolt on a ship called the Tryal in 1805. (Herman Melville drew almost exclusively upon the story of the Tryal to write his own floating gothic masterpiece of a short novel, Benito Cereno, in 1855.) Grandin tells the harrowing story of the 72 desperate slaves aboard the Tryal to fan out and explore the explosion of the slave trade in the Americas in the early 19th century. The Empire of Necessity is a wonder of power, precision and sheer reading pleasure about human horror and degradation."

"This novella is as dark and rich as European drinking chocolate, both in the story it tells and in the way it’s written. Malcolm Mays tries to escape the horror of his life by moving to a house in rural Oregon, only to fall into a new horror when letters begin to arrive from Dusha Chuchonnyhoof, who claims to be the owner. Dusha is due to return — after 117 years — and that’s only one part of the unsettling unreality at the heart of this story. Kat Howard and Maria Dahvana Headley’s separate styles blend beautifully here, as do myth and folklore, in this intricate and elegantly forged plot."

"This is easily the novel I talked about the most this year and most adamantly pressed into other people’s hands. British author Tom Rob Smith is a thriller writer, but of the literary, fiercely smart variety. Here, he found inspiration in real life — his life. In 2009, Smith received a startling phone call from his father in Sweden, where his parents had retired to a small, remote farm. His father said he had put his wife, Smith’s mother, in a psychiatric hospital. Smith’s mother called soon after, saying that his father was lying and was involved in a criminal conspiracy. She would fly back to London to tell her son everything. Which parent to believe? He had no cause to doubt either, and his mother had never shown any sign of mental illness before. From this beginning, Smith spins a novel of doubt and secrets set in a bleak yet beautiful Swedish landscape."

"Accidentally ejected from a circus train, a cheerful child clown is taken in by a solemn old farmer. After washing up, the farmer is surprised to find that without makeup the little lost clown’s face is sad and scared. Wanting to cheer his ward up, the stalwart farmer finds himself entertaining the little clown, forging a heartfelt friendship in the process. But when the train returns for its passenger, the farmer is heartbroken and alone once more. Or is he? The deceptively simple art is brilliant and this wordless picture book has much to say about loneliness and love. (For ages 4 to 8)"

"If there were a category for books to make a plane ride fly by, this would surely be a front-runner. The Fever is the third in what I think of as author Megan Abbott’s trilogy (my word, not hers) taking readers inside the mind of that most exotic and confounding creature — the teenage girl. This is not, however, a young adult novel (not that there’s anything wrong with that); this is literary fiction with young adults as the subject. The Fever loosely takes its jumping-off point from real life: the mysterious illness that struck girls in Le Roy, N.Y., causing them to twitch and spasm uncontrollably. Combining vaccination anxieties, teenage jealousies and an overall sense of something really bad happening, this is the kind of book you can start on takeoff and not put down until you absolutely have to."

"After spotting a few of 84-year-old British novelist Ruth Rendell’s books on my desk, a co-worker recently asked, “You still read her?” as if we are supposed to give up reading our favorite authors simply because they’re prolific. And Rendell is certainly prolific. If my count is correct, this is her 65th book. On the surface, it’s a mystery about the present-day discovery of a long-buried tin box with the skeletal remains of two hands inside (one belonging to a man, the other to a woman). As with so much of Rendell’s work, what matters is the psychological tangle underneath the surface. In this case, it’s a group of men and women who, as children, played together in the fields of a London neighborhood where the tin was buried during World War II. But the crime isn’t the star here; it’s the childhood friends who are pulled back together decades later, and the tremendous capacity for growth and change some of them show even well into their “golden years.”"

"I work in nonfiction, so I’m always looking for a fun tale to escape with, especially on that long flight home after a tough assignment. Jonas Jonasson had me from the beginning of this book with his main character, Nombeko. She has all the wit and ingenuity of another famous Swedish character — Stieg Larsson’s Lisbeth Salander — but thankfully for the King of Sweden, a good deal less rage and resentment. The story begins in apartheid South Africa and ends on a potato farm in modern-day Sweden. Along the way, Jonasson delivers well-developed characters and satire that’s spot-on. The book is hilarious and even heartbreaking, but always quirky and entertaining. I couldn’t put it down, let alone save some of it for my next plane ride."

"Genevieve Valentine sets the fairy tale of the Twelve Dancing Princesses in jazz-era New York City, bringing its fashions, music and speakeasies to life in glorious detail. Jo, nicknamed “The General” by her 11 younger sisters, makes life bearable for her siblings by teaching them to dance and leading them on midnight excursions into the city’s secret underground dance halls, brashly defying their father’s tyrannical rules. This beautiful novel is one of the most satisfying fairy tale retellings out there."

"This is spy craft, ladies and gentlemen; not a James Bond action movie or a John le Carré psychological thriller. This is spy craft practiced by a gentleman you’ve never heard of and never would have, had things gone well. Intelligent, religious and fiercely patriotic, Robert Ames was the kind of person you want working for the CIA; the kind of person you hope is working for the CIA. The Good Spy, Kai Bird’s biography of Ames, is absolutely steeped in the reality of being a spy. Read this book to learn who’s trying to protect you in a world full of threat."

"Photographer Jim Marshall was a short man with a huge profile in the music industry (and, full disclosure, a friend). Before his death in 2010, he’d spent five decades photographing anyone who was anyone in rock, pop and jazz. But as a San Franciscan, he also documented the counterculture revolution that flourished in the city’s Haight-Ashbury neighborhood. The Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Bob Dylan are among those who show up in this chronicle of the neighborhood’s glory days, assembled from the huge photo archive Marshall left behind. Writer Joel Selvin puts readers in the middle of everything with a detailed history of what the Haight looked, sounded and, yeah, smelled like in the era whose apex was the Summer of Love."

"There’s magic and then there’s magic. Revelation “Reve” Dyer walks a fine line between the two as part of a Las Vegas couple that performs to packed houses on the Strip. But her family’s world is turned upside down when a sabotaged prop leads to the death of her husband. As details slowly tease out, our narrator flees with her family to a small Massachusetts town with its own story to tell. Like generations of her family’s women before her, Reve struggles to balance living in a normal world while facing the dangers that accompany her mysterious, magical inheritance. Author Chrysler Szarlan hooked me with realism, but I stayed for the magic!"

"Americans may not recognize the portrait of Israel in Assaf Gavron’s most recent novel, but Israelis sure will. It’s set in an illegal Jewish settlement on the West Bank. The residents are a cross section of Israeli society who joined the settlement for any number of reasons: religious, ideological or simply in search of anonymity. The book deals with Israel’s overarching conflicts — Jew versus Jew, Jew versus Palestinian — and presents them with a nuanced complexity that feels very real. It’s a funny and ultimately melancholy read."

"No writer puts you inside the experience of music the way Greil Marcus does. His descriptions of songs, especially, unfold like thrillers or romantic rhapsodies, sucking you in and revealing aspects of each beat or vocal trill that you’d never have noticed on your own. As the most esteemed music writer of his generation, Marcus has made a career of challenging conventional wisdom on everything from Elvis to punk to Bob Dylan’s Basement Tapes. Here, he re-imagines the very idea of rock history as a series of associations rather than chronological events. You may have never thought to connect Joy Division’s “<a href= “http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dBt3mJtgJc” target="_blank">Transmission” to Buddy Holly’s “ Crying, Waiting, Hoping,” or Christian Marclay’s video- and sound-installation Guitar Drag to the Teddy Bears’ “<a href= “http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCnUsInBQws” target="_blank">To Know Him Is To Love Him,” but you’ll think of music differently because Marcus did. It’s so much fun to let him drag your brain onto the dance floor."

"When I gave my mother a copy of the first Homesick Texan cookbook, she turned up her homesick Texan nose. See, author Lisa Fain is from the Houston area and Mom’s from El Paso. As far as my mother is concerned, Houston might as well be New Orleans. But a few weeks later, Mom fessed up: “The recipes are fantastic.” Fain’s new cookbook — like her first — is based on her hugely popular blog and relies on her spectacular photography and personable authorial presence for much of its charm. (And, Mom will have you know, it attends to the state’s many cuisines.) The recipes in it are inventive, inviting, unpretentious and easy to follow: turkey enchiladas with sweet potato-chipotle sauce, black-eyed pea and Mexican chorizo soup, and jalapeno fried chicken, which calls for brining the bird with jalapenos for a long chili finish. Exactly the ticket for winter."

"N.K. Jemisin’s epic fantasy series has just been reissued in a handy omnibus edition — so there’s no better time to visit the fractured, fractious Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, where the ruthless Arameri family rules from its glowing white sky palace, built by enslaved gods. So many fantasy writers fall into the one-planet-one-culture trap, but not Jemisin, who creates a fabulously diverse array of peoples and lands, shot through with magic, loss, sex and heartbreak. Best of all, this omnibus includes a brand-new novella, The Awakened Kingdom, set in the same world as the previous three books."

"The third, and best, in a series of books about the modern American conservative movement, The Invisible Bridge is something like a national biography, a deep exploration of both the politics and the culture of the late 20th century. Perlstein is smart and convincing, and his writing is marked by skepticism, caustic wit and a unique voice. This book covers three years in 800 pages, but somehow, you don’t want it to end. It’s one of the most remarkable literary achievements of the year."

"If you, too, have been worried that the great Philippa Gregory was going to run out of angles to tell the story of Henry VIII and the fortunes and reversals of the Tudors — I think you can rest easy. The latest in her thankfully never-ending saga is The King’s Curse, the very sad tale of Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury. Frankly, all these books have a similar feel. Henry VIII ascends the throne, hope rises, many girl babies are born, paranoia sets in, heads roll. But no worries; there’s always the knowledge that Elizabeth I will eventually take power in front of a huge screen that says FEMINIST. Added bonuses: This one has a glimpse of young Henry’s early pathological anxiety, and a charismatic main character — Margaret Pole is tenacious and intelligent. Plus, there are a date with an executioner, a moral victory, and more ancillary characters who may get their own books in the future. If there is a king’s curse — I’ve got it bad — I just can’t quit you, Henry T."

"Every so often, if we’re lucky, we encounter books that challenge us to dream bigger and more vivid dreams. The Last Illusion, which draws from a medieval Persian epic to tell a coming-of-age story set in New York, is one of those books. Zal, the novel’s protagonist, spent the first decade of his life living in a bird cage in rural Iran. The only thing more chaotic than his wild and magical journey into adulthood is New York City itself."

"Even before tackling a biography of Fox News founder Roger Ailes, New York magazine’s Gabriel Sherman broke several scoops about the most secretive organization in cable news. But a book gives Sherman space to blow up the legends and unearth the real story of how a sickly kid from Ohio who once produced The Mike Douglas Show became a political adviser to three presidents and created an outlet whose bare-knuckle approach and conservative politics reflect his own pugnacious style — turning Fox News into the most popular cable TV news channel in the process. So much of how America talks about politics now flows from Fox News’ partisan, crowd-pleasing approach, and Sherman provides a detailed, illuminating history of how Ailes made it all happen."

"An amazing, affecting, beautiful book, The Man With The Compound Eyes feels so alien and yet so vibratingly… alive. It’s a story about a boy from a mystical (and possibly imaginary) island, cast out to sea to die. About a young Taiwanese woman contemplating suicide after the loss of her husband and son. About a floating trash island, a tsunami, a drowning house and so much more. While at its heart, it’s an environmental fable, the novel reads like a lyrical ode to loneliness, slow destruction and the fragile bonds that keep us all above water."

"I buy one wall calendar every year, and every year it’s the same kind: reproductions of old maps from the Age of Exploration. I love them for their beauty, for the sense of adventure they represent and for the hilarious misunderstandings. (California as an island, for instance.) But I didn’t know much about them until I read The Map Thief. In it, Michael Blanding tells the story of E. Forbes Smiley III, a dealer of rare, antique maps who, when he got in over his head, started stealing — and selling — maps from prominent libraries. Using wonderful reproductions, Blanding teaches the reader about the political, economic and practical uses of mapmaking since the 15th century. It makes the maps seem ever more precious, and Smiley’s crimes more monstrous."

"No aliens, no invasion fleets, no superheroes or space marines. The Martian focuses on just one man — astronaut Mark Watney — who becomes one of the first men to walk on Mars and, shortly after, one of the first to be presumed dead on Mars after a freak storm forces the rest of his crew to take off and leave him behind. But Watney isn’t dead, and he spends the balance of the book using his brains to stay alive on the Red Planet. A book about a scientist using actual science to battle the alien elements — what a welcome relief."

"The Memory Garden is a quiet, meditative book about friendship, parenthood, aging and the grace and magic to be found in gardens. Nan is an old woman unexpectedly raising a young girl, Bay, who was born with a caul over her head; this means Bay has the power to heal, sees ghosts and can’t ever drown. Soon Bay’s healing powers are put to the test as Nan entertains two estranged childhood friends and the mystery that drove them apart unfolds petal by petal. Reminiscent of Alice Hoffman’s Practical Magic, this is a lovely, uplifting book of women, friendship, sadness and healing."

"Dana Alison Levy accomplishes something special with this funny, warm book: She tells an enchantingly timeless story about a family that could only exist today. The Fletchers’ hilarious high jinks could have charmed readers in 1852, but Levy’s choice to center such stories on two dads raising their four multiracial sons is a refreshingly novel one. To stress the makeup of the family, however, is to do a disservice to the book’s primary appeal — the Fletchers’ perfectly ingratiating idiosyncrasies and the way all six of them climb directly into your heart. (For ages 9 to 12)"

"Forgotten history is the bedrock of The Moor’s Account, which imagines the life of the first African explorer of the Americas, a Moroccan slave who survived the disastrous Narváez expedition of 1528. Author Laila Lalami uses historical record to frame the life of Mustafa al-Zamori, who sells himself into slavery and finds himself caught up in world-changing events. The novel, structured like an Arabic travelogue, is told in dreamlike prose that builds in a grim, leisurely parallel, as what Mustafa knows and what we know come ever closer to a dreadful vanishing point."

"It took Richard Flanagan 12 years to write The Narrow Road to the Deep North — and it shows. The book has some of the most beautiful writing and plotting I’ve ever read. During World War II, Australian doctor Dorrigo Evans finds himself leading a few hundred inmates in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp in then-Burma, building what would come to be known as the Death Railway. The details of the camp — the various diseases, the wasting away of prisoners — are often graphic, and because of that all the more real. But it’s the charting of Evan’s full life — his great love, his marriage, his infidelities — and of the side characters, including the Japanese, that makes this book so powerful."

"I’ve been cherry-picking appealingly fresh recipes from this book, organized by season, since it came out in the spring. Winners include an unusual limy Spicy Sweet Potato Salad and Mark Bittman’s beautiful-to-behold Green Tomato Upside-Down Cake. Roasted Bluefish With Pickled Peaches, Sweet Corn, and Opal Basil will have to wait until next summer, but Bill Telepan’s Carrot Pancakes With Maple Pears can help fill the void. An added bonus are miniprofiles of some of the farmers who bring their produce to market in New York City every week, helping to cultivate the farm-to-table mania that has spread across the country in the past few decades like — well, an invasive plant, but a good one."

"When Irish orphans Molly and her little brother, Kip, find employment at a rundown English manor house in the desolate countryside, something, or someone, is set on destroying them. As servants to a once-rich family, the siblings are struggling to survive but hindered by a mysterious giant tree that encroaches on the house and into the lives of its inhabitants. Molly’s dreams and heart’s desire soon turn to horror as she must engage her bravery, wit and storytelling prowess to battle an evil ghostly presence. This totally absorbing tale reads like a classic and is not to be missed. (For ages 10 and up)"

"You do not have to know anything about poker or even care about it to immerse yourself in Colson Whitehead’s memoir, The Noble Hustle. In 2011, Grantland gave him the assignment to compete in the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas, and write about it. Whitehead was a casual player, and he writes in depth about his preparation for the game and his progress, but the true delight of this book is his cool hilarity. It’s not really a spoiler to say that Whitehead doesn’t get rich — but neither is this a book about learning life through poker. It’s more like being inside a particularly interesting brain experiencing a specific and odd thing. I’d read a book by Whitehead about car repair — his turn of phrase is so delicious that you’ll have to restrain yourself from interrupting whoever’s nearby to read them great line after great line."

"This wonderful children’s book is full of challenges to find the “odd one out” — the one penguin sheltering a fledgling, the scared tortoise who has hidden his head, the bird who caught the worm. Reading the story and finding all the odd animals could take quite a while, but the illustrations are so beautiful you won’t mind taking your time with each page. (For ages 2 to 5)"

"I spent a good couple months reading The Paying Guests in 2014 — not because the book is long, but because I couldn’t let go of the pleasure of reading it. The bare bones: Post World War I, a newly impoverished Frances Wray and her mother are forced to take in boarders, the young couple Leonard and Lilian Barber. The Barbers are several rungs down the social ladder from the Wrays, but post-war British society is changing — everything from family life to the place of women — and every relationship in the house is affected. When a romance develops between two of the characters (I won’t give away which two), the plot explodes. This book reads like a Daphne Du Maurier psychological thriller with the heat turned way up. And when I say heat, I mean it. I’ll never think of a scullery without blushing again."

"Debates about culture and technology are often couched in terms of either/or: Is streaming good or bad for musicians? Are social media good or bad for activism? Does online journalism leave us more or less informed? The People’s Platform takes on a weightier question: At the end of the day, whose interests is our wired world best equipped to serve? With devastating real-world examples and a sober sense of humor, Astra Taylor illustrates how the tool that promised access and influence to a generation of regular folks has left many of the old hierarchies intact — and asks how we can do better."

"There was a time when Gibson’s visions of the future were the coolest on the market. And while he might’ve traded in the chrome and mirror shades for drones, video games, John Deere hats and the grinding poverty of young, rural military veterans in The Peripheral, his eye is no less sharp and his predictions no less chillingly plausible. Plus, this one’s got time travel in it (kinda), and a mysterious apocalypse looming on the horizon, haunting both sides of the temporal continuum."

"Valentine Millimaki is a reticent, insomniac sheriff’s deputy in Montana; John Gload is the jailed remorseless murderer Millimaki has been assigned to keep an eye on. Kim Zupan’s debut novel is an unsettling meditation on the nature of good and evil, beautifully executed and dark as pitch. Zupan is an unsparing writer, but also a generous, deeply compassionate one, and the relationship between Millimaki and Gload is one of the most troubling, truest ones in recent American fiction."

"Sure, you’re just looking for a book to read while you’re waiting for dinner to cook — but here’s a brief reminder courtesy of Iranian-American author Azar Nafisi: Reading fiction is an act of bravery, citizenship and imagination. The Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books feels like a sort of companion to Nafisi’s best-selling memoir,* Reading Lolita In Tehran,* about teaching literature in post-revolutionary Iran. That book illuminated the importance of literature in a theocracy. This one is an impassioned call to reading in a democracy. Using Mark Twain’s * The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,* Sinclair Lewis’ Babbitt and Carson McCullers’ The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Nafisi argues that Americans, so gifted and lucky to live in a democracy, have begun to take reading for granted and marginalize the books that made us great. Not as long as she’s around — Nafisi has a gift for making literary criticism fun; reading the book is like auditing the class of the most passionate professor in the department."

"Something’s not quite right from the very beginning of this book. That’s where we meet Tooly Zylberberg, a bookshop owner trying to piece together her very complicated, global past. There’s what she remembers and then there’s what the people around her tell her, mixed in with large doses of deceptions and dark motivations. As he did in his last book, The Imperfectionists, Tom Rachman creates this whole world of complicated, flawed and endearing characters who keep you wanting more."

"In 2009, the Sri Lankan government finally declared an end to the island nation’s brutal, decades-long civil war. The Seasons of Trouble is a gripping and profoundly moving account of that war’s aftermath. It’s the story of two Tamil families displaced and upended by the violent ethnic conflict between the majority Sinhalese and minority Tamils. First-time author Rohini Mohan has produced an astonishing feat of reportage here, one that is richly detailed and gracefully written. Prior to reading, I knew next to nothing about this lush, remote corner of the world. Now I find myself breathlessly tracking the progress of an U.N. war crimes investigation into the events of that dark period."

"Wonder Woman has always been as divisive as she is popular. Even as millions of girls followed her adventures, Wonder Woman’s progressive politics panicked conservative sorts, like the psychiatrist who testified to the Senate about the comic’s terrifying vision that “Women in these stories are placed on equal footing with men.” In her Secret History, Jill Lepore deftly sketches the Amazon superhero’s life — her creators, the increasing influence of comics, and the social upheaval she reflects — in wry and enthusiastic prose. It’s an engaging history of an iconic character and how culture has changed her (and changed around her)."

"The Secret Place, Tana French’s fifth Dublin Murder Squad novel, pries open the world of teenagers at a girls’ prep school, and the homicidal stew of hormones that lurks within could chill the toughest detective’s blood. Detective Stephen Moran turns up at St. Kilda’s School outside Dublin in search of answers to a cold case. One of the students has contacted Moran with teasing information about the death of Chris Harper, a Casanova from a nearby boys’ school whose corpse was discovered on the grounds of St. Kilda’s the previous year. French is sensitive to the look and manner of mean girls and the subtle tortures they so deftly inflict on their victims."

"With warm, funny storytelling and fantastic art, Gene Luen Yang and Sonny Liew team up to give a character from the Golden Age of comics a worthy origin story. Hank Chu’s happy life is turned upside down when his mother has an encounter with the Anchor of Justice, a popular superhero. She becomes determined to make a superhero of her son by any means necessary — until tragedy strikes their family. To protect his loved ones, Hank invites an ancient turtle spirit to live in his shadow. It’s up to Hank, calling himself The Green Turtle, to take down Ten Grand, the mysterious crime boss who runs Chinatown."

"Every year there is one nonfiction book that makes me shake up my steady diet of fiction. In 2014, it was this detailed and moving portrait of a most complicated young man, who was found murdered in a basement near Newark, N.J. Robert Peace grew up poor outside Newark. He sold marijuana, but he was also a brilliant Yale University graduate who majored in molecular biophysics and biochemistry. Peace’s friend and Yale roommate of four years, writer Jeff Hobbs, makes a complete investigation — from birth to death — of all that made up Peace’s life. Reading the book, you become witness to tremendous potential lost, and you’ll think about race, education and poverty in ways that perhaps you hadn’t before. It can make for excruciating reading at times — excruciating, yet essential."

"Galbraith’s style is straightforward, well-executed and deeply satisfying crime writing. This is the second novel featuring Cormoran Strike, the troubled ex-soldier/war-hero turned private detective. It’s a dark and bloody tale, but Galbraith’s wicked, knowing characterization of British publishing types makes it disturbingly funny, too. The murder being investigated in The Silkworm is that of an author who is universally disliked. In fact, there are few likable characters here, and it’s Galbraith’s great skill that they remain compelling, despite their nastiness. I haven’t felt this thrilled by a detective since Kinsey Millhone in Sue Grafton’s alphabet mysteries."

"Elizabeth Kolbert writes, “If extinction is a morbid topic, mass extinction is, well, massively so.” Especially when we’re to blame for the latest mass extinction. Kolbert brings that morbid subject to life by taking us on an around-the-world journey. In Scotland, Peru, Italy, the Great Barrier Reef and more, she profiles the rise and fall of species both present and ancient. By the end, the hubris of Homo sapiens emerges as particularly shortsighted: We may be the first species to actively kill ourselves off. You’re dying to read this now, aren’t you? Do."

"Charles Phan’s latest has a few of those recipes that are the gold standard for any adventurous cook — things like Roasted Mushroom And Yuba Salad, that despite mercifully short instruction lists will still send you to the back of your local Chinese market to search unmarked plastic bags for an ingredient you’ve never seen or heard of. Nonchefs will also enjoy Phan’s gently self-effacing stories of the restaurant business — one dish, the Hainan Chicken, barely sells, but Phan is determined to keep it on the menu because he thinks it’s the “purest [way] to enjoy a chicken’s natural flavor and texture.” (Which, by the way, is “rubbery.”)"

"Did you know that the 15-year-old Duke Ellington worked at a soda fountain? That in soda slang, canned milk was an “armored cow,” and seltzer water, “balloon juice”? Sparkling bits of trivia, great photography, and recipes filled with retro syrups and straight-up fizz fill The Soda Fountain from cover to cover. Gia Giasullo and Peter Freeman, proprietors of the nostalgic Brooklyn Farmacy, will whisk you back to an era of marble countertops and bow-tied soda jerks and leave you smiling — with a snootful of bubbles."

"Show me a family and I’ll show you a mess. Families are made up of people, and people are volatile, selfish and stubborn. They’re also creative and resilient and lovable. And so for all of the sadness and chaos recorded in Blake Bailey’s memoir about a troubled brother and a fractured family, the book is lit from within by the steady, mellow light of acceptance and forgiveness. Bailey, the author of major biographies of John Cheever and Richard Yates, doesn’t gloss over his own screw-ups as he recounts his brother’s prolonged slide toward tragedy. This memoir is an eloquent reminder that no matter where you go or what you do in your life, you never really leave home."

"Science fiction is big in China, occupying a “rather unique place in the culture and literature,” according to scholar Xia Jia. Despite this, we in the Western world don’t get to see much Chinese sci fi because of the language barrier. Luckily for us, this new translation of The Three-Body Problem opens up the worlds imagined by one of China’s most popular writers. Cixin Liu makes well-worn genre concepts fresh and exciting again and explores technology, human interaction and metaphysics from a distinctly different perspective. If you love hard science fiction with a bit of thriller thrown in, you need this book."

"Marie Brennan expertly weaves together fantasy and science, history and memoir, and adventure and politics with this second book in the very entertaining Lady Trent series. This volume sees our heroine, Isabella, struggling to be taken seriously as a scientist in an alternate Earth that resembles the Victorian era. Isabella’s studies take her to an alternate African continent where her quest to learn more about dragons and sea serpents plays out against a backdrop of colonialism. The Tropic of Serpents offers a nuanced and engaging look at how politics can influence the “pure” pursuit of knowledge."

"Confession: When I started reading this book about a post-Sept. 11 hate crime for NPR’s Tell Me More, I thought, “Sure, it’ll be important, but it probably won’t keep me up at night.” As soon as I got into it, though, I found a fascinating window into two very disparate parts of America, represented by Raisuddin Bhuiyan, a former Bangladeshi air force captain who was shot while working at a Dallas gas station, and Mark Stroman, Bhuiyan’s troubled shooter. Almost obsessively reported, it’ll answer all your questions, while leaving you wondering just how much America is changing."

"These stories reminded me of another era in short fiction, a time when Bernard Malamud and Isaac Bashevis Singer and Grace Paley were writing. The settings include Tel Aviv, Prague and Ukraine, and the characters are sometimes Israeli or Russian. Molly Antopol’s decision to spread out geographically allows her a way to take stock of the delicate connections between people in and out of couples and families. Sometimes the stories resemble miniature novels, rich and eventful and populated, and Antopol has an appealing, surprising tendency to keep going past the spot where you thought she was going to wrap the whole thing up."

"With its deep insight into the Mexican musician who usually lets his music speak for itself, this book is a Carlos Santana fan’s dream. Here, finally, the guitarist shares details about how he assembles his bands, the genesis of his first four groundbreaking albums and how his multi-Grammy-winning album Supernatural changed his band’s life. But the best part is the chapter where Santana expands on the personal philosophy he often shares with his live audiences: “[I] tell them about the light that they each have inside them, that they are light — luminous is the word I like to use. I ask them to please consider accepting the … greatness of their lives.” And his message seems to be as profound as the universe itself."

"Sixteenth-century Japan is never so entertaining as in Stan Sakai’s tales of Miyamoto Usagi, the rabbit ronin. Scheming villains, enigmatic monks, stern masters and fearsome assassins populate these 24 stories. The fact that they’re played by foxes, cats and even a rhino adds a lightheartedness to their adventures without lessening the intensity. Sakai is as adept at illustrating how a samurai sword is made as he is at depicting them in use. This 30th-anniversary compilation packs 632 pages and includes a full-color cover gallery. It’s a great introduction to a classic comic."

"Fairy tales are like literary Velcro strips, nabbing us early and holding us tight; no matter how old or sophisticated we get, we stay emotionally connected to those simple tales of lost children, snoozing princesses and nasty witches. Except that maybe they’re not so simple, after all. In this collection of eight updated fairy tales, Jean Thompson demonstrates once again that she’s a modern-day Katherine Mansfield, capturing the culture with trenchant wit. These stories are entertaining, but also creepy; just when you think you know where Thompson is going — you look around and nothing is familiar anymore. Thompson is a wizard of the short story, and these tales are magical — and diabolical."

"Dangerous children face off against demons in Farel Dalrymple’s nesting doll of a story. In a post-apocalyptic world, the kids known as the Wrenchies rely on jury-rigged technology, drugs and sheer cussedness to fight off bad magic. On another plane, a comic-book-loving kid yearns to belong. But who’s that fascinating guy next door? Dalrymple’s wire-taut drawings gain depth from painstaking watercolor washes. The distinctive way he draws faces — pinched, always ready to scream — is ideally suited to his hard-bitten characters. These kids’ toils make for a fascinating grown-up read."

"In a first novel etched with grief and conviction, Kathryn Ma, winner of the 2009 Iowa Short Fiction award, delves into the experiences of an adopted girl — one of the Lost Daughters of China, the “Unhappy Outcome of the One Child Policy.” Rescued from an orphanage in Kunming, raised in San Francisco, Ari is, at 18, dismissive of her adoptive mother, curious about her father, devoted to her grandmother and bedeviled by “abandonment issues.” Ma addresses the complicated questions of what family means with clarity and empathy."

"I usually stay away from Holocaust fiction — the topic is too easy to manipulate for emotional impact. But Amis’ new novel — set in a satellite camp of the Auschwitz complex — is different, based on extensive research of the period (which he details at the end of the book). Amis offers convincing interior portraits of the camp commandant, his family, other Germans who find themselves part of the genocide and Jewish prisoners. It’s a riveting read."

"David Dow, a death row attorney, writes forcefully about three bitter losses that converged into a perfect storm of distress for him: his athletic father-in-law to melanoma, his beloved Doberman to sudden liver failure caused by NSAIDs, and his unsuccessful legal crusade to save the life of a particularly affecting prisoner on Texas’ death row. It’s the convicted man’s heart-rending story that will shake readers most — along with Dow’s scathing indictment of the Texas judiciary system. I’ve urged this powerful book on more friends than any other this year."

"Drawing on interviews and archival research, Thirteen Days in September presents an almost minute-by-minute account of one of the last century’s greatest diplomatic achievements — the 1978 Israel-Egypt peace treaty negotiated at Camp David. Wright weaves into the story terrific portraits of President Jimmy Carter, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, along with a history lesson that begins with ancient Egypt and continues to the present-day consequences of the treaty. The book reads like a thriller."

"In August, out of nostalgia for a 2013 visit to Italy, I picked up My Brilliant Friend, the first of Italian novelist Elena Ferrante’s “Neapolitan Novels” about a lifelong friendship between two exceptional girls determined to overcome the circumstances of their tough Naples neighborhood. By the time I’d devoured Book 2, The Story of a New Name, the third novel, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, had just been released in English. (All three are translated from Italian by Ann Goldstein.) In this book, the girls are grown and leading markedly different lives with families of their own. If you’re looking for a cozy, soothing read, forget it: This sharp, perceptive chronicle of a fraught female friendship reads like a thriller. My only comfort in reluctantly turning the last page was learning that a fourth book will be published next fall."

"At the center of this beautiful book is three minutes of film footage showing 1938 Nasielsk, a tiny Polish town, from a home movie that Glenn Kurtz found in his grandparents’ closet. There are delighted children, people jumping and waving — just a few moments of normalcy in a town that, a year later, would be devastated when the Nazis marched into Poland. When a young woman recognizes her grandfather Moszek Tuchendler, now Maurice Chandler, as a grinning teenager in footage Kurtz posts online, he begins to reconstruct a vanished world. A combination of luck and hard work reveals the harrowing story of some of the Polish Jews in the town — a community of 3,000, of whom fewer than 100 people survived. It’s an unusual Holocaust tale — a reconstruction of the moment just before the shadow that fell on Europe, and it reminds us that the horror wasn’t just the violence itself, but the loss of a vibrant, joyful, bustling life."

"Emily Carroll’s collection of original fairy tales and dark fiction is as beautiful as it is terrifying. Masterfully illustrated, the stories are told as much by the art as by the words, and it’s impossible to untangle the one from the other. Every story has some connection to the woods and the strange things that come from or go to them. Dressed in dazzling colors, these stories will trouble your sleeping and waking hours long after you’ve finished the last page."

"Kerry Howley isn’t your typical mixed martial arts fan. The writer became hooked on the sport while working on a graduate degree in Iowa. In her highly original memoir, Thrown, Howley follows two local fighters at very different points in their careers, from their training gyms in Iowa to big events in New Orleans, Las Vegas and New Jersey. Hilarious, sometimes tragic, and philosophical, Howley’s first book is remarkably innovative and self-assured. It’s a sly, unexpected and endlessly promising debut."

"The best post-colonial novel of the year, and also one of the slyest critiques on our comic book and video game culture. Tigerman is the funny, beautiful and sharply paced story of a retiring soldier forced to become a hero for an abandoned boy as his island home gets pulled apart by politics, science and crime. But both the boy and the man are more than they appear, and the way they come together by the end of the book will leave you knowing that Nick Harkaway, the son of spy writer John LeCarré, has the family business well in hand."

"It’s a hilariously specialized subgroup of nerds, those of us who dig the intersection of true crime and silent film. But we who enjoy debating the 1921 manslaughter accusations against slapstick comedian Fatty Arbuckle or the relative merits of the Gish sisters are likely to also adore William J. Mann’s investigation into one of Hollywood’s oldest whodunits — the murder of director William Desmond Taylor. To be sure, Mann’s conclusion is hardly groundbreaking, but that’s almost beside the point. The author, a skilled biographer of such screen greats as Katharine Hepburn and Elizabeth Taylor, brings the early days of the movie industry to sparkling life on the page, whether he’s evoking Los Angeles’ demimonde or explaining how the era’s scandals drove the film industry toward protectionism in the face of morality campaigns."

"Paul O’Rourke is a dentist with a healthy (well, actually pretty unhealthy) sense of pessimism and despair. When he discovers that he’s being impersonated online, he tries to track down the impostors, with bizarrely mixed results. A story of faith and its opposite — whatever that may be — Joshua Ferris’ third book, shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, is possibly the funniest, weirdest American novel of the year."

"This e-book collection contains only two short stories but offers a much appreciated look at Octavia Butler as a young writer, still developing her rich style and genre sensibilities. “A Necessary Being,” found among her papers in the Huntington Library collection, and “Childfinder,” accepted to a famously unreleased anthology, were both written in the ‘70s at the beginning of her career — and both showcase Butler’s ability to create a whole world and well-rounded characters out of very few words. It’s a must-read, not just for Butler fans but for all lovers of speculative fiction."

"There was enough intrigue in the real life of Russian musician and inventor Lev Sergeyvich Termen to make a fictionalization of his adventures seem superfluous. Hustled off to America by his government, the inventor of the theremin (an early electronic instrument that seems to pull sound out of thin air) meets legendary musicians, performs at Carnegie Hall, falls in love with a violinist and is pressed into service as a spy. On his wonderful music blog Said The Gramophone, Sean Michaels has made the maxim “writing about music is like dancing about architecture” seem like a beautiful fantasy rather than an admonition. Here, in his debut novel, he focuses on the small moments that bring this man of ideas and ambition to vibrating life."

"Mary Robinette Kowal’s wonderful Glamourist series gets even better in this fourth volume: Jane and Vincent, the married “glamuralists” (muralists who use magic) at the center of the series, are on their way to Murano, Italy, when they’re caught in an elaborate fraud scheme. Without friends or resources, Jane and Vincent live under suspicion for months, until a chance encounter with their swindlers allows them to concoct a plan of their own. Valour and Vanity is a fun heist, driven by smart plotting, compelling magical and historical details, and a keen eye toward human strength and frailty."

"Virgil Thomson (1896-1989) was in a select category of composers — including Robert Schumann and Hector Berlioz — who wrote as well with words as with notes. Thomson’s phrasing was original, irreverent, intriguing to a broad audience and spot on. One of his reviews begins: “Even through the mud and sugar of Rachmaninoff’s Second Symphony, it was clear in Carnegie Hall last night that Karl Krueger is a virtuoso conductor.” There’s more quantity than quality in music criticism now, so it’s bracing to read someone authoritative, curious, unbound by genre and able to tell general readers what old and new music sounded like and why they should care."

"In Viva Frida, Yuyi Morales combines fewer than 20 words with tactile, beautiful illustrations to create something astonishing: a book simple enough for very small children to understand, but complex enough to evoke the work and life of Frida Kahlo. Morales’ lush illustrations, a unique combination of digital painting and meticulously photographed models of clay and felt, communicate the incredible richness of Kahlo’s artistic vision and demonstrate the depth of apparently simple sentences like: “I dream. Sueño?” Complete with an illuminating and personal author’s note, Viva Frida is a wonderful way to introduce kids to an incredible artist. (For ages 4 to 8)"

"Fire up your flivvers and tea carts, birds — Walt Before Skeezix is here! Collecting some of Gasoline Alley creator Frank King’s very first strips, it’s a true road trip to the past. King’s work provides a glimpse of both early comics history and the first years of the automobile. Between the adorable language, the insights into the birth of car culture and the plain fun of reading comics from that era, this volume will delight history buffs. King’s love for ordinary people in all their ordinariness makes every page glow."

"All her life, beautiful and privileged Cadence Sinclair Eastman has spent idyllic summers on her family’s private island. But during her 15th summer, a mysterious accident that she cannot remember befell her, causing pain both physical and emotional. Now 17, Cadence returns to the island and struggles to piece together what has happened. Instead of simple answers, secrets and lies are revealed, denied and questioned. An engaging page-turner, this book lures you in and won’t let go — right up to the shocking end."

"This smartly written, often funny and scarily realistic technothriller, which takes place in a future that’s well within sight of where we are today, features three 30-somethings who somewhat reluctantly join together to try to foil the plans of a powerful international cabal bent on privatizing the information we ever so trustingly hand over via credit card, Facebook, Twitter and every online move we make. Not just for the paranoids among us: This is a perfect read for fans of Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon, anything by William Gibson, Dave Eggers’ The Circle and Don DeLillo’s White Noise."

"In With My Dog-Eyes, we witness Hilda Hilst at the peak of her brilliance. The late poet turned novelist — in just under 100 pages — tells the story of Amós Kéres, an expert in pure mathematics who is losing his grasp on reality. He jumbles his sentences and appears aloof during class. Everyone recognizes that he is deeply troubled. Eventually, Amós denounces them all and leaves home in search of answers, but what he learns only adds to the depth of his madness. Told through poetic and disjointed prose, With My Dog-Eyes is a dark and truly singular work."

"In his taut, haunting novel, John Darnielle goes deep into the consciousness of a damaged kid turned isolated adult who builds a game that changes lives, by design and by accident. The protagonist, Sean Phillips, is unforgettable — brilliant, innocent, self-corrupted and a master of his imagined realm who, because of injuries he sustained as a teen, can’t drink out of a regular beer can. Darnielle lets Phillips tell his own story in remembrances that surface like points on an interactive map; the book’s structure is hypnotic and its plot feels epic, though not many encounters actually take place. One of indie rock’s great balladeers, Darnielle uses his gift for imagining whole lives in three-minute songs to open up a rich and hidden sphere that shows us much about adolescence, the imagination and the fluctuating nature of destiny."

"Life onstage is tough enough for indie rockers without being out of sight for seven years. Anna Brundage is up against tough odds on a European comeback tour at 44. Why do it? In this intense and sensual novel, Stacey D’Erasmo captures the allure of performance, when Anna passes “through the eye of the needle to wonderland — to the broken, the illogical, the roads that double back on themselves, the weird, the uncanny, the in-between,” and the ever present question, “What next?”"

"If, like me, you thought of Pussy Riot as a lousy novelty punk group with a somewhat inchoate message and singularly bad luck, you’ll put down this book feeling completely ashamed of yourself. Simply put, this is the best, most urgent book I’ve read about art this year. Through rigorous research and furiously fine storytelling, Masha Gessen places the band’s founding members unflinchingly into context, revealing the worlds they move between (of Russian activists, intellectuals and prisoners) and reminding us that art really can change the world — if you’re an artist with the guts to try."

"Ah, the quandary of spices! Bought on an impulse, doomed to a dark, dusty corner of a cabinet for decades. (Honestly, when’s the last time you saw the caraway?) But Seattle-based World Spice Merchants offers a promise of redemption: a smart book packed with spice tales of origin and recipes good enough to throw open those musty cabinet doors every night. And even individual spice mixes get starring roles in several recipes apiece. Never again will you stand in the kitchen holding a half-used jar of dukkah, asking yourself, “What the devil do I do with this now?”"

"Everyone on the Internet knows this simple truth: It’s much easier to see what makes someone else abnormal than it is to figure out what might make you abnormal in the eyes of another. While this myopia may bring nothing but grief to Facebook walls, in the hands of Anna Kang and Christopher Weyant, it’s a splendid joke. If gray bear and all his friends are the same size, they can’t be small — brown bear must be big. But brown bear isn’t big! He’s just the same as all his friends — it’s the gray bears who are small. How the pair untie this Gordian knot will give kids and parents alike a bad case of the knowing giggles. (For ages 2 to 6)"

"I’ve never considered myself to be anywhere near to becoming one with the universe, but Yumi Sakugawa has me convinced that there’s hope. Her drawings are, in general, sparse yet evocative of feelings — and *Your Illustrated Guide To Becoming One With The Universe * is no different. (You will certainly feel all the feels.) It’s instructional, it’s kind and it’s a wonderful book in which to bury your head. “Connect your heart to an antenna that picks up invisible frequencies from the universe,” Sakugawa writes. “What are some secret messages you have been missing this entire time?”"

"You can almost always count on London columnist Diana Henry (now on her ninth publication) for a beautiful book that’s fairly accessible — and what’s more accessible than chicken? A Bird in the Hand offers more than 100 ways to approach everybody’s favorite fowl, from classic international favorites like saltimbocca and Korean fried chicken wings to squabs perfumed in rosewater and sauced in sour cherries. There are chicken pastas and chicken salads and chicken curries; it almost makes you wonder, why ever eat anything else?"

"Buy a house in East London today and a real estate agent may warn you that the foundation is uneven because of bomb damage from World War II. British people have a more personal relationship to the Second World War than most Americans do, and that immediacy comes through vividly in Kate Atkinson’s A God In Ruins. Her main character, Teddy, is a fighter pilot whose exploits feel more harrowing than heroic. It’s Atkinson’s second book exploring the same family — the first was her virtuosic 2013 novel, Life After Life. We should be so lucky to get a third."

"From H.P. Lovecraft to Stephen King, horror writers have found frightening inspiration in small-town New England. It’s no surprise, then, that Boston-based author Paul Tremblay cites the works of both authors in his new novel, A Head Full of Ghosts. Updating the basic idea behind The Exorcist for a generation awash in bloggers and reality TV, this tale of possession and horrific secrets grips and doesn’t let go. And its ultimate, bloodcurdling revelation is as sickeningly satisfying as it is masterful."

"In A History of Money, Argentine novelist Alan Pauls frames a brilliant and absorbing tale through the lens of money and materialism. Translated by Ellie Robins, the novel delves into the troubled political and economic history of Argentina. As great stories often do, it begins with a body, that of a steel company executive who is sent to deliver an attache case full of money but dies in a helicopter crash. Was this event an accident or a planned execution? The unnamed narrator asks these questions while also weaving in stories concerning his personal history with money and how it complicates our lives. Pauls’ book is beautifully textured and chock-full of sentences that dazzle consistently."

"In the late 1970s, South Korea’s top director and his star actress were kidnapped and shipped to North Korea, where they were forced to create films for the Hollywood-obsessed Kim Jong Il. After years of propaganda films, bizarre dinner parties and excruciating torture, the pair finally managed to escape. This book reads so much like a thriller you sometimes have to stop and remind yourself it’s completely true. Paul Fischer gives a fascinating look inside Kim’s manic imagination and the tenacity of two people who found themselves in a situation right out of a movie."

"At nearly 800 pages, A Little Life feels like it’s telling the story of four New York friends in real time — over takeout, at parties, during dinners that end in arguments. It’s most moving when author Hanya Yanagihara lets us live long stretches with the character Jude, a survivor of child abuse. The book doesn’t shy away from those horrors or the physical and emotional pain endured to overcome them. And Yanagihara is not afraid to show how his friends love him, care for him and sometimes let him down."

"Cleaning ladies are rare characters in literary fiction; so, too, are clerical workers and hospital staff, but they populate Lucia Berlin’s stories because Berlin herself held those kinds of jobs before her death in 2004. This collection of 43 of Berlin’s stories aims to bring her the recognition she never enjoyed in her own rocky lifetime. You can imagine the narrators of these stories sitting down next to you in a bar after work, ordering a first shot and, unbidden, starting to talk about their crappy days. Berlin had been around the block a few too many times to sugarcoat things. But her one-of-a-kind voice and vision make these stories well worth the pain."

"A Planet for Rent is the English-language debut of Yoss, one of Cuba’s most lauded writers of science fiction. Translated by David Frye, these linked stories craft a picture of a dystopian future: Aliens called xenoids have invaded planet Earth, and people are looking to flee the economically and socially bankrupt remains of human civilization. Yoss’ smart and entertaining novel tackles themes like prostitution, immigration and political corruption. Ultimately, it serves as an empathetic yet impassioned metaphor for modern-day Cuba, where the struggle for power has complicated every facet of society."

"To me, reading an Anne Tyler book is like hanging out with an old friend: You open the book to the first page and emerge three hours later surprised that so much time has gone by. A Spool of Blue Thread fits perfectly into that mold. Abby and Red Whitshank are getting old and their four children are eager to help them stay in the beloved family home. Sibling rivalries flare up; family secrets are spilled; and the Whitshanks emerge bruised but a little wiser at the end of it all. Pull up a comfortable chair and enjoy yourself."

"In A Strangeness in My Mind, Nobel Prize-winning author Orhan Pamuk chronicles the life of his hometown, Istanbul, through the eyes of a street peddler named Mevlut. He’s one of millions who migrated from the countryside beginning in the 1950s. As Mevlut wanders the hidden corners of Istanbul selling boza, a traditional Turkish drink, readers get a glimpse of the religious, economic and political forces swirling through the rapidly changing city. Meanwhile, on the home front, Mevlut’s elopement with a woman he never meant to marry turns into an enduring love. Pamuk’s fondness for both his character and his city shines through on every page."

"When Denise Inge’s husband, John, was appointed the bishop of Worcester Cathedral in 2008, she discovered their new house was built over an ossuary, or “charnel house.” The bones of Benedictine monks were collected there in medieval times. It took Inge a while to work up the courage to descend into that cellar. Gazing on all those skulls and femurs brought Inge face to face with the brevity of life and propelled her on a journey, both literal and spiritual, in which she visited bone houses throughout Europe. As a book — part travelogue, part memoir, part memento mori — A Tour of Bones is as strange and inspiring as are any of the bone houses that Inge visited."

"Michael Cunningham calls his reworked fairy tales “curses” and “incantations”; he plays with the sexy, warts-and-all stuff that happens after the happy ending “fell on everyone like a guillotine’s blade.” Snow White’s prince harbors a fetish for ogling his beloved in deathlike sleep — a scenario he asks her to re-enact over and over again. The most human and heartbreaking character you’ll encounter is classically one of the more odious ones: Rumpelstiltskin, who desperately wants a child of his own. And the witch from Hansel and Gretel? By the time the twins — recast as libidinous and broken punk teenagers — shove her aged flesh and bones into the oven, it’s a mercy."

"I never would have guessed that my favorite interview of 2015 would be with a Lutheran minister, but Nadia Bolz-Weber isn’t your average holy roller. Decked out in sleeve tattoos, she curses like a sailor and has a background in comedy. In 2008 she founded her own church, The House for All Sinners and Saints, which welcomes all walks of life — including addicts, drag queens and nonbelievers. Accidental Saints is a series of unflinchingly honest (and funny) stories about her life as a minister. You don’t have to be religious to get something out of this book. Like this: “Whenever people annoy me beyond reason, I can guarantee it’s because they’re demonstrating something I’d rather not see in myself.” This is a quick read that will leave you feeling better about yourself and others — for all our flawed, messy goodness."

"Elisa Albert’s take on birth, motherhood and female relationships is the antithesis of the treacly cliches that so often surround these well-trod subjects. Her story is messy, devastating and raw — deeply felt and deftly told. Through the experience of Ari, a hard-core feminist party girl/academic, Albert explores the most difficult part of becoming a mother: the eclipsing of your identity and relationships, and the struggle to find your footing in a completely new world. It will leave you marveling at the power women have to survive, to break each other’s hearts and, when we’re lucky, to rescue one another."

"A man named Aaron leaves his longtime partner to move to San Francisco and begin a new life as a teacher of English as a second language — while confronting the dark corners of his Midwestern childhood, including his father’s abuse and sudden death. After the Parade is a sprawling, hefty narrative — deeply sad and profoundly moving — and its prose is like a second protagonist: Vibrant, living and practically lifting off the page."

"Against The Country is a screed — almost the definition of one. It is a long, meandering, explosive, fierce, grating exploration and refutation of the notion that all the good in our national character comes from the rural and pastoral, and that all our manifold sins are born of town. At its most basic, it is a Southern Gothic yarn about the youth and coming of age of an unnamed narrator, growing up in a fictional version of Goochland County, Va. — a land of evil soil, terrible parents, vicious idiots, snakes, racists, genius chickens and suicidal dogs."

"Finch and Violet didn’t mean to stop each other from jumping off the roof of the school’s bell tower, but once they do, they find themselves inescapably drawn together. They embark on a series of adventures, chronicling the natural wonders of their native Indiana. As Violet begins to overcome the family tragedy that led her onto the ledge in the first place, Finch struggles to control his depression and truly commit to living his life. The heartbreak of this story is made real through the charming first-person narration. It’s hard to avoid hoping for a happy ending."

"Put down whatever you’re reading, or doing, and pick up Olen Steinhauer’s newest spy thriller, a book so taut and, yes, brilliant that it will make your other entertainments seem pale and poorly written. The remarkable thing about it is that nearly the entire novel consists of a conversation between Henry and Celia, two former CIA agents at the Vienna station — and former lovers, as well. Their dinner in Carmel-by-the-Sea, Calif., is in complete contrast to the hostage crisis six years earlier that the two of them raced to resolve — and that Henry can’t forget."

"Identity, both racial and otherwise, is at the heart of nearly all the stories in Among the Wild Mulattos, a manic, cutting and frequently hilarious collection from Kentucky author and academic Tom Williams. He’s an uncompromising writer with a fiercely original voice, and he has created one of the most unforgettable books of the year. The collection feels vital, essential, not only for the unexpected ways Williams talks about identity but for his brash, gutsy writing."

"It would be a mistake to go into Ancillary Mercy hoping for the same lightning-strike of Ancillary Justice. The first installment of Ann Leckie’s trilogy opened a world; by now, things are so complicated for protagonist Breq that all you can hope for is to be satisfied. Luckily, Mercy delivers. The world-building particularly shines in the machinations of this closing chapter, as Breq tries to use her new political powers to stop a war with all the weapons the Radchaai Empire has at its disposal: insinuation, shifting loyalties and the second-best tea set."

"Andy Goldsworthy creates art from the materials he finds in nature. His sculptures are made from ice sheets, tree branches, snow, clay and rock — he uses leaves like paint. Much of his art is meant to be ephemeral, to decay and degrade with the elements, to exist in a moment. Fortunately, Goldsworthy also photographs this work for us to enjoy and has collected 10 years of his temporary art in this beautiful coffee table book. Plus, if you’ve ever had the urge to just lie down outside in the rain, Goldsworthy’s rain shadow photographs provide you an excuse — you’re making art. Another book documenting his more permanent works is due out in spring 2017."

"British restaurateur and food entrepreneur Laura Santtini has hitched her wagon to the “fifth taste” — umami. In 2010 she launched “Taste #5 Umami Bomb” — all the savory flavors of umami, in a squeezable tube. Her cookbook, however, doesn’t simply push the product. It’s an eclectic collection of recipes that hop from country to country — croquetas and hamburger and rendang to madeleines and cheesecake. Each one turns up the volume on umami via anchovies, tomatoes, miso, Parmesan, whatever it takes. You can serve them up with an explanation about the fifth flavor if you like — or you can just quietly keep eating, before you lose your chance at seconds."

"Popular French blogger Bernard Laurance may be little-known stateside, but he aims to change that with a new English-language blog and his first book. It’s not the first globetrotting baking book — there’s one every few years — but it’s an accessible and evenhanded one that visits every continent. There are fussy canelés and easy brownies; spiced nuts and sticky sweets — in fact there’s something, most likely, for even the most unadventurous palate."

"The characters in Lauren Holmes’ debut short story collection are fully, sometimes exasperatingly real, portrayed by a young writer with a great deal of charm and not a hint of pretension. The stories in this book are sometimes painful, sometimes brilliantly funny, and most often both; Holmes can find the humor in the worst situations and the tragedy in the most glorious moments. But it’s her characters that carry the action — imperfect, difficult and defiantly human. In other words, they’re people. Just like us."

"Last year’s literary tour de force about the trials of tending to aged parents was Roz Chast’s Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?; This year’s must-read dispatch from the frontlines of caretaking is George Hodgman’s Bettyville. A few years ago, Hodgman, who had enjoyed a highflying publishing career, lost his job and returned to his childhood home in Paris, Mo., to care for his 90-year-old mother, Betty. The kicker is that Betty has never acknowledged that her only son is gay. Bettyville powerfully chronicles the exhaustion and absurdity of eldercare, as well as the psychic cost of maintaining a familial relationship that demands silence."

"Conceived as a letter from author Ta-Nehisi Coates to his son, this book punches way above its weight as provocation and analysis. Coates aims to unsettle complacency with research and bracing rhetoric. His book’s central question — “How do I live free in this black body?” — is far less haunting, Coates argues, than the ever fresh episodes of violence against the black bodies that made this nation possible. In beautiful prose, Coates bequeaths to his child the clear-eyed approach of his parents, “who never tried to console me with ideas of an afterlife and were skeptical of preordained American glory.” Those gifts, he maintains, make it possible for him to pose unanswerable questions without fearing the consequences. Some readers may regard his conclusions as grim; others are likely to find them liberating."

"Between You and Me is part memoir, part guide to the mind-bending nuances of English grammar, part homage to The New Yorker — where Mary Norris has spent more than 20 years as a highly specialized proofreader — and completely delightful. It brims with wit, personality and commas. Norris is a stickler who can’t resist shtick. She pounces gleefully on typos and is as passionate about sharp pencils — soft graphite Palomina Blackwing 602 pencils, to be specific — as she is about sharp writing. Despite her insistence on maintaining grammatical standards, a prim and regal comma queen she is not. In fact, she is vociferous in her defense of judiciously deployed profanity — which adds punch to her explanation of why “between you and I,” in trying to be “so [bleep]ing polite,” is just wrong, wrong, wrong."

"In 2012 Sarah Gerard wrote a powerful essay for The New York Times about her experiences with bulimia, anorexia and addiction. It’s a harrowing read, but only half as much so as her debut novel, Binary Star. In it, Gerard’s unnamed, semi-autobiographical protagonist goes on a road trip that’s at first an escape, then an odyssey, then an extended metaphor for a tragic metamorphosis. Gerard has channeled her trials and tribulations into a work of heightened reality, one that sings to the lonely gravity of the human body."

"If you like your feminism dangerous, this is the comic for you. In a near-future where society has been taken over by the “fathers,” women branded “non-compliant” — too opinionated, too fat, too unmanageable — are deposited on a prison planet awash in violence and nudity straight out of a 1970s exploitation flick. Kelly Sue DeConnick’s story is wildly original and Valentine De Landro’s art is down-and-dirty. Particularly fun are the old-fashioned comic book ads between chapters, like one for X-Ray Specs: “The Perfect Way to See Through His Intentions!”"

"Black Chalk is a story about the fictional Pitt College at Oxford. Six students, freshers all — five Brits of varying tempers and varying levels of damage, and one American exchange student called Chad — concoct a game in a moment of boredom and inspiration. To say any more about it would be to ruin the pleasure because this book has one of the greatest surprise reveals of the year. When you see the tricky switch Christopher Yates has pulled, you just want to kiss him, because dammit if there isn’t something sweet and satisfying about a plot twist pulled off with aplomb."

"Where to go when you’re a young woman aching for adventure? To the tavern, if you’re Sarah Hepola. There she became the woman she longed to be: fearless, funny, sexual, tough. Alcohol was “the gasoline of all adventure,” until she was forced to admit that she had flamed out. This funny, confident memoir details how Hepola created a life unfueled by ethanol without disowning the wild woman within."

"Describing Joshua Cohen’s sprawling, comic, tragic new novel is not easy. I’m tempted to use an old joke, “It’s about 600 pages,” but Cohen beat me to it. He actually uses that line in the novel. Book Of Numbers is about a digital-age superstar, the founder of a Google-like super-search engine called Tetration. It’s also about the Holocaust, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Arabs, government surveillance of email, writers, their editors, agents and parents; also nonparents, estranged spouses, and I could go on. I read the book in one very intense week, and I had a lot of fun in the process."

"Simon Snow is the most powerful wizard in the world, but despite being a senior at the Watford School of Magicks, he has no idea how to control his power and be a proper Chosen One. To make matters worse, his roommate and archnemesis, Baz, is missing, and Simon can’t stop thinking about him. This book began its life as a Harry Potter stand-in featured in Rainbow Rowell’s previous book, Fangirl. It is charmingly cheeky, and so deeply fond of the material that it’s impossible not to get caught up in this new world of wizardry."

"British blogger Lizzie Mabbott had a sleeper hit this year in Chinatown Kitchen, a rollicking and robust ode to traditional (and not-so-traditional) recipes using Southeast Asian ingredients. It’s less a Chinese cookbook than an adventurous romp through the overlapping cuisines of Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Japan, China and Indonesia. Juicy to look at and fiery fun to eat."

"As chronicled in this richly textured novel, aviator Beryl Markham’s life is the stuff of legend. The narrative focuses on Markham’s life through her 20s; she tells her story from the cockpit of her plane during her record-breaking Atlantic flight. Born Beryl Clutterbuck, raised in British East Africa to a neglectful mother and a racehorse-trainer father, she models fearlessness throughout her life. At the heart of the story is Markham’s romantic liaison with the iconic big-game-hunter Denys Finch Hatton (of Out of Africa fame). Paula McLain has created a voice that is lush and intricate to evoke a character who is enviably brave and independent."

"Some people look at a giant novel with dread. Then there are those of us who approach it with reverence, even glee. If you’re the latter, you’re probably aware of Garth Risk Hallberg’s debut doorstop, City on Fire, because of the hype that surrounded its publication. Is the book worth the nearly $2 million Knopf paid for it? That’s for you to decide, but I can assure you that it is certainly worth reading all 944 pages. Hallberg is incapable of writing a boring sentence, and the story, set in 1977 New York City, has multiple narrators and myriad threads — but each piece fits together so tightly, you’ll actually want to read to the end to see how the whole picture develops."

"Smoky bacon candy bar cookies? Folgers crystals with sour cream gianduja shortbread? Graham cracker and passion fruit whoopie cookies? It’s not your grandma’s bake sale! Mindy Segal, proprietor of Chicago-based HotChocolate Restaurant and Dessert Bar, dares you to redefine your cookie repertoire. There are some standards — brownies, thumbprints, snickerdoodles — but most of these cookies push the envelope, and keep right on going."

"Of all the kids’ cooking books that have crossed my threshold over the years, this is the one. I usually hand them to my 9-year-old for a first opinion before looking at them myself, but this one I never got back. It’s got punchy graphics and clear instructions. It’s got pictures of other kids cooking by themselves. It’s got peel-off labels for your homemade dressings. And now, it’s got stains and sticky spots, sure signs of devotion."

"Padgett Powell captures voices and thoughts so exquisitely it hurts to read sometimes; you want to stop to laugh or sigh but you also can’t wait to see what comes next. In these 44 stories, Powell grabs you and lets you go at the same time — with poignant observations and expressions of longing followed by a quick comment on how banal it all is. He does it in the title itself, Cries for Help, Various, and he delivers it again and again in his finely wrought stories."

"The Pickwick Papers, serialized in 1836, made Charles Dickens — then writing under the pen name “Boz” — famous. The illustrator of the work was a then-well-known caricaturist named Robert Seymour. Stephen Jarvis’ debut novel dramatizes the origin story of The Pickwick Papers, bringing Dickens and Seymour alive in rollicking scenes of early 19th century England. Driving the narrative are the circumstances of Seymour’s spark of an idea for Pickwick, his shocking suicide and Dickens’ later claim of authorship. In the end, though, Jarvis’ arguments about who concocted the book seem less important than the Dickensian/Seymourian atmosphere he creates."

"Web cartoonist Fran Krause takes 101 of the darkest and most wildly irrational fears he and his readers harbor, and exposes them to the brilliant sunlight of his friendly, colorful art. You’d think the humorous disconnect that inevitably results would render these four-panel Zen koans of everyday horror (“I’m not waving at anyone / And I’m not crazy. / I’m just making sure there are no / Invisible people in my bathroom”) safer, less unsettling. You’d be very wrong."

"Delicious Foods starts where some other books might end. Its hero, Eddie, is a bloodied survivor, and author James Hannaham tells us how he got there: When Eddie’s drug-addled mother, Darlene, disappears — she’s been kidnapped by a corrupt farm where she and others are treated like modern-day slaves — Eddie goes looking for her. The result is a bittersweet story of a mother who careens through life and a son who does his best to hold on."

"Tin Stars collects the first six issues of this rich and surprisingly poignant science-fiction comic about a planetary system threatened with annihilation by mysterious ancient machines, and the desperate measures humanity takes to fight back. Jeff Lemire’s main character, an android programmed to be a human child’s companion, radiates emotional warmth in a cold and dangerous universe beset by warring pro- and anti-robot factions. It’s a nuanced, thoughtful yet propulsive read that’s buoyed by Nguyen’s ghostly watercolors, which imbue even the bulkiest piece of future-tech with an uncanny layer of menace."

"This was the first book I read in 2015, and it was also my favorite. When 18-year-old Caitlin goes missing on a family vacation in the Rocky Mountains, her stoic father stays behind, always looking. An unlikable character will surprise you, and there’s an ascent — a drive up, up into the mountains through snow-covered switchback turns — that is excruciatingly satisfying. Long after another big 2015 thriller, The Girl On The Train, evaporated from my reading brain, I am still thinking about Descent."

"Jon Meacham’s biography of George H.W. Bush wasn’t even out before it started making news. In Destiny And Power, the 41st president of the U.S. criticizes former Vice President Dick Cheney and former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld — two key players in his son’s administration. The book also describes the elder Bush’s view of the war he led against Iraq. These anecdotes are based on Meacham’s extensive interviews with Bush, with many others and with unique access to Bush’s audio diaries. Meacham described Bush to me as a politician who would say nearly anything to attain power (e.g., “Read my lips. No new taxes”) and then “do the right thing,” even if directly contradictory, once in office."

"Bill Clegg’s polished, deeply compassionate debut novel digs through the ashes of a tragic fire that wipes out a woman’s nearest and dearest on the eve of her daughter’s wedding to explore how guilt and regrets fan the flames of scorching grief — and how human connection helps calm them. Yes, the title is mawkish and the sensational setup feels like the stuff of tabloids. But the novel, shifting between various survivors, shines as it sifts through everything that went up in smoke that night to reveal what actually happened. It also salvages the solace and hope to be found in connecting with others."

"Throwing Muses frontwoman Kristin Hersh recounts the time she spent with her friend Vic Chesnutt, the indie rock legend who died in 2009 at age 45. Written mostly in the second person, it’s essentially a tender, angry love letter to Chesnutt. Don’t Suck, Don’t Die is not only one of the best books of the year; it’s one of the most beautiful rock memoirs ever written. Hersh is as stunningly talented an author as she is a musician, and her portrayal of Chesnutt is perfectly done."

"Here’s one for the comics maven on your shopping list — even if that’s you. Venerated publisher D&Q has gone all-out with this 776-page anniversary tome. Works by alt-comics luminaries Chris Ware, Daniel Clowes, Joe Sacco, Adrian Tomine, Art Spiegelman, Peter Bagge, Lynda Barry and Julie Doucet intermingle with creations by a bevy of up-and-comers, plus numerous essays on the form. Want to remember why comics can be an intellectual treat? This volume does the trick."

"All folk music lovers think they know what happened at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival when a scruffy, much loved American protest singer whipped out a Stratocaster. The musical disruption that followed rivals the 1913 premiere of Igor Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. Fortunately, cultural historian Elijah Wald wasn’t content to let sleeping legends lie. Wald revisits Bob Dylan’s infamous set through contemporary accounts (including pages from one fan’s scrapbook) and interviews with surviving participants. The result leaves those of us who weren’t there wishing we had been. It’s rollicking, poignant and fun."

"Stories within stories intertwine as the lives of three children from three vastly different backdrops and time frames set the stage for Echo. From bleak Nazi Germany to a Depression-era orphanage in Pennsylvania, to sunny World War II Southern California, a deceptively simple harmonica becomes a powerful instrument in the hands of each child. Though they never meet, these three are bound together not just by the harmonic notes but by their bravery, determination and heart. Pam Muñoz Ryan’s modern classic draws you in, and you will still hear the music, long after the last page is read. (For ages 10 to 14)"

"Introducing Ellie, an adorable baby elephant. When she hears that her zoo is closing, little Ellie is sad because there’s nothing she can do to help … until she comes across a brush and some paint. As Ellie begins to experiment she discovers that her paintings can help to keep the zoo open. Mike Wu’s friendly watercolors harken back to an earlier era of picture books, and this story of hope, determination and creativity saving the day will leave you cheering for Ellie. (For ages 3 to 5)"

"Elon Musk is a real man, but also a cartoon superhero. He decided to take on the biggest challenges on Earth — as well as in outer space — and launched not one, but three companies: Tesla Motors, the luxury electric car brand; SpaceX, the private firm that wants to slash the cost of space travel; and SolarCity, which is led by his cousin from South Africa. When I told a 5-year-old friend about the entrepreneur’s life, he said, preciously: “He is doing too much. He needs to focus.” Sound advice for a man who doesn’t seem to know how to take advice. Musk is all over the place. The biography by Ashlee Vance is not. It’s a page-turning read with brilliant detail. And quite a testament to the reporting. When Musk refused to participate in interviews, Vance circled his friends and family and became such a pain, the superhero caved, and talked."

"Whatever it is you think you know about the gunfight at the OK Corral, however it is you think you feel about it, forget it all. Or don’t. Maybe cling all the tighter to whatever convictions you have about what happened, who was right and who was wrong on that day, because Mary Doria Russell has 600 pages to burn a fresh understanding into you, and she uses every one of them. Needs every one of them, too, because like I said, whatever it is you think you know about what happened at the OK Corral, you’re probably wrong."

"Twenty-six-year-old Mayor Bo Rutili is the fourth-youngest mayor in the country, leader of the decaying town of Dyson, Ohio. In Patrick Wensick’s wondrous, uproarious Fake Fruit Factory, Bo must pull Dyson together after NASA predicts a satellite will crash into the town, a threat that’s compounded by political machinations, reality-show intrusions — and a mummy. Yes, a mummy. If it all sounds like Twin Peaks meets Scooby-Doo, well, it is — but in the best possible way."

"I fell in love with Lauren Groff’s writing in her 2012 novel, Arcadia. My admiration continues with Fates and Furies, though this time I was also sucked in by a plot that had me sneaking off to read the book while laundry piled up and chores went undone. It’s the story of the marriage between Lotto, short for Lancelot, and Mathilde. They meet and marry in a rush of passion. He expects only good things from life, and with Mathilde by his side he has both love and success. But their story is told in two parts, and when we see the marriage from Mathilde’s perspective, it takes on a darker sheen. Enough said. Forget the laundry, just dig in."

"It will take you only an hour or two to read this graphic memoir, even if you stop on every page to admire Yugoslavian-Canadian artist Nina Bunjevac’s crosshatched handiwork. And what a story she has to tell: When Bunjevac was 2, her mother moved her and her sister back to Yugoslavia to escape Bunjevac’s father, whose involvement with a Serbian nationalist terrorist group ultimately led to his death in an accidental explosion. The book follows Bunjevac as she tries to better understand her father. I will admit the story isn’t exactly happy, but it will stay with you for days — or months, in my case."

"Closeted Aaron hooks up with out-and-proud — and harassed — Giles, then arranges to go to the same small private Midwest college Giles is attending. Mixed signals have the boys circling each other warily, but when they finally come together, the relationship is intense — and brings down the wrath of Aaron’s father. Buoyed by campuswide support, especially from a music department that’s like a second family, Aaron begins to feel safe, but a truly malevolent enemy is determined to keep them apart forever. A touching romance that spotlights how devastating (and sometimes dangerous) coming out can be, as well as the healing power of love and music."

"This lyrical debut novel tells the story of Fig as she makes her way toward the specter of her 19th birthday, the age at which her mother’s schizophrenia first emerged. Fig’s own instability and deep love for her artistic mom propel her into a series of compulsive tasks in a quest to save her family. The mental illness in this book is portrayed with great compassion. The result is a nuanced portrait of a family struggling to be good to one another under heartbreaking circumstances."

"Laura van den Berg’s novel follows Joy, a young woman who is taken to a hospital in rural Kansas after surviving a pandemic that has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans. Find Me is both touching and haunting, an extremely powerful look at the fragility of human life, the connections we make in dire circumstances, and the will to survive even when it seems like there’s no point."

"Adam Johnson, who won the Pulitzer for his novel The Orphan Master’s Son returns to North Korea for the title story in his new collection, in which he reveals the surprising culture shock as two North Korean defectors try to adjust to Seoul’s “bewildering nature.” “Nirvana” revolves around a high-tech genius whose talks via iProjector to an assassinated president give him comfort when he can’t help his temporarily paralyzed wife. In these stories and others, about a UPS driver navigating the post-Katrina universe with his toddler son or an ex-Stasi torturer meeting his doom, Johnson shows astonishing empathy and inventiveness."

"Drunk barkeep Freedom Oliver isn’t who she says she is, and when her long-buried criminal past reaches its tentacles toward the Oregon town where she’s landed, Freedom has to choose between her own anonymity in witness protection and the safety of the two children she gave up for adoption as part of her plea bargain. There’s a lot going on in this novel by first-timer Jax Miller, and if you’re after a perfectly plotted gem, look elsewhere — but if you’re looking for something original, compelling and voice-y, you’re in for a treat."

"Former Granta editor John Freeman (full disclosure: We served together on the board of the National Book Critics Circle) taps his global literary network for illuminating new work in this, the first anthology in a biannual series. It includes eloquent commentaries on the theme of arrival by Louise Erdrich, returning to a cemetery in Turtle Island; Colum McCann, circumnavigating Dublin airport; and David Mitchell, sensing a ghost in his bedroom in Hiroshima. Lydia Davis describes teaching herself Norwegian by reading a Dag Solstad novel. Aleksandar Hemon ponders his parents’ relocation from Sarajevo. Plus new work from Anne Carson, Honor Moore, Haruki Murakami, and Laura van den Berg. Perfect reading for our ever-accelerating times."

"No, this isn’t Nick Hornby’s take on the classic Barbra Streisand musical, but rather the story of a different funny girl. Sophie Straw is a Lucille Ball devotee and small-town beauty queen who moves to London and lands the lead role in a BBC sitcom. But this isn’t just Sophie’s story; Hornby lovingly creates an ensemble of writers, producers and actors trying to make light entertainment during the turbulent 1960s. Funny Girl explores the roles of highbrow and lowbrow entertainment, and what it means when art imitates life. The result is a charming, sweet book that’s not at all as fluffy as the sitcom at its center."

"Ashley Perkins is a 17-year-old biracial Latina girl growing up in her grandmother’s house. She’s smart, funny, driven, ambitious — and fat; so far as her grandmother is concerned, that last quality obliterates everything else. Every year, Ashley’s grandmother offers her birthday gifts in exchange for losing weight, and every year Ashley rejects them out of hand — until the year her grandmother offers her full tuition to Harvard in exchange for weight-loss surgery. For the first time, Ashley finds herself seriously considering making the horrific bargain — and the book follows her temptations and resistance, her friendships and soul-searching. A gorgeous, fiercely moving debut."

"George has a secret. She knows something no one else does — that she’s not a boy, she’s a girl. Only, George is too scared to tell people, for fear they won’t understand, or they will laugh … or they will stop loving her. But when George takes on the role of Charlotte in her class’ production of Charlotte’s Web, she can finally show the world who she really is. Warm, funny and heartbreaking, Alex Gino’s incredible debut novel George is one to cherish and share. (For ages 8 to 12)"

"These days some of my favorite reading experiences are those books and stories where fantasy, science fiction and realism get all mixed up in a deliciously intriguing package. Kelly Link’s collection, Get in Trouble, falls into that category. Each story introduces you to another world, from boyfriends who are literally unreal to a superpowered lovers’ reunion in a ghostly theme park. The first story, “The Summer People,” begins as a straightforward tale of a girl in rural North Carolina, and gives no hint of the mysterious place it will take you before it is over. Link has a gift for creating characters with emotional lives that feel deeply human even in situations that bear no relation to reality."

"Anna Lyndsey has a slight light sensitivity that grows worse until it becomes debilitating and she finds herself living in a dark box, mummified in layers of light-protectant clothing. Her disorienting, dreamy memoir tries to capture what it feels like to live in the dark, where her personhood, her presence as a body are suddenly in question. How do you deal with a sudden, violent narrowing of life — from something that’s expansive, impossibly full, to a small existence where meaning, instead of flowing in streams, must be eked out from unwilling corners? And what about identity — are you still yourself if everything you associated with your former life is impossible? In this gorgeous book, that question — is there such a thing as a stable, continuous self? — goes from being theoretical to being desperately, urgently relevant."

"I don’t particularly like to laugh when I read — I’d happily have my nose in a crime book at all times — but I read this entire novel with a smile on my face. Amy Stewart resurrects a very real heroine from history: In 1914 New Jersey, Constance Kopp dared to pursue justice for herself and her sisters after their horse buggy was hit by a car. The adventures that follow set Constance on a path to becoming one of the first female deputy sheriffs in the U.S. And how I smiled when I found out this is the first of a trilogy!"

"In 1965, LBJ signed the Voting Rights Act, wiping away obstacles that had prevented African-Americans from voting, like literacy tests and poll taxes. But what happened after the VRA became law? In Give Us the Ballot, Ari Berman chronicles five decades of political and ideological fights over voting rights. He argues that the law’s passage birthed a “counterrevolutionary” movement that worked to restrict minority voters through voter ID laws, racial gerrymandering, voting purges and other efforts. Berman’s book culminates with the 2013 5-to-4 Supreme Court decision that struck down a key part of the Voting Rights Act. The book seems particularly interesting now that we’re in the midst of the first presidential election held since that controversial decision."

"The prose is stunning in this beautiful, meditative exploration of tomorrow’s likeliest nightmare. That’s when Claire Vaye Watkins has set her new dystopia du jour novel, Gold Fame Citrus: just over a too-near horizon where everything in the American West is drought and lack and death. Where the water is gone and the people are gone and the Southwest has become a wild, weird, rolling apocalypse that, sure, is a fiction today but might be history by next year."

"Jane Smiley’s expansive, cumulatively addictive “Last Hundred Years” trilogy plows through a century of American history and social change as it follows an Iowa farm family from 1920-2019. The Langdons disperse across the country, fight wars overseas, serve in Congress, make and lose bundles on Wall Street, marry and divorce, and suffer the effects of extreme weather. The trilogy’s power lies in the unfolding lives of a Russian novel’s worth of characters who breed and hybridize in unpredictable ways — yet still share a connection, however eroded, to their agrarian roots. Golden Age, with its many deaths and its emphasis on the alarming, far-reaching impact of climate change, leaves some surviving characters wondering whether the golden age is perhaps behind them. The result is a sobering finale to Smiley’s impressive saga."

"Last year Pierce Brown wrote a book called Red Rising that was like The Hunger Games with real blood under its nails. The second novel in his trilogy is like a space opera in the best possible way, full of ships and ray guns and rocket boots. It’s kind of a YA series (in that the protagonist begins in his teens), but owing to some wild streak of honesty, Brown writes characters who actually behave like the murderous, entitled, terrified, insane, bestial kids they are. Brown’s command of plot (and director’s eye for dramatic, explode-y set pieces) keep the story surging forward, and the path he carves across space, the moon and Mars is bloody in the extreme."

"Goodbye Stranger centers on a group of middle-school girlfriends who are determined to stick together as each grapples with how she defines (and then redefines) herself. Bridge has a new friend who’s a boy (does that make him a boyfriend?); Emily has new curves; Tabitha is discovering her inner activist; and a mystery high school girl experiences a Valentine’s Day drama that will affect them all. It’s a funny and warm page-turner that challenges conventional wisdom about mean girls and social media. (For ages 10 and up)"

"Amelia Gray’s prize-winning, weirdly skewed stories are addictive. This third collection — her best yet — offers 36 marvels. “It’s harder to leave your burning home after you’ve spent so much time cleaning its floors,” she writes in “Houseproud.” “Labyrinth” recasts Halloween in a Hellenic vein, in a world that is ominous and off kilter. And she’s funny, too: “This isn’t a strip club; it’s a crime scene. And it happens to have some nice lunch specials.” Read her because she’s full of surprises, and she’ll change the way you see your world."

"U.K. writer Helen Macdonald’s breathtakingly beautiful account of training a hawk after her father’s death also tells the gripping parallel story of great English writer and falconry aficionado T.H. White, whose series of Arthurian novels established him as a sort of spiritual patriarch for British writers interested in their country’s pre-Christian mythology. But White was also a conflicted sadist whose passion for hawks was partly an attempt to control his own savage impulses. Who could have imagined a study of hawk-human communion could also be a brilliant reflection on nature, nationalism, loneliness and family tragedies?"

"Whether you’re an Ikea devotee, an antiques store prowler or a catalog shopper, home design can be intimidating. Lauren Liess’ book, Habitat: The Field Guide To Decorating, breaks it down into what she calls the fundamental and intangible elements of design. So whether you need to know what size rug will work best in your space or how to infuse your home with comfort and charm, Habitat can help. And it doesn’t hurt that her aesthetic — which values nature and texture and calm and vintage touches — mirrors that of my favorite designer of all time: my grandmother."

"These stories aren’t filled with stylistic somersaults and authorial acrobatics. They are plain in the best sense, an exemplar of high-plains stoicism. Though the stories share locations and characters, there’s no overarching narrative. The stories unfold in dry Wyoming and Colorado, where things aren’t good or bad, they just are: ominous and evocative and marvelous and difficult and amusing and bizarre."

"I’m barely average, so I may not have gotten as much out of it as you will. Still, even if you only understand 56 percent of what’s going on, this book is hilarious. Matthew Diffee is a master of conciseness. One drawing, a few words, and you’ll be calling people over to show them what you just discovered. The introductions to the thematically organized chapters are superb examples of joke-writing as well."

"In Hannu Rajaniemi’s collected short fiction, godhood is a plague, the city of Paris woos a Finnish man, a record chain’s logo is a dense symbolic capsule, and stories occasionally read you while you read them. Mixing myth, fairy tale and hard science fiction in dazzling proportions, these stories are mind-blowing, engrossing revelations of which I can only speak hyperbolically. From Finland to the farthest reaches of outer space, Rajaniemi weds vast scope to marvelous intimacy in prose reminiscent of a ringing glass bell."

"Rowan Ricardo Phillips’ second collection is packed with poems that romp and revel their way off the tongue — think “pomegranate balustrades” and “nacre-gnarled écorchés.” He packs phonic exuberance into the tightest turns of phrase, while pondering the deaths of Trayvon Martin, Ol’ Dirty Bastard and Homer’s Hector, or considering the vengeance of envious gods and the elusiveness of justice. Through it all, his poems circle back to variations on heaven — as afterlife, as fixed sphere, as backdrop to the stars. He repeats the word itself like a curse or a compulsion. And while he can get quite solemn about the celestial, the joy he takes in his language balances out the seriousness."

"Ed Piskor navigates the convoluted history of early-’80s urban culture with a buoyant combination of insight and good cheer. He captures such moments as the Beastie Boys’ transition from hardcore to rap, the rise of the Fat Boys, the creation of Whodini’s Escape, and Russell Simmons and Rick Rubin’s forging of the Def Jam label. His graphical skills are formidable. Though he works in a huge, 9-inch-by-13-inch format, each page barely seems to contain its subjects’ energy."

"Sally Mann’s memoir, Hold Still, is a book about a photographer, but it’s only partially about photography. The native Virginian’s personal story is just as much about the South as it is about her own journey. In one section, she looks back on family road trips with her beloved childhood nanny, Gee-Gee, and remembers that she never saw her nanny eat; Gee-Gee was African-American, and the restaurants they went to were segregated. All the while, Mann explores “the treachery of memory,” or how photographs can erode our memories of an experience. But there’s nothing faded about this memoir – Mann’s paints a picture that’s as vivid as they come."

"A gentle meditation on the idea of what constitutes a home, Carson Ellis’ picture book is whimsical and thought-provoking. Her lovely watercolor illustrations imbue both the grand (Slovakian duchesses’ mansions) and the familiar (an urban apartment) with ornate charm, but it is her inspired depictions of the odd (a Norse god’s castle and a mysterious estate encased in a geodesic dome) that make the book stand out. Best of all, in the final illustration of Ellis’ own studio (“An artist lives here”), each piece of bric-a-brac ties back to the vignettes shown previously, a detail attentive rereaders will surely find delightful. (For ages 4 to 8)"

"Like melon and prosciutto, the 20 bittersweet, unconventional love stories in Honeydew are a delectable combination of sweet and salty. Many are set in Godolphin, Mass., Pearlman’s fictional stand-in for Brookline, the Boston suburb that’s home to an educated, multicultural population of professionals — and Pearlman. She writes with wry charm, grace and compassion about people who learn to adjust their expectations and recognize the merits of being “happy enough.” These wise, penetrating stories, a worthy follow-up to Binocular Vision, her award-winning 2011 collection, reaffirm the value of living even as they acknowledge the loss and pain life so often entails."

"Reginald Edward Morse is one of the “Top Reviewers” for a site called RateYourLodging.com — a man who uses the review format to spin a fractured story of love and loneliness and cockroaches and heartbreak. Hotels presents itself as a formal collection, a quasi-epistolary novel in the drag of a published guidebook, and Moody gives Morse an air of class that feels rented and roughly used. It’s a style that’s beautifully evocative except when it’s maddening (or annoying, or gross), and it gives Morse the perfect fractured voice for this postmodern tale."

"Rock fans know Carrie Brownstein as one of the voices behind legendary riot grrrl outfit Sleater-Kinney, and comedy fans know her as Fred Armisen’s partner in the show Portlandia. She defies expectations once again with her new memoir, which is candid and brave, and a powerful tribute to the power of music to heal, to connect, to break you down and then make you whole again. Brownstein proves to be a funny, elegant writer, and her book is wholly original. Her music has always helped people feel like they really do belong somewhere, and her wonderful memoir does the same thing."

"Laura Vanderkam is a best-selling productivity author with four children, and her book is a bracingly practical corrective to the hand-wringers about women, success and having it all. Vanderkam analyzes more than 100 time diaries showing a typical week in the life of mothers who earn more than $100,000. In this admittedly privileged club, she says, women are getting plenty of sleep, exercise and me time; achieving at work without putting in crazy hours; and managing to connect with their children and partners, too. Her cheery message is: “A little intention goes a long way.”"

"A winning story of two sisters navigating love and betrayal, from romance star Kristan Higgins. Wedding dress designer Jenny is determined to leave behind the ex-husband who abandoned her but still wants to be “best friends,” so she moves back to her suburban hometown — just in time for her sister Rachel’s seemingly perfect marriage to implode. Rachel loves her comfortable life but feels she can’t trust her husband. Meanwhile, Jenny is drawn to her emotionally wounded neighbor — and has to keep a secret that puts undue pressure on both sisters’ romantic relationships. Poignant, funny and richly entertaining."

"At home sick with a brain-numbing flu bearing down, I was unable to put this book down. A crime writer wakes with amnesia and the sinking feeling that she has done something bad. Then the story shifts to a group of 20-somethings gathered in a remote English country home for a “hen,” or bachelorette, party. There is murder, and there are also delightful tips of the pen to Agatha Christie. You will probably sniff out who is to blame, but only when you’re within striking distance of the end — and in no way will that spoil the fun."

"Set variously in the Philippines, the U.S. and Bahrain, In the Country is a stunning short story collection about people who have little to nothing in common with one another, except that they’re all trying to find a home, and it’s always a more challenging task than anyone would expect. Mia Alvar finds beauty in the unlikeliest of places, and that’s what makes this such an inspired, remarkable book."

"Vikas Khanna (chef at New York’s Junoon) isn’t shy about bringing together ingredients from all corners of the earth — spiced cauliflower with orange sauce, green lentils with spinach and chipotle, sauteed broccoli with grapefruit — in this bold vegetarian cookbook. Although the underlying spice palette of these recipes still points, however delicately, to his roots in Amritsar, India, Khanna’s sense of culinary adventure knows no frontiers."

"Thank goodness Soho Crime had the taste and intelligence to publish this 1973 gem of Czech crime fiction. Heda Kovaly, a Holocaust survivor and memoirist (Under A Cruel Star), wrote Innocence based on her own experience of 1950s Prague, and its gnarly twists and turns mimic the steep climb up that city’s Castle Hill. You think the main character is lonely Helena Nováková — but her narration is just part of the story. Once your seat belt is fastened, Kovaly takes you on a ride as thrilling for its literary mastery as for its bleak mystery. Caveat lector: You may find the end unsatisfying. But the bulk of the novel is so amazing you won’t care, and you’ll mourn the fact that Kovaly never wrote another."

"Take a classic fairy tale, blast it into outer space, give the heroine a toolbox, and welcome to the world of Interstellar Cinderella. In this upbeat retelling by Deborah Underwood, Cinderella is a whiz at mechanics. When she rescues the prince by fixing his spaceship, he becomes smitten. But will she marry him, or does this Cinderella have other ideas? Debut picture book illustrator Meg Hunt’s strong and lively art delves into a palette of deep purples, rusts and blues to show off a galaxy where anything is possible. (For ages 3 to 5)"

"If you’re still mourning the demise of Sex and the City, and wish that David Sedaris would get a little raunchier, look no further than Isaac Oliver’s laugh-out-loud funny collection of essays about sleeping his way around New York. At first, his prose presents the polished self-presentation of a monologue or stand-up comedy routine, but Oliver doesn’t bore by remaining on the surface. Instead, he performs a daring emotional striptease, peeling away the layers of a stock character (the promiscuous single gay man) to reveal the heart and soul beneath."

"In 2011 photojournalist Lynsey Addario was kidnapped in Libya. She was covering the fighting between dictator Moammar Gadhafi’s troops and rebel forces when the car she was traveling in (with three other journalists) was ransacked. She was tied up, assaulted and held for a week. Addario’s memoir, It’s What I Do, begins with this chilling scene. In her vivid retelling, you can practically hear the bullets whiz by and taste the dirt as she’s pushed to the ground with a gun held to her head. It’s a story of vulnerability, humanity and courage that will give you an adrenaline rush without your moving a muscle."

"It turns out that 15th century France was Game of Thrones without the dragons. Helen Castor spends the first 89 pages of this biography setting up a world of blood and betrayal before Joan even makes her entrance. When the maid finally wades into this political snake pit, her power to move hearts and armies is both mysterious and astonishing. Castor never goes beyond the bounds of the documents and never succumbs to the modern impulse to psychoanalyze her heroine. As a result, this Joan is a creature of her time: used, destroyed and sanctified to serve the aims of the powerful."

"Investigative reporters have long followed this rule from the 1976 film All The President’s Men: “Follow the money.” Gary Rivlin applies that dictum to power, politics and planning in New Orleans before and after its infamous 2005 deluge. His book focuses on the central role of black-owned Liberty Bank in the redevelopment of neighborhoods inhabited largely by African-American professionals. At the same time, Rivlin offers a strong, infuriating argument that Katrina was a catastrophe decades in the making, abetted by the powers that be on the local, state and national level. The narrative includes heroes, too: Liberty Chief Executive Alden McDonald, the publishers of the monthly New Orleans Tribune, and the endearingly bourgeois, resourceful and indomitable Wall sisters of New Orleans East."

"The six short stories of Killing and Dying fit squarely in the genre of Comics About People Being Horrible To Each Other dominated by such virtuosos of alienation as Chris Ware and Daniel Clowes. With surgical precision, Adrian Tomine dissects the everyday conflicts and unhealthy patterns that engulf couples and families: A would-be artist lashes out at his patient wife; a father grapples with his daughter’s embarrassing attempts at stand-up comedy; an alcoholic woman falls in with a man she knows she should not. Yet there’s nothing clinical about the empathy Tomine feels for his characters or the specificity of detail in his art; together, they create a world the reader cannot merely observe from a safe remove — a world so unsettlingly familiar it can’t help but implicate us, and pull us in."

"OK, it’s not a cookbook at all. It’s just a little book of quick tips — use a corkscrew to remove an avocado pit! Shell stubborn pistachios in a garlic press! Make dotted lines across a tomato with a fork to guide your knife to perfect slicing. Some tips have little to do with cooking — like using a toothbrush to disclose the hidden end of the plastic-wrap roll — but these ingenious answers to First World Problems will very likely find a happy home in your kitchen (or perhaps the bathroom closest to it)."

"The greatest magic in this book isn’t its depiction of foodie culture, which itself is quite wonderful. The magic lies in the way the main character — an elusive celebrity chef of destination dining — is revealed. The book is a chronological series of vignettes, from an infancy in which her father feeds her pureed pork shoulder, to her 30s, when she is the celebrity chef hosting secret destination dinners at $5,000 a plate. Never, though, is she the main actor in the events. I’m still scratching my head about how J. Ryan Stradal pulled it off."

"With the guy’s glorious French mug now frowning down at us from statues across the country, it may be tough to believe that the Marquis de Lafayette (“best friend” to a fledgling United States) was ever anything other than marble. Happily, Sarah Vowell’s funny, unpretentious meander through history is ready to remind us that Lafayette, the man who helped the patriots find their footing in the American Revolution, was once a teenager, too. Vowell may not take herself (or her subjects) too seriously, but her smirk never stands in the way of a good yarn. She manages a quick, quippy — and edifying — history of our “all-American inability to get our s - - - together.”"

"Every week a little boy and his grandma hop on the bus after church. Along the way, they meet all kinds of people — a person with lots of tattoos, a flirty blind man, a dude playing guitar. The boy complains about the rain and about not having a car. The grandmother is stern, but loving; they don’t need a car, and the rain waters the trees by the bus stop. The book features a diverse cast of characters, but it’s not a book about diversity. It’s a story about a kid and his grandma and the city, and the beauty and excitement of everyday adventures. (For ages 3 to 5)"

"If you haven’t already, read The Good German, Joseph Kanon’s first Berlin novel (and, for good measure, see the movie starring George Clooney and Cate Blanchett). However, you needn’t do so to enjoy Leaving Berlin, a stand-alone set in the very, very cold winter of 1948, when the divided capital was in physical ruins and crisscrossed by agents playing mental games at the highest levels of espionage. Alex Meier, a young Jewish writer who escaped to America before the war, finds that his communist past puts him afoul of the swaggering U.S. authorities. They offer him a legal way back to America: spying in exchange for a passport. Unfortunately, they want him to spy on the love of his life."

"“The Lottery” author Shirley Jackson died in 1965, so it’s surprising to see new, uncollected material still coming to light. Even more surprising: Much of this material is marvelous. It ranges from comic essays that reveal Jackson’s playful, even ridiculous side to powerful stories fit for the classics shelf. Let Me Tell You is unmistakably an attic-clearing anthology, packing together odds and sods like an unfinished character sketch and a Dr. Seuss review. But the best material is revelatory, revealing again how Jackson drew indelible characters with a few sparse words, then sent them off on wild adventures."

"For Ander Monson, libraries are something more than just buildings filled with books. He’s interested in them as a concept, as a living, adapting exchange of ideas, as a way people can connect with one another, even across generations. Monson’s latest is a breathtakingly original consideration of what it means to be a reader — or a writer, or a human being. His focus isn’t books, but rather the things we find in them: notes, due date slips, scrawlings in the margins. As an essay collection, this book is magnificent; as a love letter, it’s a work of overwhelming devotion and generosity."

"Listen, Slowly is a sort of reverse migration-adventure story. It follows Mai, a Vietnamese-American middle schooler, as she travels back to her family’s home country for one summer. She’s there to look after her grandmother and to help discover the truth about what happened to her grandfather during the Vietnam War. Author Thanhhà Lại immerses both Mai and the reader in Vietnamese life, and she infuses the book with humor as well. (For ages 8 to 12)"

"Mat Johnson likes to say that being biracial is an optical illusion: The son of an African-American mother and an Irish-American father, Johnson grew up looking white but feeling black. Loving Day is his satirical take on what it means to be biracial in America. In it, Warren Duffy, who shares some biographical traits with Johnson, discovers during a midlife crisis that he has a teenage daughter. His desire to make her comfortable in her biracial skin leads him to a mixed-race commune full of odd characters and misfits. Johnson’s heightened awareness of racial ambiguity, coupled with a keen sense of humor, are on full display."

"Sure, the recipes are clear and well-written. The introductions and explanations are charming, and that incredible shot of the Lacquered Roast Chicken looks like exactly what I want to eat right now. But my favorite parts of this book (which comes out of a brilliant food magazine run by chef David Chang and food writer Peter Meehan) are the huge photo spreads detailing exactly which brands of Asian ingredients the authors favor — sure to save this intrepid shopper many hours of scrutinizing different bottles of cooking wine, preserved black beans and jars of spicy chili crisp in the aisles of her local Chinese supermarket."

"This wildly original trilogy is set in a fantasy London of the 1870s, where a family called Iremonger ministers to the heaps of city trash. Each Iremonger is assigned a “birth-object” that must never leave his or her person: Clodius Iremonger, for instance, has a bath plug, while his betrothed, Pinalippy, has a doily, and so on. Beginning with the mystery of why Clod can hear birth-objects speaking names, each volume expands into the next like nesting dolls: Heap House grows into Foulsham which grows into Lungdon, house to borough to city. A magnificently engrossing indictment of our late capitalist modernity."

"Patti Smith writes exquisitely and achingly about loss and the things that matter to her in her second memoir. Unlike the mostly chronological narrative of Just Kids, about her relationship with artist Robert Mapplethorpe, M Train is a running mental locomotive of memories and dreams, with little about her performance career. The tone is elegiac, melancholic and meditative as she evokes people who died far too young, including — most devastatingly — her husband Fred “Sonic” Smith and her brother Todd, both in 1994. But the book is energized by various passions, including coffee, detective shows, far-flung pilgrimages to the graves of artistic and literary touchstones, and a rundown property she bought near the beach in Far Rockaway, Queens, just weeks before Hurricane Sandy devastated the area."

"In the era of all things Sichuan-blasted and bacon-infused, this lovely Ukrainian cookbook is a breath of fresh air. Sections on homemade dumplings and breads are delightful, and simple soups like duck and sorrel or mushroom with buckwheat look downright healthful. Plus, author Olia Hercules’ stories of camping with her family by the Dnieper River and collecting duck eggs from her mother’s yard will have you dreaming of a new life and a fresh, seasonal approach to cooking."

"Comic books are known for their heroes, but the heroes in U.S. Rep. John Lewis’ comic are largely nameless; they’re found among the tens of thousands of people who participated in the civil rights struggle of the 1960s. Lewis, who headed the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, downplays his own actions — and humbles other notable figures too. Artist Nate Powell keeps the speeches and meetings from being dull. His pen skitters and dances, imbuing every human face and form with explosive potential."

"Marilyn has a problem: Her monster hasn’t arrived yet. In Marilyn’s world, you’re supposed to wait for your monster and not go out looking for it, but Marilyn takes matters into her own hands in this lovely, exciting tale. Not a lot of books meant for kids have tension, multiple levels and drawings that endlessly fascinate, but this one does. I’ve read it to kids as young as 3 and as old as 9 and they all asked for it again. My takeaways: Sometimes you have to push boundaries to get what you want — and monsters aren’t that scary if they need to be rescued. (For ages 4 to 8)"

"Prolific Scottish food writer and cookbook author Ghillie Başan turns to the Middle East in this jewellike tribute to mezze, the small plates that, in various guises, have made their way to even the farthest flung supermarkets. Here are hummus and stuffed grape leaves and tabbouleh, little phyllo pastries, as well as a zillion things one can do with “aubergine” and “courgette” (yes, it’s written in British, so don’t look for eggplant and zucchini). The photography is so sumptuous you may find yourself licking your fingers before you’ve even taken a bite."

"Nisid Hajari’s history of the partition of India and Pakistan is clear, well-written and at times gripping. The book focuses on the months leading up to partition and those right after, when the newly founded nations — created in a cauldron of blood — went to war over Kashmir. As Hajari points out, the story has “no easy villains — and few heroes,” but it helps us understand the present by examining the roots of the mistrust between the nuclear-armed nations. Midnight’s Furies provides a fresh and, at under 300 pages, easily digestible take on the pivotal separation."

"Mim is totally done with her anxious, secretive father, so when she finds out her mother is ill, she buys a bus ticket and sets out to find her. Her trip soon turns into an odyssey as she encounters a series of unanticipated events. Mim is a refreshingly imperfect heroine, whose observations prove judgmental, self-absorbed and occasionally mean. Her vulnerability and wit redeem her, and her voice perfectly captures the pretentious and self-searching tone that is the hallmark of so many teen writings."

"Bonnie Jo Campbell tells stories of the Rust Belt with frankness and an infinite patience for the voices of those whose stories are often left untold. These are contemporary mothers and daughters stretched beyond human capabilities, each desperate to be heard, but despairing of an audience; Campbell rescues them from invisibility. The stories here are filled with shifts when a turn of fate, a moment in nature, brings surprises and revealing insights. And within the turmoil and the troubles, the demands and the limits of life, Campbell reminds us, there are possibilities for moments of grace."

"In My Documents, a collection of 11 stories translated by Megan McDowell, Alejandro Zambra tells stories as only he can. He finds the foundations for his most enthralling work in the complex ties between fathers and sons, nations and their people, and, especially, hapless lovers. To read Zambra and a collection like My Documents is to engage with someone who writes as though the burden of history was upon him and no one else — the history of his country of Chile, of literature and of humanity’s shared experience. Put simply, the novel is a force, and further proof that the author is in a class of his own."

"Every dismissive thought you could have about Nick Flynn’s feelings — or, by extension, a book called My Feelings — he’s thought already. “Inappropriate,” “extravagant,” “misguided,” “entitled,” “f**** up”* … he writes them down and crosses them out. What do we gain, after all, by pretending we’re above our own emotions? So the poet, playwright and memoirist lays it out: the lingering ache of one lost parent, the sharp shock of losing another, the baffling surprises of fatherhood, the dark jokes of addiction. Some of the poems are elaborate and abstracted; others are spare, plain and transparently personal. But they all ring true, and a few linger long after the book is shut."

"When Gourmet abruptly ceased publishing in 2009, Ruth Reichl, its editor-in-chief for 10 years, retreated from Manhattan to her upstate New York hilltop glass house. Obviously not wired for the retiring life, she threw herself into writing My Kitchen Year, an unabashedly sentimental memoir about the restorative solace of cooking and the redemptive power of “finding joy in ordinary things.” But even better, it’s a collection of 136 recipes, mostly comfort food and the stuff of cravings. She’s as refreshingly assertive in her opinions as she is in her taste for bold spices like sriracha. For example, about her favorite waffles — an elaborate yeast-raised production from Fannie Farmer — she comments, “There are easier waffle recipes, but they’re little more than pancakes with dents.” Plenty to feast on here."

"A close-knit neighborhood in Baton Rouge, La., is forever changed after a teenage girl is attacked “beneath the first busted streetlight in the history of Piney Creek Road.” As I started this novel, I thought, “Do I need another girl-in peril-story written by a man, from the point of view of a man?” But M.O. Walsh’s writing — stewed in secrets and Southern humidity — pulled me in, and his ending made me want to pull the reading equivalent of a U-turn to double back and reread from the very beginning."

"Oh, the joys of negativity! Eric Jarosinski, a self-proclaimed failed intellectual who leapt off the tenure track in modern German critical theory, has made it his mission to fight “a world of yes. A tyranny of yes.” This profoundly clever chapbook of brainy, nihilistic, dour but playful aphorisms began as work-avoiding tweets. With the stern-faced, monocled German Jewish philosopher Theodor W. Adorno as his avatar, Jarosinski riffs succinctly and brilliantly on Nietzsche, Freud, Marx, philosophy, and language as he gleefully plumbs the sinkhole of existential hopelessness. A few favorites: “-Ologies: Are usually taut,” and “Telling a tale full of sound and fury: Idiot-proof. Signifying nothing: Harder than it looks.” An aphorism, he writes, is “Philosophy’s ship in literature’s bottle.” In my book, Nein is a big Yes."

"It’s easy to think of a medical diagnosis like autism as something that’s black and white; you either are or you aren’t. In his masterful history of that disorder, Steve Silberman examines the myths surrounding the condition. He says for decades the definition of autism was manipulated to suit scientists’ career and political ambitions. But NeuroTribes is more than the story of how those on the autism spectrum have been wronged; it also shows how those same people have come together (through shared interests like ham radios and science fiction) and are forcing society to rethink “normal.”"

"Nimona, the shape-shifting title character of this graphic novel, has a penchant for mischief, mayhem and turning into a shark. She enlists herself as sidekick to the villainous Lord Ballister Blackheart, and pursued by Blackheart’s nemesis, Sir Ambrosius Goldenloin, the two set out to destroy “the Institution.” Noelle Stevenson’s charming art blends a medieval setting with futuristic technology, and her writing both delights and takes the book to surprising emotional depths."

"The Wakefields, the family at the heart of Greg Hrbek’s Not on Fire, But Burning, live in New York, having fled California after a catastrophic event that destroyed San Francisco. In a chilling twist on the dystopian formula, this catastrophe has never been explained, and the lingering uncertainty has transformed the country’s identity for the worse. Departing radically and refreshingly from the expected, the book operates simultaneously as apocalyptic alarmism, brain-bending quantum fiction, character-driven drama and gripping mystery."

"The latest collection from Juan Felipe Herrera, the nation’s new poet laureate, covers an expansive range of forms: elegies for lost friends, long polyvocal narratives, ekphrastic poems, language splintered into shapes. Frequently profound and often furious, the collection is at its most agonized when Herrera rages against an epidemic of unjust deaths: “& your body’s / on the fence & your ID’s in the air & the shots / get fired.” He even fits danger and sorrow into white space: you throw a stone i throw a stone i throw a stone you throw a stone then a rocket a rocket comes down"

"In this final installment of Mary Robinette Kowal’s “Glamourist” series, illusion-casting glamourists Jane and Vincent travel to Antigua to deal with the death of Vincent’s father, Lord Verbury — a cruel despot who has left behind a ruined estate and terribly abused, angry slaves. Verbury’s machinations from beyond the grave trap Jane and Vincent on his plantation — but all is not as it seems, and they end up both helping and learning from a clever community of native glamourists who have crafted a rich society beyond the reach of the island’s landowners. A perfect end to a not-to-be-missed series."

"Reading this New York Times essay by Oliver Sacks in mid-August moved me so much that I immediately picked up On the Move, his memoir, and was completely absorbed. It’s an intimate, generous and insightful reflection on Sacks’ full and varied life: the shock of his mother’s rejection when she learned he was gay; his forays into weightlifting, fast motorcycles and drugs; his exceptional career as neurologist and writer; his late-life experience of love in his 70s; and, always, his curiosity and empathy for others. The book is so powerful that when this great scientist-humanist died (two weeks after I turned the last page) it felt like a personal loss."

"Journalist Asne Seierstad’s recounting of the 2011 massacre in Norway, in which an ultra-right-wing terrorist killed 77 people, most of them teenagers, is unimaginably difficult to read. But it’s worth it: Her writing, translated into English by Sarah Death, is both straightforward and compassionate. One of Us is a masterpiece of journalism, a deeply painful chronicle of an inexplicable and horrifying attack that we’ll very likely never understand."

"Jabari Asim’s captivating first novel introduces the close-knit community of Gateway City (which is not unlike his hometown, St. Louis) in the tumultuous year of 1970, two years after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. His cast includes “Guts” Tolliver, a one-time gangland enforcer who now runs a taxi business; Tolliver’s former boss, a crime lord trying to go legit; a beloved pediatrician who is a community leader with a secret, and her high-spirited foster child — all characters so complicated, flawed and beguiling you can imagine you know them as well as your friends and neighbors."

"Tracy K. Smith’s memoir, Ordinary Light, is anything but ordinary — but she performs the magic trick of writing with such beautiful simplicity that you don’t notice the language until you realize you’ve stopped to grab a tissue. This is of course because memoir is not her first language — Smith is a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet. This book is the story of her early life, her faith and her experiences with race. It’s also about her relationship with her mother and her mother’s death from cancer. Smith’s pain and confusion — and the process of learning to live without her mother — are all told with beauty and sensitivity. She is a master of poetry, prose and philosophy."

"If your previous acquaintance combining Long Island and thrillers is limited to the novels of Nelson DeMille, prepare for something completely different, and much more complex. In the slow-to-gentrify North Fork town of Orient, a series of deaths and disturbing events unites the community against a troubled young loner named Mills Chevern, who has been taken in by architect Paul Benchley. Benchley and a local real estate agent named Beth Shepherd try to fend off nasty accusations against Chevern, while Shepherd’s disturbing sculptor husband, Gavril, hosts soirees for his high-end artist pals, giving Christopher Bolen (an editor at Interview magazine) plenty of spicy sauce for his rich and suspenseful stew."

"If there’s a writer who marries thinking and writing with more muscularity than Rachel Cusk — well, introduce me. Outline is the oddest of books, in which a writer travels to Athens to run a writing workshop. On the journey she engages in conversations, listening, sometimes without comment. That’s all it is — a series of chats, of observations — but it suddenly becomes so intensely observed that you realize you’re not holding a novel; you’re holding a blade. No book in 2015 ruffled me more — I found myself waking in the night to spend time with its icy-hot precision, its crisp writing, and the opportunity to hold its mirror to my own mind."

"A beautiful Russian double agent, a jealous boss who wants to kill her, and Vladimir Putin in her bedroom watching her sleep? Jason Matthews has written a worthy follow-up to his 2013 best-seller, Red Sparrow. His heroine, Dominika Egorova, has been promoted to a captain of the SGV (KGB 2.0) and, to complicate things, she and her CIA boss are in love and the Russian president has the hots for her. Add a staggering body count, countless twists and turns, and a few grisly torture scenes, and you have yourself a whopper of a read. Fasten your seat belts."

"“Phoenix Claws and Jade Trees” is just a lyrical way of saying “chicken feet and Chinese broccoli,” according to Kian Lam Kho, the New York blogger behind redcook.net. This kind of demystification sets the tone for his first book. It’s a beautiful and meticulous volume that examines the techniques one by one — stir-frying, deep-frying, saucing, braising. The recipes travel the gamut from familiar (mapo tofu) to startling (pig’s skin and bean aspic), offering something for both the student and the adventurer in your kitchen."

"2015 was a banner year for realism-based drama in young adult novels. The post-apocalyptic dystopias of the Hunger Games era have largely given way to personal apocalypses, and Playlist For The Dead centers on a big one: a 15-year-old trying to understand his best friend’s suicide by listening to his music. It’s remarkable for its structure, which invites readers to ponder how songs like Radiohead’s “How To Disappear Completely” or Wilco’s “How To Fight Loneliness” would sound to a depressed, bullied outcast. But it’s also touching for the conclusions Falkoff reaches, which aren’t as pat and simple as the song titles."

"Pool by JiHyeon Lee is a gorgeous fantasy. The wordless picture book takes readers, and its two protagonists, away from an overly crowded pool to a world far below where you can frolic with wondrous sea creatures big and small. The colored pencil and pastel drawings — engaging, playful and warm — will have you roving the pages for little treasures. Since Pool is Lee’s first book, I can’t wait to see what she creates next. (For ages 3 to 5)"

"Cool, impassive tigers flipping you the bird. Ernesto, the Bear from Space, whose turtle roommate is seriously not chill. Arthur the wooden stool, who clings to his halcyon past as a tree. And of course: Death-Goose. These and many other strips from Reza Farazmand’s popular Web comic fill this dryly absurdist collection, accompanied by new prose pieces so hilariously deadpan that rigor mortis sets in. Farazmand’s art style promises Sarah Boynton-greeting-card whimsy, but what he delivers is darker, weirder, funnier and completely his own."

"Jonathan Franzen is often thought of as a comic novelist — and he certainly is that — but he’s also a historical novelist, able to capture the mood of a community at a specific moment in time. In Purity, he turns his gaze on state surveillance, online privacy, the student loan bubble, tech culture, and feminism. At the center is Purity Tyler, a recent college graduate looking for the truth about her father. As in Franzen’s previous novels, there are multiple and intertwining plots, superbly crafted scenes, and exquisitely observed moments. But it’s his characters that will keep you reading: They’re angry, yet frail; sensitive, yet oblivious; smart and yet wrong about so many things."

"How did popular music get from Point A to Justin Bieber? DePaul University professor Allison McCracken fills in a key piece of the puzzle with this research-rich, intriguing account of how microphone-assisted heartthrobs won over American ears in the early 20th century. Grounded in the story of the first vocalizing pop idol, Rudy Vallee, McCracken’s book shows how shifting technologies, changing attitudes about sex and a new, female-driven fan culture fed pop’s “intimate aesthetic,” which prevails to this day. A chapter on Adam Lambert and Glee brings the story into this century."

"Rogue Lawyer introduces readers to a so-called street lawyer named Sebastian Rudd. Or, maybe a better term for Rudd would be “mobile lawyer,” because, ever since his office was firebombed, he’s been operating out of a bulletproof van and not sleeping in the same place for more than a few days. “Mr. Smooth,” Rudd is not — he rubs both criminals and cops the wrong way. But, in hallowed Grisham tradition, scrappy Rudd is the defense lawyer you want sitting beside you in the courtroom when things look bleak. The biggest mystery that Rogue Lawyer poses is how John Grisham, at this stage in his long writing career, can still concoct all these distinctive characters, tricky legal predicaments and clever ways to worm out of them."

"Tom McCarthy himself writes in the novel (parenthetically, how else?): “(events! If you want those, you’d best stop reading now).” So it’s not a page-turner, but it is a mind-turner, and sometimes that kind of book hits the spot. The nameless protagonist (OK, he has a name: U) is a corporate anthropologist — he studies businesses as cultures — and is inspired by events around him (failed parachute in news; oil spill; friend’s cancer; girlfriend’s interrogation by sinister forces) to develop a Grand Theory of Everything. No real story results, but the thinking and the sentence-writing are breathtaking."

"In his second novel, Matthew Palmer plunges into the murky world of Washington consulting firms full of former insiders who have trouble giving up their stock in power and influence. The story revolves around suspicions of fake intelligence manufactured to provoke India and Pakistan to up their nuclear rivalry. Conspiracy theorists will enjoy the shadowy world of The Stoics, a secret group of government bureaucrats who are determined to reshape the world by circumventing official policy. The story is so captivating you can’t help but wonder if it might be slightly plausible."

"Scott Blackwood’s novel is inspired by the Austin yogurt shop murders, a grisly unsolved case from 1991 in which four young girls were murdered and the store where they worked was set ablaze. Blackwood writes with compassion, poetry and artistic fearlessness. See How Small is a brutal, necessary and near-perfect novel."

"In the first line of Neal Stephenson’s newest epic, Seveneves, he goes old-school mad scientist and blows up the moon. Then he spends 900 pages tracking what that one moment means for the following 5,000 years of human history. Though at times dry and overly technical (you will never again be the fella at the party who knows the least about Soviet spacesuit design), Stephenson is writing a true hard sci-fi novel here. His science is thrillingly merciless, and he makes life and death in space about actual life and death — about the million things that will kill you and the two or three things that really smart people can do to stay alive."

"A warm, wonderful book about art, heritage and community, Shadowshaper is the story of Sierra Santiago, a Brooklyn teenager painting her first big mural on an abandoned building. But the murals in her neighborhood are changing: Some faces weep; others look terrified; all are fading too quickly. In fits and starts, her grandfather explains that Sierra is part of a long line of sorcerer-artists being hunted through the city by a strange and destructive power. Together with her friends, Sierra must sift through family secrets to understand and confront it, in a story full of friendships, banter, gorgeous voice work and refreshing characters."

"Celebrated manga artist Shigeru Mizuki, who died in November, put his quirky personality and passionate moral sense on display in this history of 20th-century Japan. In four volumes Mizuki alternated between historical events – with a bias toward the scandalous and macabre – and personal experience. In this final volume his occasional departures from reality, as when he apparently has a mental breakdown from overwork, add an unsettling but fascinating note. Mizuki’s sketches of Japan and New Guinea, with his patented blend of clashing styles, are piquant and engaging throughout."

"It is no small feat to weave a rich, compelling book out of a Senate Judiciary confirmation (I suspect some might yawn even just reading that sentence) but it helps when the year is 1967 and the subject is late Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American to serve on the high court. It also helps when the writer is Wil Haygood, who has a knack for injecting drama and spark into legal and legislative proceedings. Within the framework of the fiery five-day hearing, Haygood uses Marshall’s career as a lens to explore the complexities and contradictions of American race relations."

"Nina is sleeping with her running partner; Sasha has agreed to meet her lover’s wife for a drink; and Gwen is in love with her roommate. Each story in Katherine Heiny’s collection doles out gems that are so authentic and outrageous I wanted to read them out loud to a friend over the phone — like the opening lines of the story “Blue Heron Bridge”: “The worst thing about the affair, Nina thought, was that it made her so impatient with the children.” Be ready to laugh and hoot, and then buy Single, Carefree, Mellow for all your girlfriends — but probably not your mother-in-law."

"The title tells all: Sisters in Law: How Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg Went to the Supreme Court and Changed the World. Linda Hirshman’s joint biography of the first and second women to serve on the nation’s highest court is a gossipy, funny, sometimes infuriating and moving tale of two women so similar and yet so different. O’Connor, a lifelong Republican, was raised on a Western ranch and cut her political teeth as majority leader of the Arizona Senate. Ginsburg was born and bred in Brooklyn, the daughter of a Russian Jewish immigrant, and became a professor and litigator. But as different as their backgrounds were, and even their approaches to judging, when it came to women’s rights, O’Connor and Ginsburg were allies. They began their careers at a time when women could be denied jobs, credit, even a place on a jury. But they always had an amazing self-confidence, believing that they could be lawyers and leaders."

"“Beautifully twisty” is pretty much David Mitchell’s trademark, and Slade House does nothing to tarnish his rep. It’s a horror novel (which is something you just don’t see that much anymore) that covers the years 1979 to 2015, told with shifting main characters. And while there may be a bit of goofiness living at its heart, it’s still a worthy read simply because Mitchell is very aware of every trick he’s lifting from a thousand scary stories come before, and so are his characters — each one being just as jaded, just as suspicious and just as disbelieving of all this nonsense as we are. Right up until they realize that the trap has been sprung on them, too."

"Pizza is a lot of things to a lot of people. But to Colin Atrophy Hagendorf, it’s a blank canvas upon which we can, and should, project anything we wish. In his bittersweet memoir, Slice Harvester, the infamous pizza blogger works punk rock, substance abuse, online dating and hilariously poignant anecdotes about his family (and actor Phoebe Cates) into his running commentary on that most hallowed of New York City institutions: the slice."

"This is a relentlessly charming character-driven romance, where women and people of color take center stage in a romp through a magical Regency England. Zacharias Wythe has inherited the position of Sorcerer Royal from his recently deceased guardian under mysterious circumstances at a politically threatening time. Meanwhile, Prunella Gentleman, a dark-skinned young Englishwoman of uncertain parentage, is keen to escape her magical school and enter society under Wythe’s protection and tutelage. Hijinks ensue! Pitch-perfect tone, perilous plots and delightful characters make this a thoroughly absorbing and astonishing debut novel."

"An inventor is imprisoned for making baby dolls that are too realistic. A Puritan girl, married against her will, sails to America with her dog. A programmer’s wife shuns him in favor of a sentient computer he created. In this stunning and audacious second novel from Louisa Hall, perspectives shift between different eras and places, twisting together to form a story that’s as hard to describe as it is remarkable. It’s not just one of the smartest books of the year; it’s one of the most beautiful."

"There’s just no other way to say it: Spectacle: The Astonishing Life of Ota Benga by Pamela Newkirk is required reading. In 1906, Ota Benga, a young man from the Congo, was put on display in a cage at the Bronx Zoo — with an orangutan. Based on years of research, Newkirk masterfully explores the circumstances that culminated in Benga’s horrifying ordeal and then goes a step further to unpack the layers of racism, wealth and imperialism that made this racist spectacle possible."

"Adam Brookes is quickly becoming a first-rate author of international thrillers. The deft pacing of his second novel, Spy Games, kept me reading every free moment, including workday lunches and cab rides home. What separates Brookes from many others in the genre is that he knows his subject, China, intimately. (Full disclosure: The author and I were colleagues when he served as a BBC correspondent in Beijing in the 1990s.) Brookes has ripped the plot of Spy Games from the headlines of a real-life Communist Party power struggle and set it in London, Ethiopia, Hong Kong and a Chinese casino in the jungles of Myanmar. For an atmospheric tale of intrigue centered on the world’s rising superpower, Brookes is your man."

"I depend on Kate Beaton’s comic strips when I need a good, hearty giggle. Her latest collection features hilarious parodies of classic literature, history and pop-culture, with brilliant caricatures of everyone from Lord Byron to Ida B. Wells and Wonder Woman. Highlights include her blistering takedowns of “strong female characters” and “cool girls,” as well as her cheeky depiction of hairy-legged, bra-burning “straw feminists,” who sneak into children’s bedrooms to swap a Justin Bieber poster for one of a busty Mother Earth. And if you thought Wuthering Heights was too ridiculous to parody, Beaton finds a way to make it even more deliciously weird."

"This book makes me uncomfortable, and not just in that smug way, like saying after a lecture on ethics, “Well, at least I’m struggling with these questions, right?” No, this book — which offers both a history of altruism and profiles of “extreme” altruists, like the couple who adopted 22 kids — makes me question whether I’ve ever done anything good in my life. But Larissa MacFarquhar writes so simply and beautifully that I forget my discomfort and just let her narrative carry me along. In fact, this is a book that would be less upsetting if it never ended, and we could all just live in her prose forever. That way we’d never have to face the upshot, which is that it’s very, very difficult to be a good person."

"Summerlong is the story of a marriage disintegrating. Of youth fading. Of a single, hot summer in a small college town in Iowa and how it destroys the lives of a local real estate agent, a frustrated novelist, a floundering actor and a grieving young woman. It’s a sharply observed and smartly written book, but it’s also one that’s haunted by death and sorrow and the terrible heartbreak of growing old. It captures the that instant of perfect equilibrium, where everything is exactly right — when love and family and career have come into exquisite balance. And then the instant after when everything you thought you’ve built just falls to pieces."

"Jillian Tamaki published her Web comic about a school for kids with superpowers/mutant abilities/magic for years, and no one would blame you for worrying that once collected, its one-off, gag-strip format might make for disjointed, herky-jerky reading. But then, Tamaki’s never been one to lunge sweatily for a punch line; she’s much more interested in mood and character, and if she happens to find a joke along the way: bonus. As a result, the collected strip reads like a discursive (and deeply sardonic) YA novel in which characters discover themselves at the same gradual pace readers do."

"In this remarkable, beautiful new art book, Simon Stalenhag has embedded dinosaurs, machines and savage, blond-haired children into an alt history of his native Sweden in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s: Robots clack through suburban streets, lurk in the backyard trees, or lie, still and cold, abandoned in snowy fields. It’s a child’s vision of a time not so far gone, gorgeously rendered, and attended by brief written vignettes — one man’s memories of simpler, stranger, more mysterious times when he and his friends played in echo spheres and collected the castaway bits of scrap shaken off by the slow deterioration of the freighters in the ruins of their imaginary home."

"It’s hard to imagine shaking off the dust of this thousand-year-old volume of stories (recently discovered in an Istanbul library) and seeing them for the first time. As thoughtful as they are wondrous, these tales run the gamut: epic and domestic, charming and chilling, realistic and magical, with prose like a jewel box. If it looks scholarly at first glance, take heart; by the time God folds up the desert to help a lost heroine find her way across a strange land, this collection will have made itself at home in your imagination."

"If poetry is humanity’s answer to death, then the literary feud may be the poet’s answer. One feud that may never die is between the acolytes of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath: Plath’s blame him for her suicide, while Hughes’ blame mental illness. Jonathan Bate’s new biography stokes the flames, bravely taking on the literary giant, while quite wisely admitting that Plath’s suicide is absolutely at the heart of the man’s life. But Bate’s scholarship, while not quite excusing Hughes’ character flaws, does a beautiful job of marrying his subject’s life to his rigorous and important work. The book is as insightful and charismatic as the man himself — whichever side you believe yourself to be on."

"Only a world-class iconoclast would take on media’s biggest slab of conventional wisdom: that television will soon be killed by digital platforms. But media columnist and author Michael Wolff — whose enemies list is so long, he fills the book’s back page with insults from The New York Times and Gawker — is just that pot-stirrer. His book argues that our love for shiny new concepts has blinded us to a simple fact: TV keeps making money while digital media still traffic in pennies, comparatively. And instead of replacing television, digital video outlets like Netflix, Amazon and YouTube are becoming more like TV. Wolff makes his case with the kind of detail only media nerds will read to the end, but his argument is a great way to stop conversation the next time someone tells you your TV is headed for history’s dustbin."

"Riad Sattouf’s pen frisks and wiggles, but his drawings and his message are more complex than they appear. Telling of his childhood in Libya, Syria and France in the early 1980s, Sattouf — a former contributor to the French humor magazine Charlie Hebdo — denounces pan-Arabism and Islamic politics. This graphic memoir has been compared to Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi’s graphic novel about growing up in Iran. In fact, it’s a kind of anti-Persepolis in its icy cynicism."

"In Maggie Nelson’s short memoir, nearly everything is flexible. Genres, ideas and bodies all bend, re-form and take on new meanings. Through 143 pages, she tells overlapping stories centered on her romance with the gender-fluid artist Harry Dodge and her own pregnancy. She writes in a long, unbroken sequence of short paragraphs into which she weaves quotes and theories by philosophers, child psychologists, artists, critics and loved ones. The Argonauts is Nelson’s running log of joy and fear in a time of transition — the never-ending voyage of making a family without a map."

"This is a win-win kind of book. It stimulates in two ways: First, as a textbook of sorts — even if you don’t plan to write a memoir, thinking about memory and communicating past events will set your mind tumbling over itself. And second, as a resource, a bibliography — the books Mary Karr mentions promise to be great reads. (The ones I’ve read are.) Oh, and one more: If you are planning to write a memoir, this is the best possible way to procrastinate putting pen to paper."

"You know that cliche about history “coming alive”? Well, in the hands of Pulitzer Prize-winning fashion critic Robin Givhan, it does. On a chilly November night back in 1973, five American designers went toe-to-toe and dress-to-dress with five French designers in one legendary fashion show. It was seemingly a fundraiser for the restoration of the Palace of Versailles, but lift the hemline just a smidge and you’ll see that there was so much more at play — race, gender, the new world pushing up against the old. If you’re tempted to dismiss this as simply fashion history — don’t."

"Prepare to be thoroughly entertained by this delightful story about a missing sandwich and the bear who ate it. Julia Sarcone-Roach’s active, engaging and detailed illustrations chronicle Bear’s rollicking journey from the forest to the city. The adventure culminates at a park bench where a lunchbox lies open. Hungry, Bear is caught devouring the sandwich. Embarrassed, he longs for the forest and we bid him farewell as he sets sail to return home. A surprise ending will leave you laughing out loud. (For ages 3 to 7)"

"Ludmila Ulitskaya’s novel leaps whole decades in a single bound, weaves intricate webs of connection between dozens of characters — and sure makes brief recommendations like this one a hell of a task. How best to label it? A coming-of-age tale of three boyhood friends? A record of Soviet dissident artists, a novel of manners, a historical thriller, a story of mentors and students? Somehow, it manages to slip into every one of these categories (and more) — and then to defy them in turn. At once vast, intimate and riveting, it eludes a 100-word summary. So, instead, I’ll say just three: Please read it."

"Hazel, a graduate student who has been having an affair with her married professor, discovers her pregnancy and witnesses the beginning of an epidemic on the same terrifying day. The mysterious illness, in which blond women attack strangers with rabid ferocity before dying themselves, seizes the country, and Hazel struggles to get home in the midst of the madness. The Blondes is scary and deeply, bitingly funny — a satire about gender that kept me reading until 4 in the morning — and a fine addition to the all-too-small genre of feminist horror."

"A Bollywood superstar with an icy reputation, Ria travels to Chicago for a friend’s wedding — and has to face Vikram, the first love she left behind. Convinced Ria abandoned him to pursue fame and fortune, Vikram at first tries to avoid her, but finally gives in to temptation. However, when the secrets Ria tried to bury are unearthed, Vikram re-examines their painful history. It may be too late to be Ria’s hero, but he’ll do everything he can to help her save herself. An exquisite, romantic novel with haunting universal themes."

"Jim Shepard’s latest novel tells the story of Aron, a Polish boy living in Warsaw when the Nazis invade. The book shares some predictable traits with other works of fiction about the Holocaust — it’s horrifying, brutal and angry. But Shepard’s pitch-black humor and his avoidance of artificial epiphanies are original. It’s an immensely rewarding, shocking and beautiful book."

"No novelist around today beats Ishiguro when it comes to writing about loss; and, almost every time he tackles his signature subject, he does so in a different genre: His breakthrough book, The Remains of the Day, is a “straight” literary novel in diary form; When We Were Orphans is a detective tale and Never Let Me Go is a sci-fi story. Here, Ishiguro serves up a masterful blend of fantasy, and Arthurian romance and postmodern absurdity. In The Buried Giant, an exhausted group of medieval travelers cross a blasted landscape straight out of the plays and novels of Samuel Beckett. They “can’t go on,” but they “go on” and so, too, do Ishiguro’s readers, through scenes infused with menace and magical beauty."

"In The Complete Stories, Clarice Lispector proves herself to be a true master of narrative. The collection, translated by Katrina Dodson, is a perfect introduction to those not familiar with Lispector’s work, beautifully structured and poignant on all levels. Stories like “The Escape” and “Daydream and Drunkenness of a Young Lady” — which deals with a discontented housewife on the brink of insanity — stay with you like a kind of dream. These 85 stories, some only a few pages long, reaffirm Lispector’s singularity and her reputation as “the great witch of Brazilian literature.” Long after her death, Lispector continues to champion the possibilities of language, and its ability to mesmerize."

"This remains one of the most beautiful books I have read this year — the one I champion everywhere. It’s a challenging book (about rape and murder, slavery, white colonialism, religious fundamentalism, and a plague that has wiped out 80 percent of the population, leaving none behind but several generations of black children who all die before their 20th birthdays) and is written completely in a debased (but inarguably beautified) version of English, developed among isolated knots of survivors. Newman’s voice is powerful, and her protagonist, Ice Cream Star, would make the perfect YA heroine if not for the fact that she is 10 times the heroine in any of the tales whose bones this one steals."

"Caught between the worlds of the ruling-class Patrons and the conquered Commoners, Jessamy must choose between being a dutiful daughter and secretly competing in the Court of Fives — an obstacle race that offers independence. When a power-hungry Patron throws her family into chaos and threatens the lives of her mother and sisters, Jessamy turns to an unlikely source for help: a wealthy Patron boy she beat in The Fives. Full of high-stakes adventure but also heartfelt musings on identity, family and colonization, this book presents a fantasy world that is refreshingly inspired by Greco-Roman and Egyptian cultures."

"In The Crossing, Hieronymus “Harry” Bosch, the hero of Michael Connelly’s long-running series of police procedurals, has been forced to retire from the LAPD. Harry gives leisure living a halfhearted try, but he finds that the vintage motorcycle he had planned to tinker with as a hobby interests him for about 10 minutes. Indeed, so antsy is Harry that when his half-brother, Mickey Haller (who is himself the hero of Connelly’s “Lincoln Lawyer” series), asks him to sign on as an investigator, Harry surprisingly agrees. Haller, after all, is the enemy — a criminal defense attorney — and working for him means Harry is “crossing” over to the other side. Harry may be officially over the hill as far as the Los Angeles Police Department is concerned, but Connelly is still very much in his prime."

"The Dark Net is a meticulously researched and reported look at the hidden world of cryptocurrency, anonymous Web browsing and online subcultures. Information technology has carved out small spaces of almost absolute freedom while simultaneously enabling mass surveillance and tracking. Author Jamie Bartlett takes a fair, thoughtful approach to the subject, and if you’ve ever wondered what a bitcoin is or how both child pornographers and political freedom fighters hide out online, The Dark Net serves as a great introduction."

"In this lush, finely wrought novel, a professional opera singer named Lulu has a child and loses both her voice and beloved grandmother in the same day. Certain that this has happened because of a curse that stalks the women in her lineage, she plumbs the depths of her past and her heritage to confront it. Equal parts feminist fairy tale and elegy, The Daughters is a gorgeous exploration of music, family history and motherhood"

"The Dead Mountaineer’s Inn, by the brothers Boris and Arkady Strugatsky, is a smart and deeply funny tale that sends its readers down unpredictable paths. First published in 1970, and translated from the Russian for the first time by Josh Billings, the novel follows police inspector Peter Glebsky, a family man anticipating his first vacation in years. Shortly after he arrives at his inn, however, strange events begin to unfold, and Glebsky realizes his vacation will be anything but relaxing. After a body surfaces, the story reaches a new level of strangeness, throwing readers into a detective story that is nothing short of exhilarating."

"Chances are, unless you’ve been brushing up on your modern Irish, you haven’t read Máirtín Ó Cadhain or this 1949 novel. But don’t sweat it: Very few in the English-speaking world had, either, until it finally got an English translation this year. The book, a foul-mouthed gabfest between corpses in a small-town graveyard, can be a tough one to pin down. It’s at once simple in premise and complex in execution; and while not much of note actually happens, its playful turns of phrase — and remarkably inventive profanity — give a lot of bawdy life to this challenging dialogue of the dead."

"Liliane’s double life begins when she is 8, in 1948, and boards a flight from New York to Rome to visit her father, Rudy, a German Jewish film producer. Liliane’s stylish, artistic mother, Irene, has recently remarried, to a Wall Street investment banker. Growing up, Liliane shuttles between her parents, and she works to construct her own identity as she watches, listens and explores generations of her parents’ families. To tell her story, Lily Tuck inhabits the spacious realm of the imagination, shifting time zones and historic periods effortlessly, weaving memories and photographs, family stories and facts, into a mesmerizing portrait."

"This year the author of the cultish (and groundbreaking) House Of Leaves came roaring back with the first two books of his proposed 27-volume (?!?) series, The Familiar. It is … bonkers. Both volumes are massive, track nearly a dozen converging storylines and countless characters, and seem to be attempting to bridge the visual/linguistic gap between the novel and the graphic novel with illustrations, innovative page layouts and other tricks in the typesetter’s arsenal. The second book is stronger and more polished than the first, but Danielewski has boldly marked his artistic turf with these occasionally mind-blowing artifacts of post-everything weirdness."

"N. K. Jemisin’s latest novel, The Fifth Season, takes place in a land called the Stillness — a tragically ironic name, since it suffers geographical cataclysms on a periodic basis. Essun, a schoolteacher whose husband inexplicably kills their son and flees with their daughter, undergoes a quest across the Stillness that starts out as a rescue but becomes something else entirely. Jemisin brilliantly illustrates that imaginative world-building is a vital element of fantasy, but also that every character can be a world unto herself."

"This brilliant collection of music writing by former Pitchfork Senior Editor Jessica Hopper strikes fast with its direct, biting title. And it doesn’t stop there — the book challenges commonplace criticism throughout. In mere pages, Hopper covers both the problematic treatment of female characters in mid-2000s emo lyrics and the abandonment of Christianity by one of Christian rock’s foremost heroes. Music fans would struggle to find a more compelling series of essays."

"Chigozie Obioma’s debut novel is a modern (yet age-old and universal) story of four brothers, told from the viewpoint of the youngest sibling. It follows the boys’ adventures in the modest town of Akure, Nigeria, where they have an encounter that threatens to violently tear their close-knit family apart. Inspired by his native Nigeria and, by extension, the contradictions and marvels of Africa, Obioma is an articulate and sometimes lyrical storyteller. He’s a dynamic new voice from Africa — and one that deserves a listen."

"A charming memoir about a Swedish biologist’s passion for hoverflies? Seriously? Yes. Talk about off the beaten track: Fredrik Sjöberg, who lives on the tiny island of Runmarö in the archipelago east of Stockholm, muses and amuses about his baffling passion for hoverflies. In this wry, delightful paean to some of the tiniest wonders of the natural world, he also makes a case for the opposite of globalism — cutting our overwhelming world down to size by focusing intensely on a narrow point of interest. The Fly Trap proves that great writing can elevate anything — including a swarm of insects."

"This sequel to The Best of All Possible Worlds follows the adventures of three teenagers against an epic galactic background: Rafi, a young psychic learning to control his gifts; Ntenman, a socially savvy rascal jockeying for capital on his own terms; and Serendipity, a woman from an all-telepath community dealing with recent upheavals in her society. In rich, graceful prose, Karen Lord offers sharp, staggering insights about colonialism, immigrant communities, commerce and assimilation while pouring out a fascinating world — one glass of rum at a time."

"Re-imagined Shakespeare is, of course, everyone’s bag — I’m looking at you, Baz Luhrmann — but there’s a special frisson when you marry an old play with a thoroughly modern author. Jeanette Winterson’s retelling of A Winter’s Tale shimmers with energy in a way I hope the Bard would have loved. The setting is a modern American city (which could be New Orleans). Leontes is a hedge fund manager with a fully fleshed out back story and real clues to his behavior (which are tough to find in the source material). This is a book that will appeal to any fan of a good yarn; Winterson keeps the action pumping. Even if you already know the play it’s a well-told tale of modern jealousy and power."

"The Ghost Network is Catie Disabato’s sharp and inventive debut novel. It’s the story of pop star Molly Metropolis, who vanishes mysteriously while en route to a show in Chicago. Her personal assistant, Nix, takes on the role of detective, searching for clues in Molly’s journal and going down a rabbit hole of abandoned subway lines, song lyrics and secret societies. Disabato builds a fast-paced and brilliantly structured story that is at once fiercely controlled and highly obsessive."

"When David Lagercrantz was hired to continue Stieg Larsson’s internationally best-selling “Millennium” series, he inherited an ugly public-relations problem: a family war being fought over Larsson’s estate and literary legacy. So he mostly ignored it to produce the best novel he could. And for series fans, it’s hard to deny that he did a memorable job, respecting Larsson’s characters, then confidently expanding them. This isn’t the novel Larsson would have written, but it’s dense, thoughtful and compelling, with its own strong voice and its own take on Lisbeth Salander."

"Glimpses, fleeting images and faulty memories all add up in this super intriguing “what the heck is going on?” story. An unemployed, alcoholic divorcee (“Girl”) continues her daily commute to keep up appearances — and also because it takes her by her old house, where her ex continues to live with his new wife and kid. When the neighbor four doors down disappears, “Girl” gets involved. The story is told in the first person alternately by three different characters (“Girl,” missing neighbor, and new wife) in incremental morning and evening diary like entries and you’re never quite sure whom or what to believe."

"Kyung-Sook Shin’s work often inhabits the space between story and reality. This novel — about a girl who isn’t quite her, working in a factory and going to school in the 1970s — is framed with the modern life of “the author,” in a time and place she haunts more than really lives in. Until her youth is laid out and the truth told, she’s trapped in echoes of life: negotiating family in the past, staring at an unfinished manuscript in the future. It’s a story of the pasts that build us, and it makes for one of the most absorbing reads of the year."

"A magnificent fantasy epic drawing on the events of The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, but set in an invented and richly realized world. Mata Zyndu, orphaned heir to a noble house, joins forces with Kuni Garu, a charismatic ne’er-do-well, to bring down the ruthless Mapidéré and his young empire. The gods wage proxy wars on each other through their unwitting mortal champions; duchies clash; friendships are formed and broken — and there are two more books to come. A tremendously impressive debut from an award-winning short-fiction writer."

"Glasgow-based author Kirsty Logan sets her debut novel, The Gracekeepers, in a world that’s been almost entirely inundated by the ocean, where the Circus Excalibur roams the sea looking for islands on which to set up its big top. The scarcity of land leads to two contentious classes of people: damplings and landlockers. Evoking Angela Carter’s Nights at the Circus, Logan not only captures the cloistered eeriness of circus life; she does so in a way that lovingly reinvents both the weird whimsy and archetypal resonance of fairy tales."

"For some, just thinking about Aunt Jemima evokes uncomfortable feelings — anger, maybe even guilt or shame, over a racial stereotype of a black woman who’s happiest in the kitchen getting ready to serve her white folks. But just who were the real Aunt Jemimas — the real cooks and chefs whose skill did so much to define American cuisine? To find out, food writer Toni Tipton-Martin (no relation) dived into her collection of 300 or so African-American cookbooks, some of which date back almost 200 years. Martin shares what she learned in the lavishly-illustrated Jemima Code. It’s that rare coffee table book that serves up important history and compelling imagery in digestible, bite-size chunks that still stick to your ribs."

"Never has a book argued so engagingly with Plato’s Republic by way of Mary Renault’s The Last of the Wine! Across time and space, whenever people read The Republic in the original Greek and pray to Athena to live there, the goddess plucks them from their historical moment and transports them to the island of Thera before its volcano exploded, telling them that they have a unique time-locked opportunity to build Plato’s dream city themselves — unaware that the god Apollo is incarnated among them as a young boy so that he can begin to understand consent. Utterly wonderful."

"The second installment of A.X. Ahmad’s Ranjit Singh mystery series is even better than the first (The Caretaker). Ex-Indian army Capt. Singh has left Martha’s Vineyard for the shadowy streets of Manhattan, where he’s now driving a taxi and attempting to save enough money to have a well-appointed second bedroom for his daughter’s visits from their home country. When Bollywood star Shabana Shah is murdered after an encounter with Singh, police suspect the worst — but Singh knows something even more terrible connecting the beautiful actor with a bizarre and lucrative underworld industry. Great pacing and unforgettable details make this a procedural not to be missed."

"Elizabeth Alexander is probably best-known as the poet who read at Barack Obama’s first inauguration, but she may be remembered for The Light of the World. This slim book chronicles her 15-year marriage to an Eritrean Renaissance man. Together, they created a happy household that was a magnet for friends and family. When he died just before his 50th birthday, Alexander was inconsolable. Her memoir recounts, in luminous language, how she slowly swam through almost paralyzing grief to break through the surface again and find new life for herself and her sons. Even at its saddest, Alexander’s lyricism shines through."

"This beautifully illustrated book tells the magical tale of a tiny boy who loves his garden more than anything. It provides him with joy, shelter and food; it is his entire world. Sadly, it becomes too much for him to handle alone — and he risks losing it all. Emily Hughes’ spare prose allows her gorgeous artwork to tell the story of the gardener and the single flower that brings him inspiration and hope. Layered with meaning, this is a book worth lingering over and cherishing. (For ages 3 to 7)"

"I know. A marriage anthology? Seriously? But just hear me out on this one: Curated by husband-and-wife team Stephen J. Adler and Lisa Grunwald, this collection is refreshingly unsappy. There are chapters devoted to “Grievances,” “Qualms,” “Conflict” and “Infidelity.” This idiosyncratic compilation includes Bill Clinton’s 1998 grand jury testimony, a reddit thread about whether to hyphenate your name, and advice from Ovid on playing hard to get. Like that funny guy or gal you met at the party, this sweet, smart, A-to-Z guide (“from Adam & Eve to Zoloft”) never takes itself too seriously, and before you know it, you’ll find yourself falling in love."

"Alice Hoffman’s brilliant paint box of a book is set in the early 1800s in the town of Charlotte Amalie, on the island of St. Thomas. Here we meet the family of Camille Pissarro — the Impressionist painter who will soon rise to fame — starting with his mother, Rachel. (Camille is her favorite son.) As in Hoffman’s previous work, this book is rich with magical realism. There’s a busy panoply of characters, aunts and cousins and random stepfathers. Forbidden marriages abound. And underlying the relationships is a lavish Caribbean canvas: The parrots in the trees, the coconut cake, the scent of jasmine."

"An aimless, bored and amoral Frenchman gets distracted by the sun on an Algerian beach and impulsively takes someone’s life. That nameless murdered man from Albert Camus’ existential classic, The Stranger, becomes the motivating figure in Algerian journalist Kamel Daoud’s The Meursault Investigation. Daoud gives the man a name, Moses, and a mourning brother, who narrates this taut and riveting novel. The story is less a rebuttal to The Stanger than a continuation of it; it clicks into place like clockwork. And while the book also reflects its source in its off-kilter, mesmerizing tonality, The Meursault Investigation is more than a tribute; it’s a tour de force."

"This isn’t really a cookbook in the sense that you’re actually going to make anything from it. Almost nothing here is easy enough for a dinner party, let alone a weeknight meal (I see you, “Beggar’s Duck” baked in clay). But if you’re lucky enough to have visited Danny Bowein’s bicoastal Mission Chinese restaurants (or even if you haven’t) you’ll be fascinated by his stories of time spent in various restaurant kitchens and inspired by his bold flavors (Chongqing Chicken Wings) and playful approach to classic foods from around the world (Kung Pao Pastrami)."

"If you are perplexed and intrigued by the enigmatic Vladimir Putin, you’ll want to read this biography. Steven Lee Myers goes behind and beyond the stereotypes of a workaholic leader driven by the humiliation and chaos of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Reserved and suspicious by nature, Putin is determined to project Russia as a great power and to unify the country with him at its center. His motivations — for everything from hosting the Olympics to getting involved in Ukraine and Syria — are a lot clearer thanks to Myers’ detailed reporting."

"In her debut novel, The Only Ones, Carola Dibbell writes rhythmically and lyrically about New York City’s outer boroughs in the latter half of the 21st century, where life has been radically altered by populace-decimating pandemics and mass poverty. In this fraught landscape, 19-year-old Inez Fardo makes a discovery: The wealthy will pay her good money to let them clone her. For a book about a chilling dystopia, The Only Ones bleeds tenderness, warmth and a hard-won hope."

"Oh, the Penderwicks! They’re that creative, messy family you wish you lived next door to. This fourth installment of their story sees Batty, one of five sisters, come of age while the oldest sister, Rosalind, goes off to college. As with any series, I started reading it with nervous anticipation: Would my twin daughters and I still like them? Would they be true to who we’ve grown to know? Yes and yes. With The Penderwicks in Spring, Jeanne Birdsall has once again given us the gift of sisterly love. (For ages 8 to 12)"

"After her estranged father falls ill, Taisy Cleary returns to the town where she grew up and becomes embroiled in the life of her half-sister, 16-year-old Willow. Home-schooled Willow is floundering in her first year of private school, but she’s not exactly ready to accept any help from her long-gone sister. As the two adjust to each other, Willow’s world broadens and Taisy reconnects with a lost love, and they each learn to redefine and expand their ideas of love and family. Smart, vibrant, textured and lyrical."

"The Red Web is an exploration of how the Russian state uses the Internet as a tool for surveillance and cyberaggression while dissidents are trying to use it as a channel for free expression. It reads like a spy novel, and there’s a lot of fascinating history about the state campaign to control information, from Soviet times to today. It’s a great piece of investigative reporting."

"Best-selling author Neil Gaiman made his name writing the horror/fantasy comic book series The Sandman about the godlike character Morpheus, the Lord of Dreaming. Its 75-issue run revealed Gaiman’s seemingly limitless imagination — he wrote stories about a convention for serial killers, the gods that view hell as prime real estate for development once Lucifer abandons it, and the premiere of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream held for an audience from the fairy realm. For the 25th anniversary of the comic book, Gaiman returned to his beloved characters for a six-issue miniseries. Here, Morpheus is tasked with saving the universe from complete destruction — a destruction he himself set in motion. The Sandman: Overture serves as a prequel to the original series and gives you the chance to read it all over again."

"If you’re one of those feminists who find the Bible a bit hard to take as literature (where are all the female characters?), well, Happy Hanukkah, have I got one for you. Geraldine Brooks has retold the story of David, giving a fuller look at stories that might have made you raise your eyebrows as written: the friendship between Yonatan and David, the seduction of Batsheva, the relationship with Avigail. A fight between David and Mikhal, one of David’s wives, positively sings with an anger and bitterness any woman might recognize in a fight for agency. Brooks may take King David as her subject, but it’s her minor characters who come into the greatest relief."

"The story of an African-American man who attempts to bring back slavery and resegregate his Los Angeles neighborhood, The Sellout is one of the funniest American satires in years. It’s a risky book unconcerned about offending readers. It’s also a comic masterpiece. But it’s much more than just that — it’s a smart and honest reflection on race and identity in America, written by an author who truly understands what it means to talk about history in this country."

"Israeli writer Etgar Keret usually writes short fiction that’s kind of weird — well-regarded, but weird. Here he turns his focus to the seven real-life years between the birth of his son and the death of his father, who survived the Holocaust. It’s a slim book filled with short essays, some of which draw their power from an evocative portrait of life in modern Israel. (The essay “Pastrami” is named after a game Keret plays with his son when the air raid sirens go off.) But most of them don’t need extra relevance; Keret is such a master at finding the humanity and meaning in the tiniest moments of life."

"The final novel in Terry Pratchett’s long-running, best-selling “Discworld” series was clearly written as a gentle goodbye to his legions of fans, practically an instruction manual in dealing with his impending death. It begins with the death of one of his most beloved, venerable characters, but sends her off with no-nonsense respect, then firmly shows how the world copes without her. It’s startlingly personal for a fantasy novel about witches and elves. But Pratchett spent decades using real-world parallels to turn his books into guidebooks on wisdom, empathy and kindness. It’s no surprise his swan song continues the tradition."

"A photographer takes a picture of a young girl in Eastern Europe, running from the explosion that’s just atomized her parents and brother — and with that image the photographer’s friend, a writer grappling with the long-ago loss of her infant daughter, is undone. To help her, other artists — friends, lovers, family — mobilize to locate the girl in the midst of war. This erotic, beautifully disturbing exploration of sex and violence is a fast, lyrical read, but don’t let the brevity fool you — its effects will linger long after the last page."

"In this short memoir, Barton Swaim describes what it was like to work as a speechwriter for former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford. The governor’s marital infidelity (yes, that governor — think “Appalachian Trail”) and other moral shortcomings take a back seat here. And deservedly so, for Swaim’s approach is far more entertaining and, if you care about language, far more indicting. He describes an administration in which the mistreatment of language — and staff — was commonplace."

"Quirky and inventive, Valeria Luiselli’s second novel — written in collaboration with Mexican Jumex juice factory workers — is a playful, philosophical fun house of a read that demonstrates that not only isn’t experimental fiction dead but it needn’t be deadly either. Luiselli’s elastic mind comfortably wraps itself around molars, Montaigne, fortune cookies, and theories of identity and storytelling. Her charming narrator is an auctioneer who can amp up the value of anything — including his extracted choppers — by embellishing them with hyperbolic, allegoric stories that become “an elegant surpassing of the truth.”"

"Life surges and flows, unstoppable, in Jennifer Hayden’s graphical autobiography. It may be organized around Hayden’s experience of having breasts and losing them to cancer, but it’s far more than just a record of the existence of two bumps of flesh. It’s also a rebuttal to the forces of illness and early death. Hayden shouts back with everything she has. Placed alongside dozens of other experiences in this long book, cancer isn’t allowed to shove joy, hope and humor offstage."

"For the past few years, Europa Editions has been bringing out Elena Ferrante’s series of literary novels about an edgy, decades-long friendship between two women in Naples. The fourth and final of the “Neapolitan Novels,” titled The Story of the Lost Child, has just been published. It’s spectacular, but you will realize how spectacular it is only if you do not cheat. You must read the three earlier (also superb) Neapolitan Novels, or the perfect devastation wreaked by the conclusion of this last novel will be lost on you."

"Young adult literature often takes grief as its subject — whether in Terabithia or at a cancer support group. Ali Benjamin’s beautiful debut also deals in death and somehow feels both familiar and innovative. The broad strokes: Suzy’s best friend, Franny, dies while swimming in the ocean, after the girls had become estranged. Suzy craves answers — and convinces herself that a rare, poisonous jellyfish must be at fault for Franny’s death. Along the way, the reader — and Suzy — learn a lot of scientific facts. But there are, of course, no good answers to why scary and sad things happen. Benjamin illuminates what we can learn in a voice that will appeal to both kids and adults."

"With her look at the first computer, Sydney Padua transforms punch cards and little brass cogs into the stuff of legend. Her Victorian heroes are nothing if not memorable: The larger-than-life computational genius Charles Babbage, Padua writes, was a “blend of Mr. Pickwick, Mr. Toad, Don Quixote and Leonardo da Vinci.” The once-overlooked, eccentric math whiz Ada Lovelace smokes a pipe and scribbles equations. Padua’s exaggerated, loopy drawing style keeps the energy high. Her characters gasp and glower and grin; their hair ruffles in the steam."

"The Empire of Masks has devoured Baru’s home and way of life with paper currency and restrictive sexual and domestic practices, forbidding her island’s freer sexuality and family structure as unhygienic. Baru is determined to fight back — by joining the Empire as a civil servant and destroying it from within. Hiding her desire for women as deeply as her desire for vengeance, Baru navigates intrigues in far-flung Aurdwyn, first thwarting and then orchestrating regional rebellions for increasingly murky ends, while trying hard to keep her soul intact."

"Toss together daring hairdos, an incredible cast of characters and a whole lot of delicious desserts and you’ve got the recipe for a delightful page-turner. Whip-smart 12-year-old GiGi is the new girl at a posh New York school. However, her hairdresser sister, her trailer park past and a suitcase full of family secrets threaten to unravel GiGi’s life. In this scrumptious debut novel, Kat Yeh creates a world so wonderful you’re never going to want to leave. (For ages 8 to 12)"

"Where to begin to try to explain this book of short stories? First, it reads like a novel. Second, you will never doubt that Anthony Marra is in charge. I began to imagine him standing before a giant bulletin board of timelines, maps and character bios — like a puppeteer moving everything into place exactly as he wanted it. The book covers a vast swath of Russian history, from 1930s Leningrad to modern day, and it’s simultaneously tragic, absurd and poignant. The last story is his only overreach, but it doesn’t matter. All you really need to know is that you should read this book."

"Angela Flournoy’s knockout debut is one of those books that should, by rights, be described as the Great American Novel, as it hits all the points of American life: family, real estate, money, ghosts and loss. Set mostly in Detroit during the financial crisis of 2008, the book tells the story of the 13 adult children of Francis and Viola Turner, who must decide what to do with their family house. The characters are fascinating and funny, and anyone who has played a role in the ecosystem of his family life will recognize the joys and challenges that plague the Turners. But perhaps the strongest character is Detroit itself, as it morphs from bustling modern metropolis to a potent symbol of post-industrial decline."

"The history of this rediscovered collection is its own magic: Once upon a time, Franz Xaver von Schönwerth collected fairy tales from Bavaria, where they remained hidden for 150 years until their rediscovery. The tales (translated by Maria Tatar) are fascinating — free of bowdlerized retellings, they have all their original, fiercely oddball appeal. Some are echoes of familiar stories and some are new and occasionally bizarre, but all are alive with personality (lazy flax-harvesting maidens beware). It’s a collection equally at home in an academic library and a kid’s room — if your kids are ready for a little darkness in their fairy tales."

"She’s smart, she’s chipper, she’s never-say-die, she’s got the proportionate strength of a squirrel, and she can take down the planet-eating Galactus with a flick of her tail. She’s Squirrel Girl, plucked from Marvel Comics’ deep bench to star in her own solo series, which finds her (and trusty squirrel sidekick Tippy-Toe) navigating new relationships and sundry secret identity shenanigans on her college campus. Breezy jokes animate this all-ages comic that combines a matter-of-factly feminist modern sensibility with bright, whimsical art that feels pleasantly old-school."

"Chef Craig Priebe has a pizza passion. He’s won pizza competitions. He ran an award-winning pizza restaurant. This isn’t even his first pizza book (his and Dianne Jacobs’ grilled-pizza book came out in 2008). This one is a celebration of a country whose pizza is as wildly diverse as its population — white clam pizza from New Haven, deep dish pizza from Chicago, crab pizza from Baltimore, and so on. They’re inspired by restaurants all over the country, but each recipe is Priebe’s own interpretation — which means they’re consistent, and they work."

"I never counted the months to a book’s publication until I finished listening to Book IV of the Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place series and howled for more. It’s a droll, fantastic tale of children who were raised by wolves and are guided through danger and artistic development by their sensible and endearing teenage governess, Penelope. Their invented phrases (like “optoomuchstic”: hopeful in that way that sets the stage for perilous disappointment) have made it into my family’s everyday conversation. With its spent children “draped over the furniture, limp as empty coats” and ominous encounters with beet nobility, finishing The Unmapped Sea left me counting the months once again. (For ages 8 to 12)"

"Fania Lewando was a vegetarian long before it was cool. Born in Poland in the late 1880s, she published the first vegetarian Yiddish cookbook in 1938. Now, more than 70 years after her death — she died in the early ‘40s while trying to flee the Nazis — Lewando’s 400 recipes have been given new life in the newly translated Vilna Vegetarian Cookbook. There’s plenty here that won’t appeal to 21st century palates (sorry, Stewed Cabbage) and these recipes require some interpretation (working without a thermometer, Lewando advises a “hot oven” or a “not-too-hot oven”). But reading through her spare, no-nonsense instructions made me feel like I was spending an afternoon cooking with my own Yiddish-speaking great-grandmother from Vilna, getting a glimpse at a now vanished world."

"The Visiting Privilege is the rare collection that doesn’t have a single piece, even a single paragraph, that’s less than brilliant, and it proves that Joy Williams is quite possibly America’s best living writer of short stories. She is our poet laureate of loss and mourning, but she’s so much more than that — she seems to have a supernatural ability to show what makes us function as people, at our best and at our worst. And most important, she celebrates our vulnerabilities, the moments that make us so imperfect and broken and essentially human."

"Brian Catling’s mysterious, fictional domain, The Vorrh — like the book of the same name in which it takes place — is a vast, uncharted forest somewhere in Africa. Inspired by the surrealist writer Raymond Roussel as well as Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, The Vorrh is not only a work of alternative history but of alternative literature, a sprawling, omnivorous novel that gobbles up history, geography, mythology and fantasy, then delicately chews it to a rarefied pulp."

"Paul Kingsnorth set out to write a long book about England during and after the Norman invasion of 1066 and to do it in a kind of invented mishmash of ancient words reset in modern syntax, though with odd spellings and very little punctuation. Or capital letters. It’s crazy, but Kingsnorth did not fail in his aim. He has brought to life a drunken, wife-beating, occasionally noble, possibly psychotic and completely bloodthirsty hero, given unto him a guerrilla force of farmers turned soldiers, and let him loose in what is essentially a post-apocalyptic world nearly 1,000 years old."

"Violet is a ballerina poised to live her dreams. Amber is an inmate at a juvenile detention center, facing a life of imprisonment. Orianna slips between their lives, connecting all three in a tragic cycle of mistakes, regret and rage. Part ghost story and part love song to teenage girls, this book illuminates both the beauty and the pain of youthful friendships. It paints a raw and unromantic portrait of the little societies that girls create, whether in the dance studio or the prison yard."

"Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Water Knife imagines a near-future in which the Southwestern U.S. has balkanized over water rights. The rich live in posh high-rise terrariums while the poor suffer in the dust below, and states and corporations are at war (real war — with guns) over water and centuries-old paperwork giving them rights to the flow. For Bacigalupi, it’s all too easy to picture — I mean, his book even predicted Tesla’s bioweapon defense mode. It’s a must-read for science-fiction geeks, eco-freaks and everyone who loves a great page-turner."

"Most of the stories in The Water Museum take place in the American West and Southwest, but they’re all universal. It’s difficult to find comparisons to an author as original as Luis Alberto Urrea, but you could say that he’s kind of a country-punk Lorrie Moore, compassionate but hard-edged, a kind of literary badass who still believes in love, because sometimes, there’s nothing much else to believe in. The Water Museum is a brilliant, powerful collection, and Urrea is a master storyteller with a rock ’n’ roll heart."

"Pamela Zagarenski’s The Whisper is an invitation to stretch your imagination. A girl is lent an enchanted book by her teacher and, as she heads home, the words fly out and are caught by a sly fox who may have a story of his own. Disheartened by the wordless pages, the girl hears a whisper, “You can imagine the stories.” Slowly, she begins to spin her own tales and learns to become a storyteller. Gorgeous paintings with rich colors and exquisite details will have you lingering over each page and creating stories of your own. (For ages 4 to 7)"

"Let’s clear one thing up right away: The noun in the title refers to perps that got away — the “great white whales” of a cop’s career. For Billy Graves, that was one Jeffrey Bannion. But now Bannion is dead, Graves is stonewalled, and a strange colleague named Milton Ramos is threatening his family, even though Graves doesn’t know that yet. It all adds up to a confusing swirl of a procedural, but believe me, you’ll want to get sucked down this dizzying drain, as intricately detailed as Richard Price’s Lush Life. The author wanted to use a pseudonym so he could write a more commercial book. In the end, he wrote a more commercial Price book — which means it’s terrific."

"Occasionally, you run across a book so good it feels like a secret — and spend months recommending it to anyone who will listen. That’s The Witch of Lime Street. David Jaher’s sprawling history follows Scientific American magazine’s search for a genuine medium in the 1920s. It was a perfect storm of editorial egos, scientific rigor and Spiritualist popularity — and a road that would lead to Boston and a woman ready to face the great debunker, Harry Houdini himself. The research is painstaking, but it reads like a thriller, threading in enough uncertainty that we never lose a sense of dangerous magic. Houdini would approve."

"In the haunting opening of The Witches, popular historian Stacy Schiff announces her intention to summon up, rather than solve, the mystery of the witch hunts that racked Salem in 1692. She says: “Salem represents one of the rare moments in our enlightened past when the candles are knocked out and everyone seems to be groping about in the dark, the place where all good stories begin.” Indeed they do. The Witches surveys the ministers and the odd women easily targeted as witches; the intransient judges; and the teenage girls who found their voice in claiming to be bewitched. Schiff makes the dark an inviting place to linger."

"These linked short stories probe the hidden lives of a small Connecticut town. The Wonder Garden’s protagonists may seem like your ordinary upper-class New England suburbanites, but lurking underneath are stories both grotesque and tragic: a man who becomes obsessed with touching a human brain; a woman who has stopped her car at a stop sign and can’t bring herself to start it again; an artist who covers a client’s home in giant insects. A weird and compelling collection."

"A gaggle of querulous ghosts narrates the events in this novel by Aislinn Hunter, who brings a moody grace to the phantoms and to her telling of this quirky tale. Protagonist Jane works as an archivist at an eccentric, musty museum, and on the side she investigates the 1877 disappearance of a girl in the English countryside. The twist: As a teen, Jane’s 5-year-old charge went missing in these same woods. Ghost-story tropes abound, from a spooky abandoned asylum to a haunted country house, and at the center is a brutal, long-buried crime. The novel’s tough truths make The World Before Us a memorable read."

"Most school kids know that Wilbur and Orville Wright were the first to fly a mechanized plane, but the brothers’ story is so much more than that simple fact, as David McCullough lays out in his typical crisp and compelling style. Wilbur and Orville were an unlikely pair, complementing each other at every stage and thriving in their insular world. McCullough also explores their sister Katharine’s instrumental contributions to their success, and explains how she, too, took to the skies. More than a century later, the Wright family trials and successes are as captivating as if they had taken place last year."

"Minnesota, which Charles Baxter calls his “imagination’s home,” is at the center of the 10 interconnected stories in his new collection. Half are named for vices (Lust, Sloth Avarice, Gluttony, Vanity) and half for virtues (Bravery, Loyalty, Chastity, Charity, Forbearance). The trigger for each story is a request: “Charity” begins when Quinn, who has become dependent on painkillers after a stint as an aid worker in Africa left him ill, approaches a drug dealer named Black Bird in a bar and says, “There’s something I need.” These are plainspoken, nuanced, tales with a dramatic kick."

"Randall Munroe — the former NASA roboticist behind the beloved xkcd webcomic — breaks down complex stuff into simple terms … really simple terms. The Large Hadron Collider? That’s a “Big tiny thing hitter.” The Mars rover? That’s a “Red world space car.” And for those of us who don’t love heights, isn’t “fear porch” really the best possible term for a balcony? Munroe relies exclusively on 1,000 of the most commonly used words in the English language to define and explain everything from your large intestines (“big food hallway”) to NASA shuttles ("flying space trucks.”) And with witty, playful diagrams, you’ll be understanding nuclear reactors ("heavy metal power buildings”) in no time."

"There are two different famous David Mitchells — there’s David Mitchell the novelist and David Mitchell the actor/comedian/panel show guest/columnist/writer. This book is written by the latter Mitchell, who is witty, clever, insightful and continually flustered by modern life. He’s a British Robert Benchley, if you will. He questions and pokes at modern platitudes in a fun, mocking way — from a defense of the British habit of apologizing to a cynical analysis of the ways we spend our time and money."

"Colum McCann has few contemporary parallels as a storyteller. The title novella in his new collection is remarkable — fluid yet dense with layers of consciousness and mystery. “Sh’khol,” in which a divorced translator living on the Irish coast makes a “terrible mistake” when she gives her 13-year-old son a wet suit for Christmas, is an indelible tale of love and loss. The two other stories are equally complex and powerful. These new stories reflect an understanding of the swiftly disappearing flow of our lives that is as knowing and unflinching as any by Joyce or Chekhov."

"Three Moments of an Explosion is China Miéville’s first collection of short stories in 10 years. In it, the acclaimed science-fiction/fantasy author imagines the mysterious arrival of icebergs that levitate over London, space-elevator suicides, and meditations on time and probability. These tales explore the dark, horrific beauty hidden just beyond reality — or to quote Miéville himself in the story “The Dowager of Bees”: “A dense forest of might’ves.”"

"Tiny Hardcastle is supporting her husband’s 1966 bid for Congress when a series of unexpected events make her question everything — especially the secret fling she had, just before her wedding, with her husband’s cousin Caspian. Caspian returns from Vietnam a wounded hero, and their attraction flames back to life just as suggestive photos surface, Tiny’s husband becomes furtive, his family turns intimidating and her capricious sister arrives in trouble: lots of “tiny little things” that add up to concern, if not danger. An elegant and stylish story that pays homage to a lost era while exploring timeless themes of love, romance and finding yourself."

"Whether you’re already acquainted with Lumphy, StingRay and Plastic from their chapter books, or are just meeting them now, you’re sure to love Toys Meet Snow. As the three venture out into the snow for the first time, their unique personalities shine through. Each toy’s impressions and observations are full of imagination and charm. Emily Jenkins’ masterful text is deceptively simple, and Paul O. Zelinsky’s warm and wonderful illustrations make this book an enchanting read for all seasons. (For ages 3 to 7)"

"Originally published in 1939, Tropisms is the stunning debut of the late Nathalie Sarraute, long considered one of France’s most important writers. Sarraute, whose work went on to be translated into dozens of languages, once described her work as the “interior movements that precede and prepare our words and actions, at the limits of our consciousness.” This collection of vignettes, made up of short scenes and anecdotes, reads like quiet prose poems that stay with the reader. Translated by Maria Jolas, Tropisms is a masterpiece, short but powerful in every sense."

"Who can resist a Thai cookbook that takes you beyond the familiar favorites at your corner restaurant, while still being more or less doable on a weeknight (especially if you live near a well-stocked Asian grocer)? I know I can’t. Yes, you’ll find pad Thai and yum nua in here. But mah mah instant noodles? With crab and Chinese broccoli? Candied salted chiles? Watermelon and Thai basil fruit shake? Hong Thaimee, chef at Ngam in New York, doesn’t hesitate to go there, either."

"Twin brothers Gabriel Bá and Fabio Moon, who work exceptionally well together (see: the mind-bending limited series “Daytripper”) adapt a novel by Milton Hatoum about twin brothers who despise one another. This graphic novel, set mostly in and around a decaying manse outside a small Brazilian town, moodily maps one family’s secrets, longings and long-harbored grudges over three generations. Bá’s black and white art features a thick line that lends his lush gardens, overstuffed rooms and crowded streets an oppressive sense of heavy, choking dread."

"Ijeoma is a young girl growing up in the difficult years following Nigeria’s 1967 Biafran War. But coming of age in a war-torn country isn’t her only challenge: She’s also struggling to balance her taboo same-sex relationship with her mother’s (and her society’s) expectations. Chinelo Okparanta’s writing is so immersive that even readers who have nothing in common with Ijeoma will feel like they’ve lived her experience. I couldn’t put the book down and even pulled an all-nighter to finish it (then was a zombie at work the next day). Plan your schedule around this binge read!"

"Poor Lucy. The leading man of Patrick DeWitt’s book isn’t much to write home about — or look at, or listen to. Lucien Minor is a liar who’s no good at lying, an underling to a castle servant and, what’s more, a suitor to a taken woman. Still, he makes for a fitting guide — charmingly befuddled and besieged by circumstance — in this twist on the common folk tale. DeWitt takes on familiar tropes just to turn them on their heads, and the results are by turns funny, fascinating and often plain weird — a bit like Lucy himself."

"Anne Marie Slaughter has spent the bulk of her career thinking about matters of war and peace, national security and diplomacy and everything else wrapped up in the world of foreign policy. But in 2012, the former dean of Princeton’s School of International Affairs waded into the cultural debate about work/life balance with an article in The Atlantic called “Why Women Still Can’t Have it All.” In Unfinished Business, Slaughter fleshes out a broader argument about why women and men are not given the support they need to pursue meaningful work and raise families. What makes this book so compelling is the shifting perspective between Slaughter and her husband, Andrew Moravcsik, who for several years has been the “lead parent” in their family. It’s a must-read for any working couple trying to find the time to be good employees, good parents and — oh yeah — good partners to each other."

"If your dream dinner party includes Lyra Belacqua, Alanna of Trebond, Hermione Granger or Katniss Everdeen, you should clear a space at your table for Agnieszka of Dvernik. A brave, discerning 17-year-old, Agnieszka is selected from among the girls in her village to serve the enigmatic sorcerer who protects the region from a terrible power that lies at its border. While the thrill of this novel comes from Agnieszka’s growing awareness of her own magical ability, its true power lies in the complexity of its female characters, who are responsible for the novel’s most villainous acts, as well as the most heroic."

"From Chef Michael Anthony (Gramercy Tavern, Untitled) comes what must be the most giftable vegetable book of the year. It’s a big, glossy, beautifully illustrated volume that goes from Asparagus and Artichokes to the inevitable Zucchini. Some recipes are simple enough for any old night (Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Maple Syrup); others (Chard Arancini) may set you back an hour or two. All of them look good enough to eat right off the page."

"Molly Tanzer’s keen imagination is on display in her new novel, Vermilion, a work of alternative history that finds fresh magic in the mingling of fact and fantasy. In the book’s wild vision of the Wild West circa 1870, ghosts linger to haunt the living. Enter Elouise “Lou” Merriwether, who ushers the dead to their final resting place, along the way becoming one of speculative fiction’s most compelling protagonists in recent memory. Vermilion is a unique, thought-provoking romp that rewrites the past with a vivacious flourish."

"Kevin Henkes is an amazing author — from picture books to young adult novels, his range of skill is without match — so it’s no surprise that his latest picture book, Waiting, is so terrific. In it, a collection of toys sits in a windowsill, each of them waiting for something. There isn’t a child in the picture, so the reader plays that role. Henkes creates a dance of words and pictures — subtle, simple and clever — that rewards the careful observer. Waiting is perfect for night after night after night of reading and rereading. (For ages 4 to 8)"

"“Gwen glared at everywhere,” runs one sentence in Daniel Handler’s latest adult novel. The author who brought baroque, morose vocabulary lessons to kids’ books as Lemony Snicket usually isn’t as wry and acerbic in his adult work. But he makes occasional exceptions, bringing a lightness and a sense of play to this story about an unhappy teenager who wants to be a modern pirate and her unhappy father, who has a more conventional plan for escape. Somewhere between a fable, a family drama, an issue-based YA novel and a dark comedy, We Are Pirates has unpredictability going for it. It glares at everywhere, then laughs at it too."

"When people are called upon to defend certain ideas and beliefs, they often say, “That’s just the way I was raised.” But what about those who were raised the exact same way and, for whatever reason, change? Barry Moser’s memoir is about just that. The acclaimed artist and illustrator describes the very different paths he and his late brother, Thomas, took on the subject of race. Their differences — not just about race but also how to treat one another — led to such a rift that they barely spoke for nearly four decades. Moser’s book is readable in its own right but might prove especially poignant and comforting to people navigating difficult family relationships."

"T. Geronimo Johnson’s timely novel is a tipsy social satire about race. A white, working-class Southerner named D’aron Davenport gets a scholarship to Berkeley — or “Berzerkeley.” Once there, he’s inspired by an alt history course to return to his hometown of Braggsville with some classmates to scrutinize the town’s annual Civil War re-enactment. As social satirist, Johnson is an equal opportunity mocker. The smugness of the elite university classroom is mirrored by the anti-intellectualism of Braggsville. Welcome to Braggsville deploys stream-of-consciousness poetry, fantasy and straight-up realism to explore the ways Americans miscommunicate when we try to talk about race."

"At 16, shy Madeline dodged the London marriage mart by creating a fictional suitor, a captain off fighting Napoleon. She sent him letters for years to maintain the ruse, before claiming he had died. But sometimes odd twists of fate are the answers to silent prayers, the culmination of barely acknowledged dreams. When the war ends, Madeline is a spinster in a remote Scottish castle — and then one Captain Logan shows up, demanding her hand in marriage in exchange for concealing the years of love letters mistakenly routed to him. When a Scot Ties the Knot is lovely, romantic and thought-provoking."

"Where the Bird Sings Best is Alejandro Jodorowsky’s brilliant, mad and unpredictable semi-autobiographical novel. Translated by Alfred MacAdam, this multigenerational chronicle introduces a host of memorable characters, from a dwarf prostitute and a floating ghost-Rabbi to a lion tamer who eats raw meat and teaches his beasts to jump through flaming hoops. Fantastical elements aside, Where the Bird Sings Best is a fiercely original immigration tale that culminates in the author’s birth in Chile in 1929 — a complicated time in that nation’s history. Combine that with poetry, tarot and Jewish mysticism and you have a genius’s surreal vision brought to life."

"An artist with a faltering career encounters the opportunity of a lifetime, immediately before her father’s sudden death. As her grief unspools, so does the narrative — in which her memories of him, and her thoughts about his life and death, can only be filtered through the many paint colors she uses to create her masterpiece. A beautiful meditation on the creation of art and difficult familial love."

"Jennifer Clement uses lyrical vignettes to tell the fraught story of a close friend, Suzanne Mallouk, better known to New York City’s 1980s art world as the last woman Jean-Michel Basquiat loved. The tragic spectacle of Basquiat’s life and art has become so notorious, it’s somewhat difficult to remember he was an actual human being. Clement restores both his humanity — hurt and hurtful, brilliant and blazing — and, just as crucially, pulls Mallouk out of the art scene’s shadows and into the light. To say that this is the most compelling book you’ll ever encounter about Basquiat is just the beginning of the praise Clement deserves."

"Have you ever hung out with Philip Glass, just casually chatting in his living room? I haven’t either, but you certainly feel like it while reading his autobiography. In warm, conversational tones, the famed composer of Einstein on the Beach unspools his remarkable life, from working in his father’s Baltimore record shop to discovering his personal brand of minimalism (“process replaced narrative”) to his enlightened studies with Ravi Shankar. In loving detail, the book also documents the fecund Lower Manhattan arts scene of the 1960s, when dance, visual arts and music commingled to create a vibrancy still potent today."

"Yard sales can be fun — but not when your favorite things are being sold. Callie’s move from a house to a small apartment is told with warmth and compassion. As she watches her family’s belongings being picked over and purchased, Callie’s heartache is palpable. Lauren Castillo’s watercolor and ink illustrations compliment Eve Bunting’s tender first-person telling of a routine event. However, Yard Sale is wholly Callie’s story, and we are heartened by her realization that though their belongings are gone, her family remains together to comfort and love one another. (For ages 3 to 7)"

"New friends can come from far-flung places … or planets. In this charming story, a boy meets a little green alien. Instantly, the two become inseparable, sharing fun and adventures. However, at bedtime, the boy sees his new friend growing sad. Hard as it is, he must somehow help his friend get home. In Your Alien, Tammi Sauer captures the giddy joy of friendship and the heartbreak of saying goodbye. This, coupled with Goro Fujita’s friendly and engaging illustrations, will make you long for an alien friend of your own. (For ages 3 and up)"

"The title of this book might be off-putting — after all, the word “fat” makes people uncomfortable. We prefer euphemisms like “chubby” or “big.” But novelist Mona Awad uses the word deliberately. She wants her readers to understand how a struggle with body image can take over a life. Lizzie, the fat girl of the title, is an insecure, overweight young woman who lets men take advantage of her in humiliating ways. Later we meet her as an older, thin woman, obsessed with staying fit, but big or small, happiness eludes her. Awad is a fine writer with a keen sense of black humor, which makes this often sad story more entertaining than you might expect."

"32 Yolks is as much a peek into the cutthroat restaurant world as it is a culinary tour of chef Eric Ripert’s childhood and first years in the kitchen. He pays tribute to the chef who inspired him as a young boy (he fed him bowls of chocolate mousse), and recalls the first dish he ever made in a Michelin three-star restaurant — a hollandaise sauce with 32 yolks. (Spoiler alert: It didn’t turn out well.)"

"A change of pace from last year’s A Bollywood Affair, Dev’s latest romance is emotional, intricate, and will squeeze your heart with painstaking precision. Cruise ship doctor Nic Joshi is drinking himself into oblivion as as he mourns his wife, Jen, who was killed after discovering a black market in organ transplants. When a passenger named Jess seeks him out, he refuses to believe her story: She received Jen’s heart, and she has a message for him. A Change of Heart is part thriller, part romance and part magical possibility, with a deeply satisfying and several-tissues-required happy ending."

"It begins: “I am a child of books. I come from a world of stories. And upon my Imagination I float.” Avid readers of all ages will identify with this delightful picture book about a little girl who sails away on a sea of words. Texts from classic picture books are incorporated into clever illustrations. Now if only we could get some modern stories in there … perhaps A Child of Books, Part II? (For ages 4 and up)"

"Brian Evenson’s unsettling collection plumbs the depths of the unknown and brings back 17 stories of terror. In A Collapse of Horses, nothing is reliable; love, relationships, friendships, memories and reality are deeply suspect. These stories are subtly violent and existential, simultaneously minimalist and Lovecraftian. If you’re ready for this surreal procession of nightmares, it’s ready for you."

"Count Alexander Rostov is a resourceful man who loves the finer things in life. When he is sentenced by the Bolsheviks to a lifetime of house arrest in a tiny room in the attic of Moscow’s best hotel, he uses his charm and wit to build a new life that is in some ways richer than his old one. While wars both hot and cold rage in the outside world, Count Rostov finds purpose and people to love within the confines of the Metropol. The count, says author Amor Towles, has a will to joy. No wonder, then, that A Gentleman in Moscow is a joyful read."

"In Louise Penny’s 12th Chief Inspector Gamache novel, Gamache has just stepped into his new post as chief superintendent of the police academy. He accepted the job in order to find the source of corruption within the academy — a corruption that has warped idealistic cadets into brutish police officers. Soon enough, though, Gamache confronts a more pressing problem: the murder of a professor who had been antagonistic to Gamache’s appointment. Penny is a beautiful writer and A Great Reckoning is one of her best, but I think that pretty much every time I finish a Gamache mystery."

"Cat is a Kingmaker, with the coveted power to tell when someone is lying — and in doing so, upend the power structure of her world. So she conceals herself as a member of a traveling circus to keep from being used as a pawn in an endless war between kingdoms. But when she is kidnapped by a warlord of a higher class, a breathtaking adventure begins as they both fight against connection, forbidden attachment, and centuries-old plots to kill them both. Infused with mythology and lavish world-building, this is the first book of a trilogy, and you will want more."

"As the Arab Spring raged across the Middle East in 2011, New York Times correspondent Robert Worth was there, documenting the revolutions and the characters who drove them. His finely detailed book introduces us to the ecstatic Egyptian revolutionaries who toppled Hosni Mubarak; a Libyan rebel interrogator weighing whether to take revenge on the Moammar Gadhafi loyalists who killed his brother; and two young Syrian women, as close as sisters, whose bond is shattered by sectarian hatred. The latter half of the book explores the regimes that followed the revolutions, and the rise of the Islamic State. A Rage for Order offers vital lessons to help us understand a region whose conflicts rage on."

"Charlotte Holmes is immeasurably observant, able to tease the truth out of a handful of clues, but unable to accept that as a woman, her options in society are limited and do not include the autonomy she craves. The mystery here — several strange deaths that threaten Charlotte’s family — contains all the hairpin turns one might expect, but it’s the revelations and connections between Charlotte and the women who surround her that form the heart of this clever gender inversion of a classic literary character."

"Why? Why? Why does Ada Twist ask so many questions? In this clever, fun and breezy book, Ada’s boundless curiosity propels her forward in her quest to understand the world and beyond. Though her endless experiments sometimes give way to disastrous results, we are rooting for this curious young scientist. With rhyming text by Andrea Beaty and energetic mixed media art by David Roberts, Ada Twist, Scientist deftly addresses the STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) fields. However, ultimately this is a book about Ada, a girl who yearns to follow her passion and achieve her dream. (For ages 5 to 7)"

"Addlands is a novel with poetry and fistfights; sex and backbreaking work; horse-drawn plows and cellphones; and the occasional Welsh word to help situate you in the stark and stunning countryside. There, it doesn’t much matter what decade (or century) it is, and I loved spending time with this Welsh farm family — some 70 years — stretching back from World War II to modern times."

"Diana Athill is, by her own account, a very old woman. At 98, she lives in a home for the elderly in North London. This small and lovely book is a collection of favorite memories that return to Athill at the end of her life. It is a charming book for the company alone, for the luxury of wandering in someone else’s best memories, but it is also a nimble recasting of the familiar warning: gather ye rosebuds, memento mori, carpe diem, what have you, because we do not live forever."

"Nine stories of nine European men, in European countries not of their birth. Nine uncomfortable stories of men at their smallest, their weakest, their loneliest, obsessing about love (or the lack thereof) and wealth (or the lack or loss thereof). It doesn’t sound like much of a feast, but these tales are unwrapped so gently and so without judgement, they make these lost men utterly human (and even somewhat likable)."

"There aren’t any swords or lasers in Charlie Jane Anders’ All the Birds in the Sky — instead, it mixes science fiction and fantasy in a profound alchemy. The love story of a young, bird-communing witch and a young, time-traveling scientist, Birds sensitively raises some of the philosophical issues the human race faces as it ventures further into the future. The book is as full of quirkiness and playful detail as it is packed with overwhelming depth and poignancy — but more than that, it’s a laser sword straight to the heart."

"All the Single Ladies begins with a milestone statistic: For the first time in the U.S., single adult women now outnumber married adult women. From there, the book takes a celebratory look at women’s hard-fought independence and the realities (both good and bad) of being a woman on your own. Author Rebecca Traister effortlessly bridges the gap between Susan B. Anthony (who predicted an “epoch of single women” back in the 1870s) and Carrie Bradshaw, highlighting the lives and choices of single women past and present. As Traister writes, “The story of single women is the story of the country.” Now put your hands up!"

"Don’t let the sugary title fool you. In this memoir, David Kushner takes us down a dark path as he unravels the senseless crime that has haunted his family: In 1973, Kushner’s 11-year-old brother was murdered after taking a carefree bike ride through the woods near their suburban Florida home. Kushner carefully reconstructs the shocking crime, but, more than that, his memoir is a powerful exploration of loss, survival and the tricks of memory."

"If you like cakes, you’re not alone. For 250 years, Americans have been making whatever cake they could with whatever they could find. Anne Byrn’s impressive, big-hearted, historical tribute to the genre is a must-have for its dizzying diversity. (You surely haven’t heard of Oregon prune cake, Texas sheath cake or Scripture Cake, have you?) You can trace America’s gastronomic evolution and geographic expansion from cornmeal and molasses to Hershey bars and pineapples. Both the cakes and their stories are obscure, unexpected, delightful and worth getting to know, one sweet slice of history at a time."

"This delightfully zany book of short stories is Nora Ephron’s I Feel Bad About My Neck with a Southern drawl and a dark sense of humor. Novelist Helen Ellis took a long hiatus from writing, but her time as a “housewife” (her words) provided plenty of fodder. In this collection, Ellis turns her sharp wit on dinner parties, dishwashers, book clubs and passive-aggressive neighbors. The result is funnier — and far more sinister — than you might expect."

"Philosopher John Kaag hits the sweet spot between intellectual history and personal memoir in this chronicle of how a neglected library of philosophical treasures hidden deep in the New Hampshire woods rescued him from despair. When Harvard philosophy professor William Ernest Hocking died in 1966, he left a library that had become the repository for the personal libraries of many of his famous colleagues — a collection that included first editions of René Descartes, John Locke and Immanuel Kant, as well as countless volumes bearing their original owners’ marginalia. Over the three years Kaag spends excitedly excavating and cataloguing the books, he finds heartening answers to William James’ question, “Is life worth living?” — and a soulmate with whom to share his discoveries."

"Kiersten White’s And I Darken is an evocative imagining of the life of two noble children who are handed over to the Ottoman Empire to ensure that their father, the Prince of Wallachia, will be on his best behavior. What begins as resentful imprisonment soon becomes a source of internal and external conflict for siblings Lada and Radu, as they’re torn between hanging on to their past identities and assimilating into the empire that they ought to despise. This book takes no prisoners, offering up brutal, emotional historical fiction in a seldom explored setting."

"Jacqueline Woodson says Another Brooklyn came to her in a “kind of dreamlike series of vignettes.” And that is just how this slender novel unfolds. It’s the story of a girl named August who moves to Brooklyn from Tennessee after the death of her mother. Peering out the window of the apartment she now shares with her father and brother, August sees the three girls who will become her best friends, guiding her through this new world and into adolescence. Adult August narrates the book, and we know from the start that the friends have betrayed one another. But we only learn how, why and to what effect as August’s memories return to haunt her. Woodson perfectly captures the elusive feel of memory in prose that often reads like poetry."

"What does a famous, world-traveling chef eat when he’s back home? In his first cookbook in more than a decade, Anthony Bourdain — who travels the globe eating food that’s not for the faint of heart — shares go-to crowd-pleasers for family and friends. Here you’ll find sandwiches, salads, biscuits, mac and cheese and other dishes that would please his 9-year-old daughter. But Appetites isn’t all warm and fuzzy. The photos in the book are as disturbing as they are beautiful, and Bourdain offers an abundance of no-nonsense advice, complete with honesty and F-bombs."

"Turns out, the details of Taraji Penda Henson’s climb to fame could have been used as a script for one of her own movies. The Empire star was born in Washington, D.C., raised by a single mom and cheered on by a dad who struggled with alcoholism and his own impulsive behavior. Henson left the love of her life when he hit her, raising their son as a single mom. She earned far less than her white co-stars on movies like The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. More a story of empowerment and persistence than a Hollywood tell-all, this book unfolds like a story told by Cookie Lyons’ talented thespian sister; a down-to-earth, around the way girl explaining to contributor Denene Millner how a sister who graduated from Howard and worked as a secretary for the Pentagon became one of TV’s hottest performers."

"I love stories about family dysfunctions as much as the next person, because who can’t relate, right? There’s plenty of that in Larry Watson’s latest novel, about a man who abandons his own kids, but is called into service decades later as a grandfather. His son and daughter-in-law must drive 500 miles across Montana for an operation — and his job is to look after the grandkids. At first glance, the characters may seem like simple 1950s and ‘60s stereotypes, but their pasts reveal more complex storylines. As someone who grew up in the area, I also got a kick out of Watson’s depiction of Missoula, Mont., which, with its stately, tree-lined neighborhoods, was the envy of so many people who hailed from much harsher, rugged corners of Big Sky Country."

"This book makes casual reference to eating veal broth and the honor killing of moose, as a prerequisite to marriage. OK, so Annie Proulx had me at veal broth, and I stayed for the moose in this epic, sprawling tale. Two indentured woodsmen arrive in “New France” (now Canada) and take divergent paths — one establishes a timber empire, the other marries a Mi’kmaw woman. Barkskins follows the descendants of these men over centuries, chronicling the march of Manifest Destiny, deforestation, progress, destruction, hope and greed. I kept saying, “I’m never going to finish this” 700-page epic, yet, in the end, I couldn’t put it down."

"This is not a book to read if you are a nervous flier. It begins with a plane crash off Martha’s Vineyard (though in a small, private jet). From there, though, you’ll be engrossed even at 35,000 feet as the layers of this mystery are peeled away and each chapter about the final days before the crash is told from a different passenger’s point of view. There’s a media mogul, a starving artist, a young boy; they deal with celebrity, tragedy and absurdity. Author Noah Hawley created the TV show Fargo. Dude knows how to tell a story."

"Kaya Rubio is focused on her research in molecular biology and doesn’t have time for anything else — until her overwhelming and loving family nudges her one time too many about being single. She devises a scientific methodology to find an ideal match in time for a family wedding, including selecting a negative control: Nero, owner of a local cafe, because he is the most unsuitable match she can think of. Of course, plans like that never work out as intended, and seeing Kaya’s brilliant mind try to sift scientific analysis out of emotional complication is the best part of this experiment."

"Imbolo Mbue’s debut novel begins like any story about the American dream; a young, Cameroonian couple move to New York to find a better life for themselves and their son. Here’s where it departs: It’s the fall of 2007 and the U.S. economy is on the verge of collapse. Jende works as a personal chauffeur for a Lehman Brothers executive and the ensuing bankruptcy will strain his family and his marriage. I’m not sure any of these bright and lost and careful characters find the lives they’re looking for in this book, but Mbue shares a version of the American dream that feels captivating and real."

"In a time when racial issues and identity politics are widely discussed, it’s hard to imagine growing up with your biological background hidden from you. But that’s what happened to Sil Lai Abrams, who, until she was 14, was told that her brown skin and curly hair were the result of being born in Hawaii. Abrams’ journey to the truth — that the man she knew as her father was not her biological father — makes for illuminating, thought-provoking reading."

"Fifty years after the birth of mainstream comics’ first black superhero, MacArthur “genius grant” recipient Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a rich take on this formidable character and his world. King T’Challa leads the mythical, technologically advanced African kingdom of Wakanda, a nation that hasn’t been scarred by colonial rule. In a story inspired by a Pulitzer Prize-winning history book, Coates questions whether it is ever possible for a truly good man to be a king. Brian Stelfreeze’s art is nicely balanced between thickly shaded, satiny surfaces and the best comic book smash-and-flash."

"What can one child do to make an impact on her community? A lot. In Book Uncle and Me, 9-year-old Yasmin’s cherished free lending library is about to be shut down. A voracious reader, she must unite her friends, family and fellow Indian neighbors in a political campaign to keep Book Uncle’s library going. Author Uma Krishnaswami tells the story of a girl coming out from behind the pages to speak out and be heard. With delightful Illustrations by Julianna Swaney, this is a celebration of ingenuity and the power of words. (For ages 7 to 10)"

"If Millicent Roper only had to deal with being a bisexual woman living with two prosthetic legs and borderline personality disorder while trying to get her life back on track after her suicide attempt derailed a promising film career, that would be plenty — but also there are fairies. Millie gets recruited to the Arcadia Project, a community of people in Los Angeles tasked with policing the borders between human and fairy worlds, and when a famous fairy noble goes missing, it’s up to Millie and the people who aren’t quite her friends to figure out what’s going on. Shrewd, sharp and full of fiercely graceful writing, this is somewhere between urban fantasy and ballet."

"This memoir isn’t the funny book you’d think a funny man would write. Nor do you read it just for the rags to riches journey, though what a journey — from a South African township to The Daily Show host chair. You read it for the remarkable perspective of someone born between categories: a biracial kid spit out into an apartheid regime in which marriage between whites and blacks was illegal and his existence a crime. When you go back to watching The Daily Show, the jokes sound better."

"Self-written rock star biographies often hit two potholes: They’re not particularly insightful and they’re not particularly well-written. Thankfully, rock ’n’ roll wise man Bruce Springsteen leaps past both obstacles with a bracing story that reads like extra stanzas to epic songs like “Jungleland” or, yes, “Born to Run.” Springsteen dishes on the father who struggled with mental illness and never really understood him, how he sidestepped early efforts to present him as the new Bob Dylan and how a rock superstar hailed by millions as The Boss could endure his own struggles with depression. There might be a bit too much detail about ‘70s-era rock joints in New Jersey for casual fans, but this book sets the record straight on everything from the despair of his failed first marriage to fights over money with members of the E Street Band. And there’s a little bit in here about rock ’n’ roll inspiration, too."

"Award-winning basketball writer Jonathan Abrams takes a deep dive into the lives and careers of a special group of basketball prodigies in his book Boys Among Men. Centered on players who made the leap into the NBA straight from high school between 1995 and 2005, Abrams’ fine-tuned prose and analysis ignite every page. From illuminating anecdotes to never-heard-before interviews with some of the NBA’s most elite athletes, this is a smart and fresh account that fans and casual fans alike will enjoy."

"Ever wonder what would happen if you reconnected with your childhood bully? Writer Alex Abramovich finds out when he gets back in touch with Trevor Latham, his own tormentor, who grew up to become president of Oakland’s East Bay Rats Motorcycle Club. This memoir of an unlikely friendship condenses a lot into its 224 pages: It’s an anthropological look at motorcycle gangs. It’s a well-researched dive into Oakland’s rich history. It’s a thoughtful exploration of the nature of memory — and a hard look at the question of why men fight."

"If you, like many in this post-Serial age, have finally discovered the charms of a good true crime story, then this YA thriller will be a treat. It’s set in 1977 New York during the Son of Sam killing spree, which author Meg Medina (herself a Queens native) also lived through. The book follows 17-year-old Nora Lopez as she watches Carrie for the first time and worries that kissing her co-worker will bring her to the serial killer’s attention. It’s a fictional story, but Medina fills it with so many telling details that you are entirely transported. Nora’s experiences feel real and immediate, and they will keep you up turning pages late into the night."

"Readers may approach a doorstop novel of some 700-plus pages with a mixture of hope and dread, but Steven Price’s By Gaslight proves engrossing enough to warrant its forest-depleting bulk. This historical crime drama stars William Pinkerton, whose father founded the famous Pinkerton detective agency. William is something of a brute with heart; he possesses the essential noir detective traits of world weariness, barely controlled machismo and an aching, underlying sensitivity. Set primarily in Victorian London with side trips to the American Civil War and to the diamond mines of South America, By Gaslight is threaded through with a melancholy brilliance."

"Great historical novels give us a god’s omnipotence. They don’t coddle but burden us with the sure knowledge that we can do nothing to alter the flow of time. And this is the inherent tragedy that lives at the heart of Carry Me, which follows the fortunes of two intermingled families through one of the most turbulent times in modern history — England, Ireland and Germany in the first half of the 20th century. We can read words like “Blitz” and “zeppelin” and “Nazi” echoing in our heads, and we know that there’s nothing we can do but watch and wait for the bad things to come."

"If you read only one science-fiction book this year about a spaceport in the middle of embattled Tel Aviv, it should be this one. If you read only one book about the religion of robots, the evolution of the Internet, magical children and data vampires, Central Station has to be it. The stories will gut you. The language will make you wonder why you even bother speaking English. It is one of the most beautiful books of the year, absolutely the most grab-you-by-the-heart engaging, and so, so smart that Lavie Tidhar can scatter a hundred brilliant ideas like pennies on the ground — like he has so many of them in his pockets that he can just throw them away, leaving them for anyone to pick up."

"In Mexico, local drug-dealing vampire gangs that trace their lineage back to the Aztecs clash with European newcomers — everywhere but Mexico City, where human gangs have declared a vampire-free zone. Living on the margins of this world is Domingo, a 17-year-old garbage collector with a heart of gold, whose vampire comics don’t prepare him for the real thing. When he meets Atl, a vampire woman being hunted by a rival gang, he gets swept up in a whirlwind of blood debts and danger. Fast-paced and full of gorgeous characters, this is urban fantasy with emphasis on the urban: Mexico City is as much a character as the vampires."

"Antonio Garcia Martinez, author of Chaos Monkeys, reads like a despicable human being: a misogynistic Silicon Valley elitist who lives on a sailboat, neglects his kids and embraces the tech culture he claims to reject. But (and this is the tricky part), he also reads like a philosopher and historian, the exact travel guide you’d want to walk you through the inner workings of Facebook. His tell-all memoir is the best writing out there on one of the world’s most powerful companies. And he even manages to make the ins and outs of online advertising fascinating."

"I’ve been reading the Easy Rawlins series for so long, the character is like an old friend now. In this latest installment, Walter Mosley manages once again to make you care about this complicated and richly fleshed out character. He’s on one hand a killer – but only when necessary and always reluctantly – while on the other a loving and protective dad, loyal friend and brokenhearted lover. And if none of that floats your boat, Easy solves mysteries too."

"Ben Katchor’s comic strips, published in various alt-weeklies as Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer, serve as both a serialized love letter to, and a deadpan satire of, a kind of urban experience that has faded from the world. Katchor produces a series of vignettes about tiny, out-of-the-way and vaguely impossible corners of a vanished New York City, and makes sure we feel a subtle magic simmering behind every grimy storefront and tenement fire escape. Originally published in 1991, this deluxe 25th anniversary edition has been reformatted by Katchor, and the result retains the artist’s characteristically elliptical, allusive charm."

"Alexander Weinstein’s assured and astonishing debut fiction collection, which explores how technology is changing humanity in tiny, specific and irrevocable ways, invites comparisons to the Netflix show Black Mirror. But where that series offers cautionary tales steeped in mordant cynicism, Weinstein’s take is warm and achingly, plaintively funny. This is speculative fiction that privileges language and emotion over didactic moral lessons or tedious technical detail, and it’s my favorite book of the year."

"Today, stories about Egypt often conjure up images of Tahrir Square protests and political unrest, but so much of Yasmine El Rashidi’s novel — which documents three summers (1984, 1998 and 2014) in the life of a young Egyptian woman — is about silence. When the book’s unnamed narrator asks, as a child, where her father has gone, no one will say. (He was forced to flee the government.) And later, when he returns, no one tells her why her parents are no longer living together. El Rashidi’s story explores how one can be a participant and an observer of political change, and how so much of our politics are formed by the things we don’t say in public and the questions we are afraid to ask."

"Commonwealth isn’t as soaring or as lush as Ann Patchett’s earlier novels, but wow does it ever suck you in. This is a story of families and marriage and love and the unlikely friendship that develops between two sets of children, united in hatred of their parents. Reading it before bed the other night, I found myself laughing even as tears rolled down my cheeks, then gently closing the cover, turning to my husband and whispering, “This book is so, so good.”"

"Eric Fair is a goody-two-shoes. A Presbyterian church geek from a moribund Pennsylvania steel town, he believed a career in law enforcement would be an opportunity to minister to those who needed it most. So how did he end up torturing Iraqi detainees in Abu Ghraib? This wrenching — and deeply moving — memoir provides a powerful reminder of how brutal circumstances can lead to an unexpected capacity for cruelty. It’s also a chance to confront our collective national shame. Consequence is one of those books that should be required reading for all Americans."

"Korean cookbooks are everywhere right now, but this one’s different. Author Robin Ha is an artist and graphic novelist, and every page features a variety of ingredients having a rollicking, boisterous party on the page. There’s a smiling daikon, a winking squid and even bland tofu that seems to be enjoying itself. Though each recipe relies on more or less the usual suspects — soy, sesame oil, chili paste, scallions, ginger — each has a distinct character, whether it’s japchae, soy spinach and bean sprout salad, pajeon or galbi. Ha’s protagonist (or alter ego) is a smiling young cook in traditional Korean silk formalwear with a ribbon in her hair. She’s a whiz with a cleaver — and she has excellent handwriting."

"Connie Willis’ books are intentionally and enjoyably exasperating, as characters struggle through screwball situations and endless obfuscations in search of the one bit of information they actually need. Crosstalk is no different, as a young woman deals with sudden, unwanted telepathy and the endless complications it brings to her job and her love life. Part romantic comedy, part exploration of why psychic ability is the worst superpower, and part metaphor for an oversharing society that’s perpetually awash in a flood of distracting data from mobile devices, Crosstalk is a comedy about the importance of privacy and the pleasure of unplugging."

"Salvador Dalí, the great surrealist painter, didn’t just create fantastical visions on canvas. He also hosted many dreamlike dinner parties — at one (we aren’t making this up!) the hostess, dressed as a unicorn, bottle-fed a lion cub, and guests dined on frogs served inside satin slippers. In 1973, the artist released a lushly illustrated cookbook of recipes from these Dionysian gatherings. A collector’s item long out of print, it has just been reissued. Warning: Many dishes feature ingredients likely to put off most palates — there’s a whole chapter on snail and frog dishes alone. But for art lovers long entranced by Dalí, this is truly a feast for the eyes."

"There’s a moment in Dark Matter that made my blood run cold. That’s a cliched thing to say about a thriller, granted. But that my horror stemmed from theoretical physics? Less so. The story hinges on the simple facts of Jason Dessen’s life: He’s married. He has a son. He’s a middling college physics professor. And then one day, he’s abducted, knocked unconscious and thrust into a life where he’s still Jason Dessen … but everything else is different. I ripped through this book, unable to put it down. It’s a breathless journey through the laws of the universe and the human heart. It didn’t take much time to read it, but it stayed with me long after I put it down."

"Long before “rigged” elections were a daily (albeit false) refrain, Charles and David Koch, along with their octopuslike political organizations, were wielding multimillion-dollar influence from secret hotel conference rooms and clandestine bank accounts. For good or bad (and in Jane Mayer’s telling, more than bad), the Koch brothers transformed American politics — elevating their libertarian ideology from fringe to mainstream. Dark Money takes you inside those back rooms and narrates — in clear, readable prose — the Koch brothers’ 30-year conservative crusade."

"Set in Atlanta just after World War II, Darktown chronicles the progress of two young black veterans who’ve been chosen to integrate the Atlanta Police Department — over strenuous objections of most of the city. How they manage to do that (with the under-the-table help of a few well-intentioned white colleagues) as the city’s racial tensions continue to rise makes for a riveting read. And the police-community tensions will sound sadly familiar."

"The Three-Body Problem, the first installment of Chinese author Cixin Liu’s Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy, won the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 2015. Death’s End is the series finale; “grand” doesn’t do it justice. A tale of contact with an alien species that radically transforms our understanding of ourselves, our world and the laws of physics themselves, the novel sprawls across a jaw-dropping backdrop that encompasses universes and eons — a meditation on technology, progress, morality, extinction and knowledge that doubles as a cosmos-in-the-balance thriller."

"Originating as a minicomic, Jason Shiga’s Demon has grown to four planned volumes centering on one mystery: Why can’t Jimmy Yee die? In this first book he continually changes his identity and circumstances — frequently attempting suicide — yet remains an emotionally stunted, amoral cipher. Even so, clues turn up that will eventually make all clear — if you’ve been paying attention. Thanks to the overarching conundrum and Shiga’s sparse, cartoony style, the gore and nihilism manage to be simultaneously gloomy and cute."

"Tommy Sanderson, a 13-year-old living with his single mother and sister just outside Boston, doesn’t come home after a sleepover with his buddies. The search for him begins in Borderland, a nearby forest: specifically a place called Split Rock, a cleft boulder with a dead tree sticking out of it that the boys have begun referring to as Devil’s Rock. From that simple premise, Paul Tremblay crafts an intricate, perception-rattling mystery in which nothing is as it seems — the kind of thriller that takes the simple premise of a lost child and twists it into a dizzying emotional vortex."

"A lot of children’s books have a doting older relative hovering around, looking cuddly and offering cookies and hugs. Don’t Call Me Grandma has a fully realized character who upends those stereotypes. The “Grandma” of the title is Great-Grandmother Nell, 96 years old, with wrinkled “chocolaty brown” skin, who wears pearls every day, doesn’t hug and eats fish for breakfast. Nell is prickly and sometimes scary, but to her great-granddaughter, the narrator, she is also fascinating, with her crowded vanity, the glass she’s always sipping out of, and the bedroom that’s fit for a princess. Elizabeth Zunon’s illustrations are genius — mixed media that allows some of Nell’s memories to be sharper than others. There are civil rights-era photographs, a lone ticket to Alvin Ailey, an I Voted sticker. Vaunda Nelson spells out neither Nell’s past, nor the message of the book, allowing readers the best ending: a conversation about what makes us who we are, and the pleasure of loving difficult people. (For ages 4 to 8)"

"Dorie Greenspan can bake anything. We’ve seen her do it in one home-cook-friendly book after another. But here she takes her talents to the little round talisman we all love best: the cookie. For five years, Dorie and her son ran a cookie business, and the upshot is a cookie compendium like no other. It’s chock-full of disks and bars and sandwiches, biscotti and pinwheels and drops, knots and puffs and wafers — each with that attentive Dorie detail that gently but firmly inspires you to up your cookie game without complicating your life."

"Yep, it’s precisely what it looks like: a book about dust. Well, that and the ways this all-but-invisible matter, this ever-accumulating nothing, pervades and reflects our relationship with the world. Dense topics, to be sure, but Michael Marder’s little book of philosophy — just one installment in a multiauthor series called Object Lessons — brings levity and loving care to his topic. It’s brisk, brief and slim enough to fit in your pocket; what better way to embrace all the big ideas these tiny specks offer?"

"In an age when self-promotion and celebrity are glorified to the hilt and “hero” gets overused, Ryan Holiday’s book is a reminder that the biggest impediment to achievement is often ourselves. Holiday retells stories of the famous and not so famous that will both inspire you and stop you in your tracks. This is a book to savor by reading it in increments so the power of the examples sinks in, leaving time for healthy reflection. If the rat race of modern life has you feeling burned out, Ego is the Enemy just might help you view philosophy as anything but a relic of the ancient Greeks."

"The love affair between first lady Eleanor Roosevelt and journalist Lorena “Hick” Hickok — something of an open secret for the better part of a century — has never been treated with as much care or attention as in Susan Quinn’s Eleanor and Hick. Here, Quinn deftly traces the dissimilar but converging paths of these two complex women and gives new life to their intimate, dynamic relationship, against a backdrop of tremendous social upheaval."

"In the earlier volumes of her acclaimed biography of Eleanor Roosevelt, historian Blanche Wiesen Cook described Eleanor’s emotionally deprived childhood and delved into the marital partnership that evolved between Eleanor and Franklin. In this third and final volume, Cook focuses on the war years. As the president’s attention shifted away from his New Deal programs, Eleanor pushed for progressive ideals like racial equality and full employment. She also grew into the role of “First Lady of the World,” working for refugee rescue and traveling to Blitz-ravaged London and bases in Bora Bora and Guadalcanal. Cook has written a superb conclusion to one of the 20th century’s most monumental lives."

"Elephant Complex made me add Sri Lanka to my bucket list, but armchair travelers will enjoy settling in for an evocative visit with John Gimlette as guide. There is so much more to the tear-shaped Indian Ocean island than tea, cricket and the legacy of civil war. Fun facts: Cinnamon became a global commodity thanks to the Portuguese conquest. Sri Lankan tradition says that a punishment far worse than death is reincarnation as a crow. I won’t spoil the elephant stories."

"Lore Tannenbaum has brought an elaborate birth plan to the hospital, several pages long, single-spaced and with lots of bullet points. Franckline, the nurse who will guide her through delivery, knows better: “as if much of anything about a birth can be planned,” she thinks to herself. Pamela Erens’ slim novel centers on the 11 intense hours of one woman’s labor. Along the way, she unwinds the complicated back stories that have brought these two women together. This is childbirth at its grittiest and most intimate."

"Pride and Prejudice has inspired endless adaptations, but rarely has anyone captured Austen’s wry and antic spirit like Curtis Sittenfeld in Eligible. Sittenfeld isolates what makes Jane Austen endure (her social and moral acuity; her interest in what makes a good life), from the historical context (bonnets and balls) that so many adaptations fetishize. Instead, Sittenfeld brilliantly shows how much richer life is for the story’s heroines now, and what forces they are when they get out of the drawing room and into the world."

"If you could go back in time and see any band play, whom would you choose? In Mo Daviau’s Every Anxious Wave, that question faces Karl, a former indie-rock star turned bar owner, and Lena, a Ph.D. candidate in astrophysics, after Karl finds a wormhole that leads to any yesterday of one’s choosing. Soon, though, time travel becomes less of a way to see old bands and more of a way to painfully revisit past relationships, departed relatives and buried traumas — not that it gets in the way of some serious music geekitude. Wise and witty, the book is a sci-fi romp about how our past can both hold us back and lift us up."

"Pretty much all you need to know about this book is the story that inspired it: A small-town police officer discovers a garage door opener in his wife’s car. Convinced his wife is having an affair, he goes all over town aiming that door opener at different garages. Such is the jumping-off point for author Richard Russo’s return to North Bath, N.Y., a place he first wrote about over two decades ago in Nobody’s Fool. It’s the kind of place that would be easy to dismiss as a down-on-its-luck former factory town, so what a joy to have a novelist open up the humanity, wisdom and — of course — comedy to be found there."

"“Enthralling” might seem like a bizarre way to describe the stories of real people teetering on the brink of homelessness in Milwaukee, but this account of how the system is stacked against poor people is powerfully written. It reads like great fiction, but it’s deeply and compassionately reported. (Author Matthew Desmond — a Harvard sociologist and recipient of the MacArthur “genius grant” — has his own memories of his family losing a home to foreclosure.) Books about social issues can sometimes feel like homework, but reading Evicted is a gripping, moving and eye-opening experience."

"You would be forgiven for assuming that E.K. Johnston’s Exit, Pursued By a Bear — about how head cheerleader Hermione Winters pieces her life back together after being drugged and raped at cheer camp — would be a depressing read. But despite its unflinching depiction of the real challenges faced by assault survivors, it’s also warmer, more comforting and simply compelling in a way its plot summary could never capture. While assault survivors, both in fact and in fiction, often find their lives narrowed to this one designation, Johnston refuses to flatten her heroine. Instead, she insists that Hermione’s joy in being thrown into the air during cheer routines, and the strength of her best friendship with co-captain Polly are just as vital to our understanding of her as the facts of her assault. By doing so, Johnston makes Hermione’s story easier to survive, for both Hermione and the reader, without ever making it less true."

"Perhaps it’s not as momentous as Henry Hudson sailing into New York Harbor in 1609, but Jane Jacobs’ 1934 arrival in Greenwich Village (at age 18) also changed the city’s history. Jacobs fought to save Washington Square and the Village itself from Robert Moses’ plan to build an expressway through the heart of Lower Manhattan; and she drew on her life as a downtown mother of three to inform her classic, The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Like Jacobs, author Robert Kanigel is a lively writer, and *Eyes on the Street * is an all too rare biography of the making of a female public intellectual."

"The radiant Faith is long overdue in comics. This superhero who fights crime using powers of flight and telekinesis is formidable, pulchritudinous and — remarkably, unabashedly — fat. The art both caresses and celebrates Faith’s ovoid belly and double chin; the phenomenal subversive power of a fat female body in motion makes her larger than life in a way many other female superheroes seem to struggle to be."

"Sarah Glenn Marsh paints a portrait of a little Manx fishing village in 1913, where people are disappearing and mythical creatures may be to blame. Bridey has hated the sea ever since it took her grandfather away, and all she wants to do is leave the island behind forever. But when she finds a mysterious young man washed up on the beach, she will have to put aside her terror of the sea to protect her loved ones. Fans of folklore-influenced YA will find this to be a satisfying use of familiar material."

"Mike Carey (of the Lucifer and Unwritten graphic novels) writes the kind of novels that are best experienced with no advance information, even of the genre involved. Both his 2014 novel The Girl With All The Gifts and 2016’s Fellside pull tremendous tension from their reveals, as they start in one story mode and transform over time, with careful teases to keep readers guessing. But for the distrustful: This supernatural fantasy reads like a marriage between Stephen King and Charles De Lint, with a touch of Orange Is The New Black and a little modern young adult fiction for extra flavor."

"Flavorwalla (or “vendor of flavors”) is chef Floyd Cardoz’s exciting contribution to the bustling market of “chef cooks at home” books, and it’s simultaneously more user-friendly than the typical chef book and more exciting than the typical home-cooking book. Why shouldn’t you drizzle your roast broccoli in lime and honey? Why wouldn’t you add pomegranate seeds and crushed peanuts to white beans? Fresh and unexpected as a hit of citrus zest where you least expected it, Flavorwalla has much to offer cooks whose sense of adventure is greater than their free time."

"Float is an uncontained delight. This collection of loose chapbooks — poems, lists, essays, speeches — can be read in any order. Cryptic, antic and funny, all contain sparks of something truly original. The subjects are often classical but range from Zeus to the artist Yves Klein to Joan of Arc to her brother’s widow (“she dies / in April 2010 of alcohol and indescribable longing”). Anne Carson’s thoughts feel like anarchic rainfall, a fresh shower, an escape."

"In post-Civil War Nevada, wealthy and powerful rancher Rhine finds Eddy lost and near death in the desert, and nurses her back to health — but though Rhine comes to desire her, he can’t act on it. Eddy is black, and Rhine’s business, wealth, status and security all rest on the fact that he is passing as white. If you like vivid characters inhabiting underexplored but fascinating American history, in stories overflowing with scorchingly unresolved sexual tension, this is definitely a book for you."

"In this moving, beautifully illustrated picture book, Ashley Bryan uses historical documents to evoke the lives of 11 slaves who were sold during the 1828 dissolution of a Southern plantation. Using a combination of free verse and illustration, Bryan elegantly accomplishes a challenging feat: honoring the work of these slaves, imagining the pride they might take in that work and celebrating their rich interior life without ever muting our awareness of the oppressive framework that defined their lives and their existence in America. A stunning book and a wonderful, accessible demonstration of the artistic potential of primary source research. (For ages 6 to 10)"

"The irrepressible Beans Curry is at the heart of this rollicking whopper of a Depression-era story. Always scheming to make a few extra nickels, Beans is not above working for a shady character or two, especially since it beats babysitting. When a stranger shows up in his hometown of Key West, Fla., with a plan to turn it into a tourist destination, Beans finds himself right in the middle of the action. Author Jennifer Holm keeps the laughs coming in this colorful story that captures the small town dynamics of another era. (For ages 8 to 12)"

"The good news: Nothing’s really haunted except by the spirits we imagine for ourselves. The bad news: We’ll make anything haunted. The great news: There’s Ghostland. Colin Dickey gets to the heart of the matter over and over, skirting any tourist-trap sensationalism in favor of historical context that touches on the longing and tragedy underneath ghost stories. It’s a tour of America’s haunted places that takes an insightful look at how ghost stories are made, how ghosts and historical visibility are so tightly intertwined, and why we keep looking for the dead."

"Ghosts is the latest comic from Raina Telgemeier, and darn it if her books don’t just keep getting better. She’s got a real connection with middle-graders who are skirting puberty and having just as much fun with it as you did (amirite?). Ghosts tells the story of Cat and her little sister Maya, who’ve moved to the spooky and beautifully drawn Northern California town of Bahia de la Luna — it’s windswept and wet and the sun rarely shines, but the ocean air is meant to help with Maya’s cystic fibrosis. Maya is exuberant and outgoing despite the illness; Cat is more withdrawn and protective. Cat and Maya come face to face with two scary things: a cute boy, and some ghosts that frequent the town. What follows is a wonderful experience from panel to panel — and the rare book that doesn’t talk down to middle schoolers about death."

"Robin Wasserman’s terrifying thriller is the story of two teenage girls, outcasts in their small western Pennsylvania town in the early 1990s. The girls’ hatred of a popular classmate quickly takes a dark turn that just keeps getting darker. Wasserman’s novel turns the Satanic panic of the Reagan-Bush years on its head, and the result is a novel that’s terrifying, upsetting and hypnotically beautiful. There’s not a false step in it, and you never want it to end, although you know it has to. It’s an inferno of a book — brutally gorgeous — and you know it could explode at any time, but you can’t turn away, even for a second."

"In his masterful debut novel Grief is the Thing with Feathers, Max Porter offers a poetic and beautifully rendered meditation on love, grief and the transformative power of art. Told in compressed yet striking prose, it centers on a husband — a father of two boys — who is trying to process his wife’s sudden, accidental death. Each sentence and page carries the air of a song, drawing in the reader with its deep wisdom and dazzling language."

"Margaret Atwood’s best books delve deep into her characters’ souls, but her funniest work is faster and broader. Her retelling of The Tempest is the latter: a modern farce that casts a small-town theater director as Prospero and the local bureaucrats as his usurpers. Atwood taps into The Tempest’s rage and grief and finds unsettling analogues for Miranda and Ariel that waver between realism and fantasy. But the book’s meta humor is its lifeline. Atwood blurs the lines between the director’s life and his art, turning the book into a simultaneous meditation on mourning and a lively, silly trip down the rabbit hole."

"Not all of us Hamilton nerds will be lucky enough to be in the room where it happens. But poring over the musical’s accompanying book will help soothe your Hamilton obsession while you wait to hear back about today’s ticket lottery. I recommend you put on the cast album, curl up on the couch and begin dissecting every essay, every footnote, every sketch and every historical document. I won’t spoil any of the Easter eggs jam-packed into the production. But let’s grab a drink when you’re finished so we can discuss every detail."

"Jennifer Haigh grew up in Pennsylvania coal country. In this novel, she explores what happens when fracking comes to a fictional version of her hometown. The story is told from multiple perspectives, starting with a cocky salesman set on convincing locals to license their land for natural gas drilling. A prison guard who dreams of farming the land he owns sells his rights. An organic farmer says no. Through the reactions and interactions of Haigh’s large cast of characters, we see how the controversies around fracking play out in corporate America, in the environmental movement, and in one small town where people must live with the consequences of their decisions."

"Set in the fictional Jamaican town of River Bank, this novel follows three women struggling to keep their lives together in the wake of a long drought and a series of personal tragedies. Nicole Dennis-Benn’s writing is so assured, so gorgeous, that it’s hard to believe Here Comes the Sun is a debut novel. There are no wasted words; every sentence is constructed with care and a clear eye. It’s a joy to read, but you can tell that each phrase was hard-fought. Dennis-Benn’s novel is tough, beautiful and necessary. It feels like a miracle."

"Winston Churchill, FDR’s stalwart partner in World War II, burned with ambition and visions of grandeur from his earliest years. Candice Millard tells of his quest for fame and glory that landed him in a reckless mess in the South African Boer War. Churchill ended up hiding in a mine before a daring escape as smuggled cargo. Millard’s elegant turns of phrase, with just the right detail that brings out Churchill’s character, make the book a delightful read. This story places Churchill’s later gambles on the world stage into a pattern of what today we would call “go big or go home.”"

"The names Katherine Johnson and Dorothy Vaughan were never taught in any of my history classes. Hidden Figures introduced me to these “human computers” — two of the many African-American women who helped the U.S. win the “Space Race” in the 1960s. When I finished the book, I was left with a feeling of deep gratitude to author Margot Lee Shetterly for researching and telling these previously untold stories. The book is being adapted into a film — premiering in January — and perhaps these women will finally claim their hard-earned place in American history."

"An ambitious high school junior decides to befriend a former classmate and “cure” him of his agoraphobia as a way to secure the scholarship she needs to the college of her choice; emotionally fraught high jinks ensue. That’s the kind of plot summary that makes you raise both eyebrows, and not necessarily in a good way. But in the hands of John Corey Whaley, it becomes a book that will make you laugh out loud, full of characters that, while highly comic, never lack nuance or feel less than real — a book just heightened enough to crackle with fun, but grounded enough to keep you fully invested in its oddballs."

"J.D. Vance walks you through the struggles of white working-class Americans making their way across a broken economic landscape. Ouch: The journey cuts. As he describes his rise from a chaotic home in Ohio’s Rust Belt to Yale Law School, he considers the economic changes that make people poor – and the personal failings that can keep them that way. He knows all about the alcoholism, drug abuse and bad work habits that hold some back. But he also sees the heartbreak and dislocation that accompany the loss of mining and manufacturing jobs. His people — “hillbillies” — have a story worth hearing."

"His Bloody Project is an ingenious, artful tale of a 19th century triple murder in the Scottish Highlands. Though a novel — and shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize — it masquerades as the tale of a true crime, made up of a collection of historical documents supposedly unearthed by the writer, each new bit shedding further light on what drove a 17-year-old to kill three people — including an infant — in his small crofting community."

"The next time I hear someone say “Oh, please — slavery ended centuries ago; discrimination against African-Americans can’t only be the fault of slavery,” I’m going to recommend this book. Yaa Gyasi’s sweeping epic follows two half-sisters and their descendants; one endures the horrors of the Middle Passage to end up enslaved in America. The other remains in West Africa, under colonial rule. Gyasi’s skilled storytelling allows readers to understand that although slavery has ended, the concentric ripples of its effect continue to wash up on both shores, even today."

"In cartoonist Lisa Hanawalt’s bold, brilliant and bananas collection of comics — and comics essays — she infuses her disparate passions (food, travel, sex, horses) with ebullient humor. Whether she’s shadowing avant-garde chef Wiley Dufresne around his kitchen or chronicling the sexual misadventures of various anthropomorphized animals, Hanawalt’s eye is bracingly idiosyncratic, her wit sharp, her sensibility defiantly absurd."

"Heather Havrilesky, New York magazine’s self-proclaimed “existential advice” columnist, is both the first and last person you’d seek out for guidance. On one hand, she’ll shake you by the shoulders and tell you the truth. On the other, she’s the friend rooting you on, cursing (creatively) all the way. Taking on topics such as “Am I Too Weird?” and “I’m Thirty-Eight and Everything Is Awful,” Havrilesky abandons the prim and proper and instead delivers delightfully offbeat wisdom with a side of straight talk."

"Did you know the Tudors didn’t actually smell that bad? Neither did I, and I’ve read an awful lot of history books. Historian Ruth Goodman spent three months wearing period-correct linen underthings and changing them every day as the people of the era did, and she stayed relatively stench-free. It’s that level of hands-on research that makes How to be a Tudor a delight; from breakfast to brewing to the very occasional bathtime, Goodman is a charming and deeply informed guide."

"This novel about a down-on-his-luck young Englishman in Cambodia reads like a thriller. Lawrence Osborne weaves in the country’s past and present, and he has much to say about East and West, but it’s really money that drives Hunters In The Dark. Small amounts, the dreams of bigger amounts, the lure of vast amounts — this is a tale of greed, trickery and treachery. Deft pacing, luscious descriptions of Cambodia and an impeccable sense of impending doom keep the reader hooked all the way through."

"Patrick Flanery’s novel I Am No One asks whether it is more delusional to think you are being watched, or to think you are not being watched. In it, a mild history professor begins to suspect he is under surveillance. Though Flanery undeniably has a point to make, one about privacy in this “new regime of data collection [that] does not see innocence first but assumes guilt by algorithmic association,” he resists the obvious at every turn. This is not a polemic — instead, emotional and psychological precision are the order of the day."

"This is a book about the millions of microbes that live inside us, and yet — it’s not gross! As you might guess from the Walt Whitman reference in the title, Ed Yong is a romantic — and a tremendously fun science writer. The book took me from laughter to near-theological epiphany, and best of all, it left me with actual facts about bacteria (rather than just vague fears) that I’ve found can come in handy as I go about my day, living in the world."

"I have spent entirely too much time gut-laughing at posts and comments on the blog AwesomelyLuvvie.com. It’s a mix of humorous and often right on the nose commentary about politics, pop culture and fashion, with some popular TV show recaps, social media etiquette tips, and advice. Luvvie Ajayi took her witticisms and had them bound into a wig snatching “Do-Better” manual because, as she writes, “Humans are flawed beings. Some flaws are mere wrinkles, some are cracks and some are the Grand Canyon.” So put your side-eyes on pause and start taking notes so you, too, can do better."

"A boyfriend takes his girlfriend on a long drive to the remote farmhouse where he grew up. It’s dark, it’s snowing and the trip feels as doomed as the relationship: She has agreed to meet his parents, though she is “thinking of ending things.” To say much more might spoil it, but I will add that even a pair of slippers becomes deeply unsettling in author Iain Reid’s world. Yep, slippers. The ending won’t work for everyone, but you’ll still enjoy the chilling ride that leads up to it."

"Ida and Gus are true New Yorkers. They love the pulse of the city. These two best friends — did I mention they are polar bears? — live side by side in the Central Park Zoo. Gus has always had Ida. Always. Then Ida gets sick, and she and Gus realize she won’t have much time left. “Wherever I go,” Ida tells him, “I bet I’ll always smell your fishy breath!” Gus wants to smile, but isn’t sure if it’s OK until he sees that Ida is laughing. This sweet, sad story of friendship, love and memory will help kids learn that life comes along with both joy and pain. (And I dare grown-ups to try to get through it with dry eyes!) (For ages 4 to 8)"

"This stunning novel from author Adam Haslett tells the story of decades in the life of a family living in the shadow of depression and suicide. Told from rotating points of view, Imagine Me Gone is sometimes quite funny and often heartbreaking. Haslett’s characters are fully formed and true to life, and he writes in a beautiful, distinct voice. It’s not just one of the best novels of the year; it might be one of the best novels ever about living, and dying, with mental illness."

"Though most Americans are familiar with Nazi Germany’s horrific eugenics program, it’s less well known that, in 1927, Oliver Wendell Holmes, a polymath and justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, championed forced sterilization as a way to “protect” the U.S. gene pool. In Imbeciles, author Adam Cohen details the landmark high court decision that led to the state mandated sterilization of up to 70,000 Americans. Connecting the dots from Charles Darwin, to faux science, to misguided immigration anxiety, Cohen recounts the compelling tale of Carrie Buck, the plaintiff in the court case, who was sterilized after the state of Virginia deemed her “feebleminded.” The Nazis borrowed from the U.S. eugenics program, Cohen warns, and, to this day, Buck v. Bell has never been officially overturned."

"You don’t have to have lived in Los Angeles to appreciate how author Dana Johnson shadows in the sun-bleached settings of Southern California. The USC English professor works in the spare, efficient — and compassionate — short story traditions of Raymond Carver and Edward P. Jones. From a mother trying to navigate her young daughter’s interactions with LA’s overwhelming homeless population, to a former stripper (and astronomy buff) whose boyfriend is pushing a threesome, Johnson delineates surprising, troublesome days in the lives of everyday Angelenos, mostly African-American."

"Dana Spiotta’s fearless, ambitious new novel explores our ongoing obsession with fame and technological change. Meadow Mori and Carrie Wexler are childhood friends raised on the fringes of Hollywood. Both become filmmakers — Meadow a documentarian and Carrie taking the more commercial route. Also central to the story is Jelly, a lonely, vulnerable woman with an unusual approach to phone sex who agrees to be the subject of one of Meadow’s documentaries — a choice she comes to regret. Throughout this complicated and important book, Spiotta reminds us to wonder what’s “real” and what’s constructed by visible or invisible others."

"Remember Jane Eyre, that Victorian orphan whose sad story begins with a bullying cousin and a cruel headmaster? Now imagine an alternate version in which Jane fights back — like, really, murderously fights back. That’s the premise of Jane Steele, which isn’t so much a retelling of Charlotte Brontë’s classic as a total reimagining of her main character. This Jane is a completely different woman, one who refuses to accept her lot in life or the limitations imposed on the women of her time. The resulting book is a dark, thrilling read, and while there is a romance thrown in, it comes with a contemporary twist."

"If jazz is audible poetry, then how fitting to find a poetry/fiction/nonfiction book about graphic designer Art Kane’s 1958 pitch to Esquire magazine: What if he got all the living jazz legends together to pose for a single photograph? The story of who came (and who didn’t) is an unlikely subject for a children’s picture book. All the more impressive, then, that this Boston Globe-Horn Book Award winner is as visually stunning and fantastically written as it is. Jazz Day shows fabled musicians — like Duke Ellington and Dizzy Gillespie — laughing, sweating, goofing around and, most importantly, alive once more. (For ages 9 to 12)"

"Alan Moore (the groundbreaking, hairy, British genius behind V for Vendetta and Watchmen) spent 10 years pecking away at this Really Big Book — a nearly 1,300-page masterpiece of ambition and focus in which the only character that really matters is the place where it’s set: a half-mile-square patch of working-class Northampton, England, known as the Boroughs. Sure, other characters show up. There are angels and prostitutes, James Joyce and Oliver Cromwell, the plain and the famous. But they are all temporary. The Boroughs is eternal. And Moore chronicles it all in a novel that is insane in the best possible way; which reads in its best moments like a bedtime story for the overeducated and verbose, and in its worst like a wild, boundless experiment in the extremes of modern storytelling."

"Joe Gould, an eccentric Greenwich Village fixture who claimed for decades to be writing a monumental “Oral History of Our Time,” achieved immortality through Joseph Mitchell’s beloved New Yorker profiles, “Professor Sea Gull” and “ Joe Gould’s Secret.” More than half a century after Gould’s death, Jill Lepore, a Harvard history professor and New Yorker writer, questions Mitchell’s fact-finding and addresses trenchant issues about race, mental illness and journalistic versus historical standards in this breezy, compulsively readable inquiry. The result, more than just a footnote to a beloved literary landmark, has bite."

"Kill ‘Em and Leave tells James Brown’s story through quiet scenes and colorful, real-life characters who knew Brown in and outside the frenzy of his 1960s stage shows. It’s part documentary and part meditation on Brown’s legacy: his highly cultivated (and successful) attempts to remain a mystery, his wily fights with the IRS and, oh yeah, that race thing that shaped him into an American original. This is no uplifting showbiz fairytale; it’s too funky, too haunting for that."

"What would happen if One Direction met the Heathers? In Kill the Boy Band, a group of teenage girls accidentally kidnaps Rupert P., the “worst” member of their favorite boy band, the Ruperts. This pitch-black comedy reads like a well-plotted thriller. The whip-smart musings about the relationship between insecure teenagers and their pop star loves melted my Backstreet Boy-loving heart. I wish I could go back in time and give this book to my 13-year-old self."

"For anyone who’s had the honor of being in the presence of a baby, this charming book captures the tiny tyrant nature that quickly becomes apparent. King Baby’s expressions, his entitlement and his condescension to his subjects are amusing to adults and children alike — and both may see behavior that feels just a tiny bit familiar. Most important, King Baby holds up over multiple, multiple readings, the true test of a children’s book. And, of course, it’s primed for a sequel, since who shows up at the end (spoiler alert)? Queen Baby. (For ages 4 to 8)"

"The characters in this sometimes dark, sometimes hilarious short story collection include a young man who lets himself be talked into stealing a tiger and selling it for meth, and a guy who moves into a duplex and discovers, too late, that his new roommate is a sadistic kidnapper. John Jodzio writes about junkies, criminals, dealers and liars, but he treats them all with compassion and humanity. He writes with emotional honesty about the people on the very edge of society, and the result is, well, a knockout."

"Gloria Norris’ memoir Kookooland describes the violent projects of Manchester, N.H., with its race tracks and drive-ins, con men, rat hunts at the dump, and the river that “sliced through Manchester like a wet, oily knife.” Violence is omnipresent in her own family and those around her. As in a tyranny, in an abusive family you either find small ways to dissent or you rebel and perish, or you decide to survive at all costs. Norris exactly captures the chilly calculus of abuse: What it would cost her to disagree out loud? But what it would cost her to stay silent?"

"Part memoir and part meditation on the natural world, this book is probably my favorite of the year — quite a statement from this fiction-obsessed reader. The writing is as lovely as the world around us, a world that author and geobiologist Hope Jahren is trying to get us to really see. You will be moved by the “lives” of the plants and trees she describes, as well as by Jahren’s own difficult journey as a woman in science."

"These days it’s hard to toss a broomstick without hitting a book about teen witches, but in Labyrinth Lost, Zoraida Córdova gives us a twist on an old story by populating her mythos with elements inspired by Latin American culture and folklore. Alex was born a bruja, connected to the spirits by a bond that goes back generations. When she tries to rid herself of magic, she accidentally banishes her entire family to the spirit world. In order to save them, she must come to terms with the power she has always feared — and brave creatures she thought were nothing more than myth."

"Take this as perhaps the most soothing manuscript of the past year. Daniel Nadler — Janus-headed tech firm CEO — debuts a collection made up of poems that feel less like lyrics than incantations for a trance-like state. Throughout these ultra-short 100 (much of the poetry is fewer than six lines long), Nadler’s ambient noodling is rooted in an arch sense of being-in-the-world, of floating ahistorically, free of the allusions and symbolisms made and exchanged over time. The result is a dream-inducing exercise in imagism that Ezra Pound would be impressed by."

"Noted naturalist writer Robert Macfarlane goes home again in Landmarks, an autumnal rumination on language, place and life. It’s probably strange to say a book is written gently, but it suits; the language carries with it the weight of the years Macfarlane has been seeking himself in the land, without losing the little thrill of immediacy at seeing a bird in flight. It’s a meandering and philosophical memoir — less about him than about his most beloved geographies, and the writers who gave him the map to discover and rediscover them — and it’s a walk you’ll want to go on."

"Parents and older siblings alike will identify immediately with this folktale-esque story about the trials of a grandmother who just wants a little time to herself to knit. The interruptions, however, rapidly become loopier and loopier. Whether it’s overeager children, peckish mountain goats or curious moon men, the old woman’s rapidly disintegrating patience is matched only by author Vera Brosgol’s hilarious art. This book reads aloud beautifully to large groups, and should have them rolling in the aisles. Funny is hard; Brosgol makes it look easy. (For ages 4 to 6)"

"Such a fun romp! A boy with big glasses is trying his best to find a quiet spot to read, but no luck! Creatures of all sorts keep interrupting to tell him why his book is so great. As you race to the end trying to avoid spoilers, the book in his hands becomes the book in your hands. I can’t wait to see what’s next from first-time author Minh Lê! (For ages 4 to 7)"

"When a pair of introverted outsiders meet, their lives are about to change forever. For Lily, being herself is a battle she fears she is losing. For Dunkin, the new kid, he’s barely staying afloat. Middle school is hard enough, but when you are transgender or dealing with a bipolar disorder, it can be torture. Though some scenes seem to wrap up too neatly, friendship, understanding and love are challenged in this finely nuanced novel. Donna Gephart’s Lily and Dunkin introduces us to two kids who just want to be themselves — and when they find each other, they may just get that chance. (For ages 10 and up)"

"Fans of historical romance know that if there’s one thing fictional England has in spades, it’s dukes. But they might not be as accustomed to encountering valets. You might see one briefly, making certain a coat of claret velvet hangs just so on his master’s shoulders, but as the hero, complete with romantic aspirations and dreams of his own, he’s almost unheard of. That is what makes Rose Lerner’s Listen to the Moon (and all the other books in her wonderfully grounded Lively St. Lemeston series) so special: John Toogood, valet extraordinaire, and upper housemaid Sukey Grimes are not the lovers you’re used to seeing. They’re expert at cleaning silk and unaccustomed to wearing it. But their love story is just as toe-curlingly delightful as that of any duke and duchess."

"This essay collection from fiction and science writer Rivka Galchen is not your mother’s motherhood lit. Brief, gemlike reflections on adjusting to life under the rule of a baby daughter (called “the puma”) are interwoven with literary and historical references. It’s a book that will ring both familiar and strange."

"For those of us ready to leave the “damsel in distress” trope in the rearview mirror, this visually stunning twist on the classic fairy tale is a breath of fresh air. Instead of waiting to be rescued, author Bethan Woollvin’s fearless heroine looks danger right in the eye and takes matters (and an ax) into her own hands. (For ages 4 to 8)"

"Like all good writers, Teddy Wayne has an uncanny ability to teleport to another location and inhabit the people who live there. In the case of Loner, his dark and compulsively readable novel, the protagonist, David Federman –– one of those kids in high school who is known by almost no one –– unravels over the course of the narrative, and Wayne skillfully shows us every disturbing and obsessive moment. This is a close-grained look at a stalker, set against a Harvard backdrop, and the combination of true creepiness dropped into an undergraduate social setting is very effective: It’s a tightly written, tensely memorable short novel."

"“It matters what you call a thing.” So begins Look, the debut collection of poetry from Solmaz Sharif, with all the grace and ferocity of an unpinned grenade. Built upon the language of the Department of Defense’s Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, Sharif’s Look is an open invitation to marvel at the audacity and capacity of euphemism in modern politics. As she detonates term after DoD-approved term throughout tender and personal poetics, Sharif takes back wartime doublespeak by pumping it full of her own blood and memory."

"Julia Greenfield is 26 years old, and she’s trying to lose her virginity. (Got yer attention, eh?) I know this sounds like the plot of a teen comedy, but bear with me, because Losing It is one of the cleverer books about sex I’ve ever read. This is partly because Emma Rathbone resists, after the initial setup, making anything about her characters cliche — Julia is a delightful and sharply drawn young woman, and her observations about the world of sex and dating are both insightful and hilarious. Julia — like most of us in our ‘20s — makes some good decisions, and some bad ones, and in the end finds her most central relationship won’t have anything to do with sex at all."

"This carefully detailed portrait of Louisa Adams, wife of sixth U.S. President John Quincy Adams, depicts a woman of strength, ambition and tenacity. Born in London in 1775, she traveled the world, worked tirelessly to get her husband elected and served as a behind-the-scenes advisor. Through it all, Louisa wrote; she left behind letters, plays and memoirs, documenting her trips around the world and giving an insider’s view of a Congress in its infancy. Author Louisa Thomas weaves these writings into a thrilling account of an extraordinary life."

"You might think you know Joe Buck — the sportscaster has been calling World Series and NFL games for Fox for years. But if you haven’t read Lucky Bastard, you don’t. It’s the story of his relationship with his father, Jack Buck, the radio voice of the St. Louis Cardinals. In poignant and revealing chapters, Joe describes how his dad’s legacy has dogged him all his life. That’s reason enough to pick up the book, but it’s also laugh-out-loud funny and full of self-deprecating humor. (Did you hear the one about the hair plugs that nearly ended his career?)"

"For dedicated readers of young adult fiction, the extraordinary quality of Australian YA has long been an acknowledged fact. With the help of remarkable books like this year’s Lucy and Linh by Alice Pung, I hope to spread this gospel to readers at large. Pung’s novel follows the struggles of Lucy Lam, a scholarship student trying to reckon with her Viet-Chinese heritage at a ritzy Australian private school. It feels like what Zadie Smith might produce if she set out to retell Mean Girls: It’s funny, sharp and addictively paced, but without ever sacrificing nuance, or limiting its capacity to provoke a profound emotional response. This is one I’m going to be pushing on friends for years to come."

"Musician and author Alina Simone set out to write a book about Madonna but abandoned the project when she realized her real interest lay with the Material Girl’s hometown and army of fans. Madonnaland is a wonderful collection of essays on subjects ranging from one man’s quest to get Bay City to recognize its famous daughter, and other bands that hail from the Michigan city, like Question Mark and the Mysterians. Simone is a deeply funny writer, but also a perceptive, compassionate one."

"The third and final installment of Congressman John Lewis’ retelling of the civil rights movement is genius. Even if you already know the story well, March: Book Three is well worth the reminder of the African-American struggle to register to vote. Nate Powell’s masterful brushwork swirls and carries you through the years of struggle, loss and pain all the way from 1963 Birmingham, Ala., to 2009 Washington, D.C. Once you’ve read it, you will want to pass it on."

"When chefs cook at home, they leave everything but their skills at the restaurant — and sometimes their skills leave even their “home” recipes dauntingly out of reach. Not so with Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto’s new book. If you can find mirin, miso pastes, scallions and sesame seeds, you can cook this food (katsu don, yakisoba, nabeyaki udon, gyoza, the works). And once you have, you’ll see that a lot of the dishes you thought were strictly restaurant foods can also be home-cooked meals, even on a weeknight."

"If you’ve binge-watched Happy Valley, The Fall or Prime Suspect, I’ve got a book for you: Former journalist Susie Steiner’s Missing, Presumed shows a diverse crew of Brits coming to terms with both a murder and their own imperfect lives. Unhappy at midlife, Detective Sergeant Manon Bradshaw of the Cambridgeshire Major Incident Team faces down a complicated case involving an upper-class family and a lower-class young man in a novel that’s audaciously full of real women’s voices. You might come to Missing, Presumed for the police procedural; you’ll stay for the layered, authentic characters."

"The subject matter of Modern Lovers — love, friendship, the SATs and New York real estate — may sound lightweight, but this book is as clever as it is charming. Three middle-aged friends and former bandmates learn that a movie is being made about a fourth bandmate, who achieved solo fame, but died tragically at 27. The news launches the characters into various midlife crises and tailspins. The result is a comedy of family and errors — just think: Jane Austen in contemporary Brooklyn."

"At first glance, Molly on the Range looks like just another young person’s blog-to-book adventure, albeit one attractively shot in a Midwestern farmhouse, irresistibly illustrated (by Lisel Jane Ashlock) and starring a fresh-faced Jewish-Chinese Juilliard-trained percussionist. But it’s the food that’s breaking boundaries here: There are Brussels sprouts rosti, scallion pancakes with maple syrup slaw and a dark chocolate marzipan scone loaf so good you won’t even remember to be embarrassed till you’ve polished off the crumbs of your third serving."

"This epic fantasy graphic novel tells the story of Maika, a teenage heroine who struggles with a hungry monster living inside her, set in a magical world torn apart by war. The book isn’t an easy read, especially if you don’t like gore, but it’s a worthwhile one. With the help of Sana Takeda’s lushly detailed art, Marjorie Liu has created a story full of gods and monsters that’s ultimately about the violence of dehumanization, the brutality of racism and what it means to be human."

"Deadpan humor doesn’t get much deader than Tom Gauld’s spare and slyly funny graphic novel about the last police officer on a soon-to-be-abandoned lunar colony. Though Gauld’s characters are little more than stick figures, he imbues them with so much feeling, you find yourself leaning into the page, as if to catch hints of whatever’s hiding behind their blank expressions. The book’s retro-future designs (everyone, including the dog, sports a bubble space helmet) are shot through with a very modern species of loneliness and melancholy. Beautiful and haunting."

"Michael Chabon’s latest novel, a playful twist on family memoirs, purports to be the amazing adventures of the author’s maternal grandfather, as confided to him when the normally reticent, often anger-fueled electrical engineer lay dying on a “palliative cloud” of painkillers. The entertaining, beautifully written narrative encompasses the hunt for Nazi rocket scientist Wernher von Braun during the last days of World War II, marriage to a beguiling but psychologically damaged French Holocaust survivor, and a stint in prison for attempted murder. Despite a few wayward blasts, Moonglow is a propulsive, ultimately moving love story about shooting for the moon but learning to accept misfires."

"Graham Swift’s spare, incantatory tale zeroes in on a turning point in the life of a young woman, a foundling and a servant who against all odds becomes a famous author. With no mother to visit on the 1924 Mothering Sunday holiday (when servants were given time off to visit their mothers), Jane Fairchild bikes over for a final tryst with the neighbor’s ne’er-do-well son before his upcoming marriage. Their relationship, although consensual, is grossly imbalanced. The novel, a sort of slow striptease, gradually bares the contours of Jane’s life before and after that fateful day. More than just a story about crossing “impossible barriers” like class and education at a time of seismic change in English society, it is a lovesong to “untethered” possibility and to finding a voice."

"Every author makes decisions while writing; every reader makes choices while interpreting. Usually you can ignore the rejected possibilities on either side. Not so with Multiple Choice. This haunting book-in-test-form demands that you carefully consider how things could be different. Cut this sentence, swap this word, ponder this explanation. Does that sound like a bloodless bit of formal experimentation? It’s not: This is a book about love, loss, guilt, empathy, inequality and life under Chile’s dictatorship. It’s a slim volume, but calls for lingering. It’s beautiful, fascinating, brilliant, brutal, all of the above."

"Before I’d read a page of My Marathon I assumed it would be your fairly typical “how I became a champ” autobiography by a sports legend. I was dead wrong. In this compelling, engaging work, gold medalist Frank Shorter writes with brutal honesty about how the sport helped him evade a monstrously abusive father who terrorized him and his siblings. You don’t have to be a marathoner to appreciate all that Shorter overcame to become an Olympic champion and “father of the modern running boom” in America."

"A woman named Lucy stares out the window of a hospital room, recovering from an infection. She turns and sees her mother, from whom she has been estranged for many years. For most of a week, Lucy relaxes into the comfort and closeness of a mother’s love. But this is a complex relationship with dark corners — Lucy gossips amiably with her mother about people they used to know, but they never talk about the poverty and abuse that marked her childhood. Nor do they discuss the life Lucy leads now, her small successes as a writer, her husband and children. There are mysteries here that Elizabeth Strout doesn’t fully try to uncover, which is one of the reasons I loved this book."

"Native is a collection of the satirical columns that Sayed Kashua wrote for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz over the course of several years. They’re funny — kinda. A laugh-so-they-can’t-see-what-you’re-getting-away-with kind of funny, except when they’re seriously funny or surreally funny or that kind of funny that comes from laughing at someone who suffers with a certain amount of sad-sack elan. I don’t know if there’s a word for that. Like schadenfreude without the guilt. The columns are autobiographical — they track Kashua, his neighbors in Jerusalem, his family and his career to form a kind of novel/memoir about a newspaper writer telling stories about being a newspaper writer and about being a Palestinian in Israel during the Arab Spring and the Israel-Gaza conflict of 2014."

"There’s a matter-of-fact surety to Jo Walton’s books that makes the most implausible ideas seem as prosaic and sensible as warm socks. In her Thessaly trilogy, wrapping with the marvelous Necessity, the goddess Athena has stolen dreamers from throughout time to found an ideal city per the dictates of Plato’s Republic. The philosophical debates — starring a good-humored Socrates — are thought-provoking, but Walton never loses sight of her characters in all the heady thoughts about consent, education, responsibility and equality. These books move fleetly, with irresistible humor and action, and some fascinating perspective on the lives of gods."

"Before it even came off the presses, Night Sky with Exit Wounds had a mythos about it that hummed in the air. Ocean Vuong had been marked as a precocious talent whose age belied the wisdom with which he wrote about his queerness and his experience as a refugee. With a sigh of relief, here we are: Vuong’s proper debut is every bit as graceful and muscular as we’d hoped. Thickening the thin line between fear and intimacy with the fortitude that only an exile would be able to provide, Night Sky with Exit Wounds is an exercise in trauma, history and motion — a dark dance done beautifully."

"If you need a blood and whiskey soaked waterslide out of your life for approximately seven hours (or however long it takes you to read 224 pages), this is your book. Lee Clay Johnson tells the tale of Leon, a bass player with a broken arm, who is asked by the woman he loves to murder a dangerous man living on the top of a mountain. Will he do it? Not really the question of this book. Johnson writes like lightning, and this wild, careening ride through mountain roads, dirt-covered couches, cold vans and burning bars jumps perspectives and makes you laugh when you least expect it. If you want to see literary talent applied in refreshingly new ways, come along; there’s blood ahead — and betrayal, exploitation, arson, unthinkable violence and all the other byproducts of people reaching, straining, for a better life."

"Indelible, searing images haunt Noonday, Pat Barker’s ambitious historical novel. Depicting the lives of a group of young men and women struggling to survive in Blitz-era London, the book completes the trilogy Barker began with Life Class and Toby’s Room. Here we have a marriage and a love affair under a painful shadow, as the 500-pounders pummel London from above. It’s no mean feat to match the horror of an experience with horrific language and not venture into fright-show territory. Barker walks this line with sensory-thick prose; its sweep makes us truly appreciate life and death in a decimated landscape."

"I approached Ian McEwan’s fetal Hamlet with the healthy skepticism of one who has sat through many dumb Shakespeare adaptations. But wit and self-awareness will go far in making improbable interpretations work. In Nutshell, we see a bookish mind at play. And it turns out that a fetal Hamlet — bound, listening while his mother and his uncle plot the death of his poet father, watching the inevitable event grow nearer, an extravagant and erring sprit confined in doubts and impotence — is actually just about right."

"ODY-C is a stunning interplanetary adaptation of The Odyssey, both graphic and novel, which makes Homer new. In the world of ODY-C, most of the men are dead, and the gods and heroes are powerful, muscled warrior women with flowing hair and no mercy. Instead of cunning Odysseus, creators Matt Fraction and Christian Ward give us the “witchjack and wanderer” Odyssia. Reading ancient literature can occasionally feel like a lesson in the disposability of women. But change is the essence of Homeric poetry, and with ODY-C, two male comic book creators have made a Greek hero worthy of women."

"Voluminous Olio, a “black vessel of spiritspeak,” choruses with history in an enormously beautiful, half-imagined collection of songs yet unsung. As with all historical fiction, Tyehimba Jess has created a hybrid work, riffing here with the voices of musicians and vaudevillians of the early 20th century. Throughout, there is a strong posture of reverence for a time when black song was necessarily colored by the blues. It’s both gorgeous and stupefying — a marvel to read someone whose blood beats loudly enough in rhythm with the past to resuscitate the dead."

"When I first read Originals, I couldn’t help but take notes. What I jotted down was essentially a to-do list for how I could be more creative and how I could imagine and communicate new ideas. Some of my favorite takeaways: Take more risks! Instead of brainstorming, try “brainwriting,” in which you come up with ideas on your own and then convene with friends, co-workers or classmates to share and evaluate. Procrastination can lead to originality (this one was my favorite!), and, if you need more time to be creative, take it, because extensions can be a good thing. (Maybe my editor should read this book …) In addition to being a guide for adults, the book is filled with interesting guidance for teachers and parents on how to cultivate originality and creativity in kids."

"In Depression-era North Carolina, an unhappy wife struggles to get out from under her husband’s shadow — and in doing so, triggers a series of devastating events. This beautifully written and carefully researched novel examines what happens when the women who “belong” to men get a taste of freedom, and it explores the complex way nascent feminism and accusations of witchcraft were historically entwined with each other."

"In Belgian writer/artist Brecht Evens’ previous works The Wrong Place and The Making Of, he employed colorful, chaotic ink washes to lampoon urban life and the art world, respectively. Panther’s story, about a small girl’s imaginary playmate, is far more intimate — and disturbing — than those works, but Evens once again uses watercolor tableaux bursting with bold detail to tell it. At first, his imagery may seem jarring, even confusing, but it steadily coalesces as the true subject of the book reveals itself. An assured and accomplished work that — fair warning — goes to a very dark place."

"Paper Girls Volume 1 collects the first five issues of writer Brian K. Vaughan and artist Cliff Chiang’s ongoing series about a group of teenage girls who encounter deep, mind-bending weirdness and danger while going about their morning paper routes. Think Stranger Things if the main characters were tough, complicated young women, and the titular things they faced were even stranger — and darker, and trippier. Warning: Ends on a cliff-hanger — and you’ll be hooked."