Thumbnail artwork by Catrin Welz-Stein, Sophie Backall, Christian Schloe, Jin Xingye
THE HEAVEN AND EARTH GROCERY STORE by James McBride is an exuberant, sharply observed journey through the richly detailed lives of the residents of Chicken Hill of Pottstown, Pennsylvania in the 20’s and 30’s. The plot is loosely structured around a mystery in a well...
THE MARRIAGE PORTRAIT by Maggie O’Farrell is a richly drawn novel that reimagines the short, tragic life of Lucrezia di Cosimo de’Medici. By bringing Lucrezia’s fictionalized story to life in the pages of a book, O’Farrell not only tells a captivating tale, but she...
THE ANNIVERSARY, by Stephanie Bishop, is a mesmerizing, challenging, subversive book that keeps the reader off balance until the very last page. The digressive passages go on too long, but the cumulative effect is powerful. Lucie is a successful novelist, married to...
ANIL'S GHOST, by Michael Ondaatje, is an ambitious, haunting mosaic of a novel. This is Ondaatje at his best, the story told through the alternating voices of enigmatic and deeply seen characters who reveal themselves in gorgeous, startling prose as the novel unfolds....
BEAUTIFUL WORLD, WHERE ARE YOU, by Sally Rooney, entertains, perplexes, and made me think. Rooney has a fabulous ear for dialogue, and her precise details and a courageous vulnerability beneath the awkwardness drew me in as her characters navigate friendship and love....
IF I HAD YOUR FACE is a fascinating exploration of contemporary South Korea told from the alternating points-of-view of four friends, Kyuri, Miho, Ara and Sujin. As they make their way in the hyper-competitive world of Seoul, they face daunting obstacles, including...
THE BASS ROCK by Evie Wyld is a bewitching, textured novel that lingers after the last haunting page has turned. Told in alternating points-of-view, Viviane recounts the present-day arc of the story as she travels from London to clear out the family home on the Firth...
ON EARTH WE’RE BRIEFLY GORGEOUS, by Ocean Vuong, is an incandescent, devastating novel/prose poem. Written as a letter from Little Dog to his mother, a letter she cannot read because she’s illiterate, the story explores language, family, identity, and what it means to...
SILVER SPARROW, by Tayari Jones, is a complex, superbly written novel with no easy answers. Jones has created flawed, believable characters who struggle with difficult moral issues of family and loyalty even as the consequences of their choices unravel with painful...
How to Set Yourself on Fire, by Julia Dixon Evans, is a quirky story in the vein of Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation, only sweeter. Sheila, 35, is a mess. She can’t hold down a job, she barely sleeps, and when she does it’s often on the stoop of her...
The goshawk is staring at me in mortal terror, and I can feel the silences between both our heartbeats coincide...She breathes hot hawk breath in my face. It smells of pepper and musk and burned stone. In her extraordinary and riveting memoir, H is for Hawk, Helen...
Lila is the third in Marilynne Robinson’s trilogy of novels that takes place in the small Midwestern town of Gilead, and both Gilead (2004) and Home (2008) explore the lives and friendship of two Iowa preachers. In this latest novel, Lila, the wife of the preacher,...
