In his debut thriller, Brendan Slocumb employs polemic about racism to great effect as he reminds us that the high-toned world of classical music suffers from, and because of, racism.
Phyllis Fischer, a 40-year-old wife and mother, is drawn into a liberating relationship with a much younger man. She soon realizes that perhaps she wasn't so content as she thought.
In each of these stories — Full Flight, Required Reading for the Disenfranchised Freshman, Ophelia After All — a girl stands at a junction in her life, on the brink of deciding who she wants to be.
There are notable parallels to The Brothers Karamazov in Lan Samantha Chang's new novel about three brothers and the contentious relationship between them and their domineering father.
Kim Fu's book contains 12 stories that peel away layers of normalcy to reveal weird, creepy things; though very different from each other, they share elements, giving the collection a sense of unity.
Tessa Hadley's sharp new novel centers on a middle-aged wife and mother who falls for a much younger musician. Free Love is a domestic novel that's as eclectic and alive as the times it captures.
Bustle editor Rachel Krantz's memoir is a sincere and curious reckoning with the cultural messaging we all receive about gendered expectations and power dynamics in romantic and sexual relationships.
One character is an aimless young man works at a euthanasia theme park for terminally ill kids, placing them on the roller coaster that will kill them before the plague does. It is a book about death.
June Hur's history-based novel binds fiction to fact in a gripping young adult mystery. A nurse in 18th century Korea's royal court tries to track down the killer of four women.
In Dana Schwartz's novel, it's 1817 and Lady Hazel, set to marry a cousin, just wants to study medicine. She meets a boy who helps her — and the journey is an adventure from there.
Novelist John Darnielle — also singer-songwriter with the Mountain Goats — has a hero who wants to honor the victims he's writing about but doesn't much like them.
Thrity Umrigar's novel is about India's humanitarian crisis — with its depictions of misogyny and scenes of public shaming, mistreatment and torture — but it's also about a transformative journey.
Ali's memoir is intelligent and incisive in its arguments against "whiteness" but focuses, too, on hope and heart — calling for a more compassionate world through community and solidarity.
By exploring the spectrum of commitment in this book, and in her debut novel Chemistry, Weike Wang has shown us myriad ways to build a sense of home, myriad ways to feel okay in our skin.