The puzzle of a girl's death propels Alina Grabowski's debut novel but, really, it's less about the mystery and more about how our actions impact each other, especially when we think we lack agency.
In her debut novel taking place in the Victorian era, Kuchenga Shenjé explores the expectations that arise when society demands that every group be neatly categorized.
A heist with a social conscience, a father using magic for questionable work, an urban legend turned sleepover dare: These new releases explore protagonists embracing the magic within themselves.
In a heartrending follow-up to his beloved 2009 novel, Brooklyn, Colm Tóibín handles uncertainties and moral conundrums with exquisite delicacy, zigzagging through time to a devastating climax.
Poet Iman Mersal's book is a memoir of her search for knowledge about the writer Enayat al-Zayyat; it's a slow, idiosyncratic journey through a layered, changing Cairo — and through her own mind.
Many philosophical ideas get an airing in Rachel Khong's latest novel, including the existence of free will and the ethics of altering genomes to select for "favorable" inheritable traits.
April always brings some of the years' biggest poetry collections. So as it wraps up, we wanted to bring you two favorites — retrospective collections from Marie Howe and Jean Valentine.
The Letters of Emily Dickinson collects 1,304 letters, starting with one she wrote at age 11. Her singular voice comes into its own in the letters of the 1860s, which often blur into poems.
Novelist Amy Tan's The Backyard Bird Chronicles centers on an array of birds that visit her yard, as Trish O'Kane's Birding to Change the World recalls lessons from birds that galvanized her teaching.
Myah Ariel's debut is like a fizzy, angsty mash-up of Bolu Babalola and Kennedy Ryan as the challenges of doing meaningful work in Hollywood threaten two young lovers' romantic reunion.
These new books will take you from murder in present-day Texas to cryptography in Cold War Berlin to an online community that might hold the solution to a missing-person case.
A very sinister thriller with a dash of science-fiction and full of inscrutabilities, Sarah Langan's novel is as entreating and creepy as it is timely and humane.
NPR's Books We Love is a roundup of favorite books of the year, sorted and tagged to help you find exactly what you're looking for. From the meet cutes to the happy endings and through all the ups and downs in between, we're recommending great books for people who love love and romance.
Ursula Villarreal-Moura's debut novel movingly portrays its protagonist coming to terms with an imbalanced, difficult, and sometimes harmful friendship that was also a key part of her life for years.
In her new novel, Leigh Bardugo drags readers into a world of servitude, magic, power struggles, and intrigue — one where there isn't a single character that doesn't have a secret agenda.
