Books

Naomi Novik's new reimagining of "Rumpelstiltskin" digs deep into the anti-Semitism of the original story and drags out a warm, solid story about the nature of debt, friendship and hospitality.

Megan Abbott's new novel follows two women with a troubled past who meet again, working in the lab of a powerful scientist. It's a slow-burning story whose final explosion is a true surprise.

An anthropologist takes a deep dive into the history of gathering, raising and eating insects, and why in America and Europe, they're unlikely to become a mainstream food option anytime soon.

The severity of the enormous reduction in bee numbers over the past decade is at the heart of a new book by conservation biologist Thor Hanson, whose appreciation for the pollinators shines through.

Abbott's new thriller Give Me Your Hand is set partly in a scientific lab studying a severe form of PMS — she says she's fascinated by "this sort of idea that the female body is monstrous."

The science doesn't quite add up in Meredith Goldstein's debut novel about a young scientist who's continuing her late mother's work on pheromones — in an attempt to win back her ex-boyfriend.

The son of Pakistani immigrants in the U.K., Mahtab Hussain was often taunted: "Go home." One day he did just that to see what his life might have been like if his parents had not left.

When Andrei Kaplan returns to Moscow to care for his grandmother, he hopes to write an article based on her Soviet-era stories. But things don't go according to plan in this new novel by Keith Gessen.