Books

Jenni Fagan's latest follows a transgender girl and her mother in a near-future world that's slowly freezing to death. Fagan makes potent but subtle links between climate change and personal change.

Blake Crouch's new science fiction novel tells the story of Jason Dessen, a father and physics professor who suddenly finds himself in a parallel universe — in which he's unmarried and famous.

Gay Talese conflates the journalist and the voyeur in his new book about a motel owner who spied on his guests. And he makes the readers voyeurs as well: We watch him watching the unwary motel guests.

Fans of science fiction have long wrestled with the question of just how much science should be in their fiction. Advocates of different approaches met at San Diego's Comic-Con.

Alaska's a state that's "not too precious about itself," Eggers says. In Heroes of the Frontier, he follows an out-of-work dentist as she moves her small family to an unfamiliar home.

Bookseller John Evans recommends three vacation reads: The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sport of Kings by C. E. Morgan and Under the Big Black Sun by John Doe and Tom DeSavia.

Author Marjorie Liu is nominated for two Eisners, the most prestigious awards in comics. She writes young adult fantasy books that cover topics that include war, women and steam punk gadgetry.

State Department veteran Mary Thompson-Jones sifts through a few choice WikiLeaks cables and parses them for a lay audience in To The Secretary, a fascinating primer on a complex and difficult field.

Lindsay Hatton makes a bold move in her new novel: She lifts a character from John Steinbeck's 1945 classic Cannery Row -- and then the author himself — for a tale of thwarted romance by the sea.