Book Reviews

The Koch brothers' wide-ranging influence is no secret. But rather than focusing on how they spend their money, Christopher Leonard presents a richly reported tale of how they got it.

Timothy C. Winegard has written a well-researched work of narrative nonfiction that offers a history of the world through the role that mosquitoes — and mosquito-borne illnesses — have played in it.

Yoko Ogawa's novel takes place on a small island were objects — flowers, photographs, boats — are disappearing, and the mysterious "memory police" work to make sure they're eternally forgotten.

The success of Sigrid Nunez' The Friend sparked the reissue of this early work, also about a beloved pet — but Mitz the marmoset was real, and she belonged to Leonard and Virginia Woolf in the 1930s.

Rajia Hassib's novel wrestles with heavy themes — survivor's guilt, religion, family and revolution — but it's never didactic. It's an honest, engrossing portrait of two very different sisters.

Ruth Ware's new novel is a clever update on Henry James' classic of paranoia, but instead of ghosts, Ware's characters are haunted by unknowable, unpredictable smart homes and surveillance technology.

Kira Jane Buxton's novel imagines a viral apocalypse from the perspective of the animals left behind. Specifically, a crow named S.T., who sets out to save the world with his canine companion.

Reports of mass shootings in Dayton and El Paso have dominated the news in recent days; Robert Jackson Bennett's novella Vigilance draws a direct line from today's America to a bullet-riddled future.

Karen Abbott's page-turner teases with its central mystery, reaching its climactic final trial with a satisfying bang — though more on the politics of the time would have been a welcome layer.

As the U.S. becomes more brown and black — resulting in a xenophobic backlash and nostalgia by some for white European immigrants — the ideas in Sarah Valentine's memoir become even more necessary.