Book Reviews

The tensions that arise between two peoples, especially the ones felt by Chinese Americans, form a throughline in Gish Jen's brilliant new collection.

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.