Book Reviews

Albert Woodfox's timely account of his wrongful conviction and time in solitary confinement shows that some spirits are unbreakable; it should be required reading in an age of Black Lives Matter.

Author Mitchell S. Jackson trains his formidable linguistic skills on his turbulent youth growing up in a poor black community in Portland, Ore., one of the whitest cities in the country.

William Boyle's new novel follows mob widow Rena, her granddaughter and an ex-porn-star neighbor, on the run from a crazed mafia enforcer in — what else? — a 1962 Chevy Impala.

Patrick Radden Keefe's new book begins with the 1972 disappearance of a 38-year-old widowed mother in Belfast, then spins into an epic account of Northern Ireland's bloody sectarian conflict.

Don Winslow's sprawling, operatic epic about the War on Drugs has some flaws, but it does the same thing Shakespeare's histories did: It simplifies current events into messy, bloody, gripping theater.

Lisa Kleypas mashes up two of her romance sagas — the Regency-era Wallflowers and the Victorian Ravenels — in a delightful story about a sheltered widow and her roguish suitor.

In his new book, primate behavior researcher Frans de Waal writes that "emotions are everywhere in the animal kingdom, from fish to birds to insects and even in brainy mollusks such as the octopus."

Irvine Welsh catches up with Renton, Begbie, Sick Boy and Spud — now middle aged and gone their separate ways — for what he says is the last installment in the Trainspotting saga.

Kate Quinn's new thriller puts women's experiences front and center in the story of a former Soviet "Night Witch" pilot chasing down an escaped Nazi known as The Huntress in the years after the war.

Tehlor Kay Mejia's debut novel We Set the Dark on Fire is set at a posh girls' school in a dystopian world where the students are being trained for lives as political consorts to powerful men.