Book Reviews

In Olivia Hinebaugh's new novel, a girl gets fed up with her school's abstinence-only classes and sets herself up as a sex ed expert, handing out condoms and advice with help from her mom, a nurse.

Roshani Chokshi's new novel — set in an alternate Belle Époque Paris — features an unlikely team of thieves out to steal a magical artifact with connections to their colonized homelands.

You may not think the world needs another retelling of Jane Austen's classic, but Soniah Kamal's Unmarriageable has an undercurrent of social and political commentary that makes it a worthwhile read.

Marc Fernandez' noir has fascinating elements — a crusading journalist, a trans detective, and the tragic real-life snatching of thousands of babies in Franco-era Spain — but ultimately falls flat.

Josh Rosenblatt's personal meditation on fighting and selfhood is replete with engaging literary and historical excursions — giving the idea of fighting a dignity it might be harder to grant without.

Kristin Roupenian went viral with her New Yorker short story "Cat Person." And that story is in her new collection, but she goes much further, with genre switches, shock endings, even a fairy tale.

Niviaq Korneliussen's new novel follows five people in Greenland's capital Nuuk; it's a heartbreaking yet hopeful look at young, queer life in one of the most isolated places in the world.

Sarah McColl unstintingly puts her heart on the page as she reflects on caring for her dying mother, with whom she is unimaginably close, as her marriage fails.

C.S. Pacat's comic about rivalries and relationships in the overheated world of elite high school fencers stars a brash outsider up against a sleek yet surly prodigy at the top of his game.