Book Reviews

Critic Maureen Corrigan recommends two books to expand your horizons: One is a cultural history of the great American road trip; the other an early 20th-century classic of Midwestern rural life.

Pearl's under-the-radar recommendations include a children's fantasy, a murder mystery set in 1919 Kolkata and an entire book dedicated to the events of 1947.

Authors Dorthe Nors and Sayaka Murata use bracing good humor to subvert readers' expectations about single women in their new novels, Mirror, Shoulder, Signal and Convenience Store Woman.

Critic Maureen Corrigan says Tommy Orange's novel, which centers on a cast of native and mixed-race characters whose lives intersect at a powwow, features "a literary authority rare in a debut."