Book Reviews

"Nature Boy" Ric Flair is one of the greatest pro wrestlers of all time. His daughter Charlotte followed him into the ring, and now, they've written a joint memoir that's moving and brutally honest.

In her new essay collection, Minna Zalman Proctor digs deep into her relationship with her late mother. Her descriptions of her mother are beautiful, though the fragmented writing can feel evasive.

Nathan Englander's latest tells the fraught history of Israel and Palestine with quotidian details that make the story feel not historically accurate, but historically intimate.

A new book worries that growing up with smartphones and the internet has been harmful to a generation of kids. Critic Annalisa Quinn says intergenerational carping is a long, and unhelpful tradition.

Daniel José Older's new novel continues the adventures of magician Sierra Santiago and her tight-knit band of friends and family as they battle not just unfriendly sorcery but everyday discrimination.

Lauren Markham's careful, empathetic new book follows twin brothers from El Salvador, who flee gang violence to make a new life for themselves in a country that's increasingly harsh to immigrants.

Drew and Jonathan Scott trade chapters, attempting to capture their on-camera rivalry. NPR's Linda Holmes says, "They're dunking on each other, but with Nerf balls. And a plastic hoop. At eye level."

With The Pictures, British author Guy Bolton kicks off a mystery series set in classic-era Hollywood. He's clearly done his research on 1930s America, but sometimes all that detail obscures the story.

Nicole Krauss' new novel, Forest Dark, tells two stories concurrently: a man at the end of a financially successful life searching for meaning, and a younger woman writer searching for meaning as her marriage collapses. The only thing that connects them is a building on the other side of the world.

Kij Johnson works fresh magic with an old story in The River Bank, a sequel to The Wind in the Willows that introduces two new characters, Miss Mole and Miss Rabbit, but keeps the original's charm.