Book Reviews

Alexander Weinstein's debut story collection is a harrowing vision of the near future as a place of both technological wonder and dysfunction — and a nuanced look at where humanity might be headed.

Atwood may be best known as a novelist, but she's also a creator of comics — her new comic, Angel Catbird, is the gleefully subversive tale of a DNA-altered, superpowered cat-bird-man.

Peter Ho Davies' new novel tells four separate stories, from a 19th-century tycoon and his Chinese valet to the murder of a Chinese American man in 1982. It's a revelatory, deftly structured read.

Gleefully obscene, violent and shockingly funny, Razor Girl follows an ex-cop turned restaurant inspector on the tail of a car-crash con artist, a kidnapped TV agent and a loud-mouthed reality star.

Nisi Shawl's new alternative history novel imagines a group of socialists and missionaries who found a new nation — Everfair — as a safe haven for those fleeing Belgian atrocities in the Congo.

Jonathan Safran Foer returns with a door-stopper of a meditation on family, identity and Judaism. It's the story of a crumbling marriage set against the backdrop of a crisis in Israel.

Amor Towles' new novel stars a Russian aristocrat, sentenced by the Soviets to permanent house arrest in a luxury hotel. It's a frothy romp that tends to overlook the reality of life under Stalin.

Historical events both real (the 1968 Democratic Convention, Occupy Wall Street) and imagined come to life in this novel. Reviewer Jason Sheehan says it will make you laugh and break your heart.