Book Reviews

In this new collaborative YA novel, three authors — Scott Westerfeld, Margo Lanagan and Deborah Biancotti — each take charge of two characters, teenagers with offbeat and troublesome superpowers.

Claire Vaye Watkins' first novel is a frighteningly believable near-future dystopia; drought has ruined the West, and two holdouts among the wreckage find their lives changed by a strange child.

Ilana C. Myer creates a lush, shadowed fantasy world in Last Song Before Night, with a sprawling cast and an epic quest to restore the long-lost magic once summoned by music.

Musicians Kristin Hersh and Vic Chesnutt were friends and tour buddies for years before his death from an overdose in 2009; Don't Suck is Hersh's haunting memoir of her lost friend and his pain.

Seth Dickinson's fantasy debut lays out pages of loans, taxes and commodity trading for his imagined empires — which turns out to be a riveting backdrop for a brutal tale of loyalty and rebellion.

In ancient Greece, philosophers denied that women were capable of friendship. Marilyn Yalom and Theresa Donovan Brown trace the way those perceptions changed over the years in this engaging history.

If you didn't grow up in the punk subcultures of the 1980s and '90s, you might have a little trouble with David Baillie's new novel — but stick with it; the book reveals a vicious grace and honesty.

In Greg Hrbek's new novel, a family is faced with an unsettling possibility: Their memories don't match up, and their collective past includes a sister and daughter not all of them remember.

This autobiographical novel about a South Korean girl who moves from the countryside to the city in search of work and education blurs the line between fiction and reality.