Book Reviews

Chuck Wendig's brisk new thriller deals in cutting-edge tech, but it's traditional at heart, pitting a rag-tag band of hackers against a big, sinister cyber-entity and the threat of global disaster.

Adam Johnson's new story collection spans the globe from former East Germany to post-Katrina Louisiana. Reviewer Michael Schaub says the book is uneven but enlightening, and brilliant at its best.

Ruth Ware's In A Dark, Dark Wood brings together a group of 20-something women in an isolated rural house for a bachelorette party — a perfect setting for buried secrets and terrible deeds.

Stephanie Clifford's debut novel, about the desperate social strivings of a young woman in Manhattan, has its roots in the tragic, old-money fascinations of Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth.

This week, we're setting the NPR Books Time Machine for the Napoleonic Wars, and Lauren Willig's swashbuckling Pink Carnation series, about florally themed spies battling it out across Europe.

Readers everywhere are rediscovering the work of Brazil's Clarice Lispector. Critic Juan Vidal calls Lispector a singular artist, whose newly collected stories linger in the mind like poetry.

Our Summer of Love rolls on with a roundup of romance manga. Japanese comic books can be a daunting field to enter — but we've picked three of the sweetest for your summer reading pleasure.

Helen Phillips' surreal, dark, funny new novel follows a young woman named Josephine, who gets a job at a mysterious agency. Critic Michael Schaub says the book works as both love story and thriller.

Explorer and activist Bell is best remembered today for helping create the modern state of Iraq. A smartly edited new collection of her writings presents a fascinating (if not always smooth) portrait.

Tanwi Nandini Islam's debut novel is an understated queer coming-of-age tale, set in a vividly-portrayed Brooklyn brownstone whose residents all ache for some kind of home they've never been to.