Book Reviews

Miranda July's new novel The First Bad Man defies neat summaries; reviewer Annalisa Quinn calls July "a master of the intimate weirdnesses of human thought," who treats dusty mental corners with care.

Fantasy master Michael Moorcock makes himself a character in his new novel The Whispering Swarm, but reviewer Tasha Robinson says the story doesn't fully satisfy either as biography or fantasy.

Paula Hawkins' gripping new thriller begins with bitter, dissolute Rachel, who sees what she believes to be a perfect couple, every morning on the train to work — and then one day, the wife is gone.

Reviewer Heller McAlpin says Rachel Cusk, known for her lacerating memoirs, begins to bring her fiction and nonfiction closer together in Outline, an "impressive deepening" of her work.

Reviewer Jason Sheehan calls Ben Metcalf's Against the Country meandering, challenging and "almost the definition" of a screed against the idea that virtue is found in rural places. Also, he loved it.

Jason Reynolds' new young adult novel, The Boy in the Black Suit, begins on familiar ground. But this tale of a boy dealing with his mother's death is tragic, funny, hopeful and almost too realistic.

Thomas Pierce's debut story collection, Hall of Small Mammals, focuses on finding the surreal within the mundane. Reviewer Michael Schaub calls Pierce "an endlessly incisive and engaging writer."

Tim Johnston's suspenseful novel follows a family that begins to come apart after their teenage daughter is abducted during a mountain vacation. Critic Alan Cheuse says his heart is still pounding.