Book Reviews

"'After the burial we can begin to heal,'" Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie recounts her mother saying. Perhaps in the reading of this book, so too will the rest of us who lost so much over this past year.

The Spanish-American war serves as the backdrop for Chanel Cleeton's new novel, which follows a real-life rebel named Evangelina Cisneros, who attracted a lot of attention from American newspapers.

Rachel Cusk follows her acclaimed Outline trilogy with this story about a woman whose lifelong obsession with a truculent painter is tested when he comes to stay at a cottage on her property.

Olivia Laing weaves the history of people and ideas in with her own life, bringing readers on a fleet, gracious tour of bodily distress and joy that takes in Malcolm X, the Marquis de Sade and others.

Eric Nguyen's debut novel plays off a Vietnamese word that means both country and water, examining all the ways those two things affect a family of Vietnamese refugees who resettle in New Orleans.

Lilly Dancyger's memories, coupled with her father's art and conversations with his friends, create a map she uses to navigate her past, her childhood and growing up, and her father's life and legacy.

Warren fans looking for score-settling won't find it here — her book is not a juicy tell-all. Instead, it reads like a that of a future campaigner or a public servant who wants to continue fighting.

Martha Wells' new Murderbot novella is a classic locked-room mystery — only the locked room is a docked shuttle at a normally peaceful space station ill-equipped to deal with murder and mayhem.

Early Morning Riser, by Katherine Heiny and Secrets of Happiness, by Joan Silber, ruminate on love and family — particularly the family that's thrust upon you when you fall in love.

Jhumpa Lahiri's new novel — which she wrote in Italian, then translated back to English herself — centers on a middle-aged Italian woman trying to figure out her place in the world.