Books

Robert Asprin's rollicking Myth Adventures books get their laughs from whimsy, lightheartedness, buddy-movie banter, and, um, comic myth-understandings. They're a welcome antidote to grimmer series.

Author Alison Gervais suffered permanent hearing loss as a child; her new book follows a deaf girl who's tossed into a hearing high school when her family moves just before her senior year.

Olga Tokarczuk's novel, first published in Polish in 2009, follows an eccentric recluse in a village on the Czech-Polish border who's convinced she knows why dead bodies keep turning up around her.

His new book How To Be Antiracist is a manual to follow; the author writes that "being an antiracist requires persistent self-awareness, constant self-criticism, and regular self-examination."

Téa Obreht's new novel is set against a familiar old West backdrop, but it tells a fresh story of two people, both haunted in their own ways — a tough frontier woman and an immigrant camel driver.

African Australian author Eugen Bacon's debut is a rich, multidimensional tale of a preacher's daughter whose life on Earth is upended by two interstellar visitors — and that's just the beginning.

By celebrating those who applied the substance as a drug, Walter A. Brown aims to raise awareness — and to demolish what remains of the myth that scientific progress is driven by rigorous dispassion.

The poet laureate's collection tells a tale of a fierce and ongoing fight for sovereignty, integrity, and basic humanity. It's a plea that Americans take responsibility for what's done in our names.

Music and identity dominates a wide-ranging conversation with writers Elizabeth Acevedo, Amanda Alcantara and Danyeli Rodriguez del Orbe.