Books

The characters in Lauren Holmes' debut story collection are more than words on a page, says reviewer Michael Schaub. They're fully, exasperatingly real, portrayed with charm but without pretension.

Mary Kubica's new thriller follows a woman who takes in a runaway and her baby daughter. Reviewer Bethanne Patrick says it's a perfect setup — but the twists you expect aren't the ones that arrive.

It's no secret that women are getting more prominent in the world of comics. But some women are tired of waiting for mainstream attention: They're turning to crowdfunding to get their projects done.

Thirteen novels are in the hunt for the Man Booker Prize, the U.K.'s biggest literary award. The Booker is open to Americans for only the second year, and this year's list pits rookies against titans.

Cartoonist Ed Piskor has just put out the new book in his award-winning Hip Hop Family Tree series. It's an exhaustive, good-natured look at the birth of hip-hop that avoids the pitfall of voyeurism.

The author of The Paris Wife is back with another novelized memoir, this time of pioneering aviator (and all-around adventurer) Beryl Markham, the first woman to cross the Atlantic Ocean east to west.

Austin Grossman's new novel is half Lovecraftian horror, half thoughtful character study of a President Nixon who's in charge of an alternate America built not on democracy, but on dark magic.