Literary fiction

Review of Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward

Annis is a young Southern woman enslaved, sold, and abused in the years before the Civil War. In Let Us Descend , she leans on the...

Review of Burn by Peter Heller

I love Peter Heller's books, and Burn offers a wonderfully complicated friendship, meaningful connections to nature, momentous secrets,...

Review of James by Percival Everett

Percival Everett's James is a fascinating retelling of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the point of view of enslaved Black character...

Review of Bear by Julia Phillips

The author of Disappearing Earth offers a story of bleak prospects, poverty and illness, a sister bond with fault lines ready to crack...

Review of You Are Here by David Nicholls

David Nicholls's characters, some of whom are strangers to each other, meander through the English countryside on a days-long jaunt--and...

Review of In Memoriam by Alice Winn

Alice Winn's account of the unrelenting slog of World War I and the beautiful young men set against each other in the trenches serves as...

Review of Wellness by Nathan Hill

Flawed main characters Jack and Elizabeth try to find their way back to an emotional connection in this literary fiction work. Wellness...

Review of The Other Valley by Scott Alexander Howard

The Other Valley is literary fiction with a captivating setup: three adjacent valleys, each of which is a different timeline of the same...

Review of The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak

Elif Shafak's The Island of Missing Trees explores past Turkish-Greek conflicts in a small island community while illustrating the...

Review of Shark Heart: A Love Story by Emily Habeck

Emily Habeck's debut novel offers an unusual premise in which one member of a newlywed couple begins transforming into a great white...

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