This slim (122-page) novel builds from a real-life tragedy to a deep, disturbing, fascinating exploration of morality, responsibility, chance, circumstances of birth, and judgment and empathy. I was intrigued by the unsympathetic narrator as well as the thought-provoking, unflinching, pointed questions directed at the reader. Vincent Delecroix takes a grueling set of real-life events and builds a short, powerful, thought-provoking novel that plunges the reader into its plausi

Lerner's slim novel offers three distinct sections. In the first, a pivotal, wandering interview fails to be recorded; then the "reconstructed" aspect of that interview becomes clear; and ultimately, issues of memory, parenthood, technology, art, faulty recollections, and forgiveness shape the story. The unnamed narrator of Ben Lerner's short (144-page) novel has traveled to interview his 90-year-old mentor Thomas (who is also his best friend Max's father) to write what will

This classic memoir is told through letters between Hanff, living a passionate reader and writer's life in New York City, and a group of booksellers across the ocean who are struggling in postwar Great Britain. The structure allows for poignancy and wonderfully frank self-reflection. In interviews about her wonderful book The Correspondent , Virginia Evans mentioned another epistolary book, the 1970 classic memoir 84, Charing Cross Road , and I hadn't ever read it so I decide

Seth Haddon's slim science fiction debut offers action and a risky space quest, revenge, and love, but it's also a poignant, lovely story about being seen for your true self, being vulnerable, and thinking beyond traditional standards. Wylla's ship has seen better days, and she's desperate for a break. When she catches wind of a valuable, mysterious piece of technology on another planet, she banks on her wiliness and speed to beat other treasure hunters to it. Wylla's own mas

Harpman's slim novel poses a mysterious situation without promising concrete explanations. Our main protagonist knows little about her...

The playful tone and clever main protagonist in Olivia Waite's science-fiction novella make for an appealing mystery and lay the...

A former artist-in-residence at a hospice, MacNaughton distills the process of witnessing a loved one's end of life into a few elements...

Keegan offers a gorgeously wrought Irish story of childhood, hope, love, and loss that is spare, lovely, heartbreaking, and that brought...

Harding bases his slim historical fiction novel This Other Eden on a real-life, racially integrated island off the coast of Maine,...