In Naomi Hirahara's mystery novel, a Japanese American family interned during the war returns home to a changed city. They're still settling in when their daughter is caught up in a murder.
Set in a neighborhood where Blacks and immigrant Jews have lived next to each other for decades, The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store is one of the best novels critic Maureen Corrigan has read this year.
Rickly's first book is a solid and promising literary debut. He's a natural, albeit a germinal one. He is best known as a singer and songwriter of the rock band Thursday.
Lindsay Lynch's luscious debut, Do Tell, is set in Hollywood's Golden Age. Dwyer Murphy's The Stolen Coast is a moody tale of a lawyer who makes his money ferrying people on the run into new lives.
Set in Mexico City in 1993, Silvia Moreno-Garcia's latest novel is steeped in cinematic history and lore, as well an eerie well of myth that recalls H.P. Lovecraft, albeit in a more progressive form.
The playful second book in the author's Harlem Trilogy shows Ray Carney scheming how to get his teenage daughter into the concert of her dreams. Alarming capers ensue.
A few weeks ago we asked NPR staffers to share their favorite summer reads. Old, new, fiction, nonfiction — as long as it was great for hot and hazy hammock reading, it was fair game.
Nothing goes right for American Wren Wheeler during a trip to London. And that's before the overthinking 18-year-old meets a prince — and they both learn a comet is hurtling toward Earth.
These Paul Tremblay stories — a wildly entertaining mix of literary horror, psychological suspense and science fiction — will be more than enough to make readers into immediate fans.
Andrew Lipstein achieves the difficult feat of realistically animating a hedge fund manager who talks and moves as real hedge fund managers might, but who is compelling and not overly alienating.
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Anne Hull grew up in the rural interior of Central Florida during the 1960s and '70s. Her memoir evokes a land of perfect citrus, and the cruel costs of its harvest.
An excellent work of people-first journalism, Donovan X. Ramsey's book offers a vivid and frank history and highlights how communities tend to save themselves even as they're being targeted.
Mai Nguyen's debut novel centers on the family of Tuyet and Xuan Tran, Vietnamese refugees who settle in Toronto. It simmers with questions about work, class and generational divides.
Most novels set in bookshops are heartwarming paeans to bonds forged among readers. The Door-to-Door Bookstore by Carsten Henn and Days at the Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagisawa are no exception.
As we roll into the dog days of summer, these three YA novels move beyond being beastly — as their protagonists transform into the creatures that lie within.
