The Once and Future Witches

by Alix E. Harrow

In the late 1800s, three sisters use witchcraft to change the course of history in Alix E. Harrow's powerful novel of magic and the suffragette movement. In 1893, there's no such thing as witches. There used to be, in th...

How to Write One Song

by Jeff Tweedy

A thoughtful, counterintuitive book about creativity from the celebrated songwriter, leader of the band Wilco.

Her Body and Other Parties: Stories

by Carmen Maria Machado

In this electric and provocative debut, Machado bends genre to shape startling narratives that map the realities of women's lives and the violence visited upon their bodies. A wife refuses her husband's entreaties ...

Leaving the Atocha Station

by Ben Lerner

Adam Gordon is a brilliant, if highly unreliable, young American poet on a prestigious fellowship in Madrid, struggling to establish his sense of self and his relationship to art.

How to Behave in a Crowd

by Camille Bordas

Eleven-year-old Isidore has never skipped a grade or written a dissertation [as his five accomplished siblings have]. But he notices things the others don't, and asks questions they fear to ask. So when tragedy strikes the Mazal ...

Circe

by Madeline Miller

Reviewed by Linda:Circe, the sorceress of ancient Greek mythology, appeared in tales about the Minotaur, Daedalus and Icarus, and Odysseus, but at last she is at the center of her own tale. This spellbinding novel will keep readers rapt ...

Factfulness: 10 Reasons We're Wrong About the World, And Why Things Are Better Than You Think

by Hans Rosling; with Ola Rosling and Anna Rosling Rönnlund

Reviewed by Matt:

Doctor, educator, and TED Talker Hans Rosling explains why — when it comes to long-term global trends — people everywhere hold views that are pessimis...

Stories of Your Life and Others

by Ted Chiang

Reviewed by Matt:

This collection contains some of the most interesting and intelligent science fiction stories I've ever read. But what sets them apart is that several also pack a genuine emotional punch. (Republished in 2016 with an alternat...

The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History

by Elizabeth Kolbert

Reviewed by Linda:

A New Yorker staff writer, Elizabeth Kolbert knows how to grab and hold our attention in this account of evolution as it is being altered by humankind. Throughout earth's history there have been five major mass extinc...

Bobcat, and Other Stories

by Rebecca Lee

Reviewed by Matt:

Sharply-observed short stories about heartbreak, dinner parties, plagiarism, and other topics. They pack a punch, they're funny, and they're full of incredible sentences.

True Grit

by Charles Portis

Mattie Ross is just fourteen years of age when a coward going by the name of Tom Chaney shoots her father down in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and robs him of his life, his horse, and $150 in cash money. Mattie leaves home to avenge her father's...

Tenth of December

by George Saunders

A collection of stories includes "Home," a wryly whimsical account of a soldier's return from war; "Victory Lap," a tale about an inventive abduction attempt; and the title story, in which a suicidal cancer patient sa...

Cloud Atlas

by David Mitchell

Recounts the connected stories of people from the past and the distant future, from a nineteenth-century notary and an investigative journalist in the 1970s to a young man who searches for meaning in a post-apocalayptic world.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

by Junot Díaz

Living with an old-world mother and rebellious sister, an urban New Jersey misfit dreams of becoming the next J. R. R. Tolkien and believes that a long-standing family curse is thwarting his efforts to find love and happiness.

The Southern Reach Trilogy

by Jeff VanderMeer

Reviewed by Matt:

This trilogy about the Southern Reach – the government agency charged with containing and exploring the mysterious Area X – will alter your brain. Bizarre and amazing. (The first book is Annihilation....