In this witty and beautifully imagined Gilded Age outing, Rosen (Park Avenue Summer) examines the rivalry between the Astors and the Vanderbilts toward the end of the 19th century. Caroline Astor finds a nemesis in Alva, the headstrong, redheaded wife of William K. Vanderbilt. The two socia... Continue reading »

Early in this superior crime novel from Ned Kelly Award–winner Fox (Hades), Blair Harbour chooses not to report the battered, distraught teenage girl who robbed the L.A. gas station where Blair works and stole her car. Recently paroled after a murder conviction, Blair feels sympathy for the... Continue reading »

Maresca (The People of the City) launches an exciting new series with this electrifying, genre-bending fantasy. The country of Pinogoz is divided by a harsh caste system. After Nália Enapi, an insurgent motorcycle gang member from the lowest caste, steals petrol from a delivery train, she i... Continue reading »

Hogle’s excellent sophomore novel (after You Deserve Each Other) is an endearing take on the enemies-to-lovers trope. For Maybell Parrish, inheriting a house from the beloved great-aunt she hasn’t seen in 20 years is the perfect excuse to leave her crowded apartment and toxic workplace behi... Continue reading »

Marie-Crane Williams (Run Home If You Don’t Want to Get Killed) documents the 1918 murder of Mary Turner in this harrowing graphic work that incorporates explicit block prints, historical newspaper clippings, and yellowed telegrams to create the feel of a haunted scrapbook. In May of 1918, ... Continue reading »

The glittering, energetic debut from greathouse seeks to honor and give voices to all bodies: “Before I could accept this body’s fractures, I had to unlearn lame as the first breath of lament,” she writes. Using images and language with surgical precision, greathouse focuses her energy on the body a... Continue reading »

Pearson (A Long Time Comin’) delivers a satisfying tale of one woman’s secrets returning to haunt her. Maxine Owens is preparing for her wedding to Theodore Charles when she decides it’s time for her to come clean about a secret she’s been keeping from Theodore and his family: Maxine’s 13-y... Continue reading »

Biographer Isaacson (Leonardo da Vinci) depicts science at its most exhilarating in this lively biography of Jennifer Doudna, the winner of the 2020 Nobel Prize in medicine for her work on the CRISPR system of gene editing. Born in 1964, Doudna grew up in Hawaii, where she felt isolated and... Continue reading »

Sifton (See You on Sunday), food editor of the New York Times, gathers in this remarkable cookbook 100 purposefully inexact methods for creating delicious meals. Cooking without adhering to standard recipes “is a proficiency to develop, a way to improve your confidence in the kitchen,” he w... Continue reading »

Ruden (The Face of Water) wrestles fresh meaning from Christianity’s sacred texts in her startling new translation of the four Gospels. Working from the original Greek text and within the context of the ancient Greco-Roman-Jewish era, Ruden strives to rescue a “defensively hermetic” text fr... Continue reading »

Rich with evocative language (to “bake the coarse bread/ And spin the fine thread/ And weave the rough cloth”), this subtle verse novel retells the Grimms’ “The Seven Ravens” through a lens of perseverance and change. Though all his parents want is a daughter, “girlish” misfit Robyn lives a stifling... Continue reading »