Bosnian writer Bakic’s debut teems with the oddball narratives of George Saunders, the eerie atmosphere of Edgar Allan Poe, and the feminist intellect of Marge Piercy. Her characters all, in one form or another, use language to survive, to manipulate, or to shine. In “Day Trip to Durmitor,” a writer... Continue reading »

At the start of this exceptional psychological thriller from Swanson (All the Beautiful Lies), bipolar Hen “Henrietta” Mazur and her husband, Lloyd Harding, have dinner one night at the suburban Boston home of neighbors Mira and Matt Dolamore, with whom they’ve recently bonded over their mu... Continue reading »

Debut author Stout combines a pitch-perfect noir tone and a richly detailed world full of human, amphibian, and less-identifiable characters in this instantly gripping fantastical mystery. Carter is a smart cop with a troubled past, working in Titanshade, a garish metropolis in need of a miracle. Th... Continue reading »

Love and self-esteem are as tangled as the sheets in this sensual masterpiece set in New Orleans. NOLA is known for spicy food, lively music, and vibrant colors; it’s the perfect place for engineer Avery Barrows to unleash her inner wild child for a few days. Tired of being judged—and insulted—about... Continue reading »

This masterful continuation of Jack Kirby’s Fourth World saga breathes new life into Scott Free, aka brilliant escape artist Mister Miracle. The book opens with his attempted suicide, and it’s clear that a history of struggle has made its mark on Scott. While he recovers with help from his beloved w... Continue reading »

Multi-genre writer Samuels (Symphony for Human Transport) brings contemporary experimental writing into dialogue with a modernist literary inheritance in this daring collection. She frequently pays homage to her literary predecessors through appropriation, deriving titles for these finely c... Continue reading »

Literary biographer Gordon (Lives Like Loaded Guns) brilliantly ties together the biographies of five women writers who bravely embraced outsider status and “summoned the will to explore oddity in ways that speak to us about our unseen selves.” Gordon assigns each woman a primary role: Emil... Continue reading »

The rise and fall of the transatlantic puritanism is told through political, theological, and personal conflict in this exceptional history from Univ. of Georgia history professor Winship (Godly Republicanism). Spanning from the 1540s to the 1690s, Winship’s overview covers extensive physic... Continue reading »

In this wordless book originally published in the Netherlands, a monkey father picks up his child in a zippy-looking banana motorcycle and promptly gets caught in traffic. Rather than pout, the little monkey scampers out of the sidecar and into a series of adventures on the fanciful, Richard Scarry–... Continue reading »