This beautifully crafted historical from Epstein (Wunderland) evokes the cruel and misogynistic mental health system of late 19th-century Paris. After Laure Bissonet’s father dies in debt, his house is seized, leaving Laure without a home. She has a breakdown and lands in the hysteria ward ... Continue reading »

Musso (The Secret Life of Writers) combines a baffling mystery with a memorable lead in this superior thriller. Roxane Montchrestien, longtime member of a French police brigade that hunts down the country’s most wanted, attempts to resign after she gets caught up in a street protest that tu... Continue reading »

These 15 invigorating horror shorts from Tremblay (The Pallbearer’s Club) showcase the author’s imagination and versatility. Two are radically different ghost stories: in “Ice Cold Lemonade 25¢ Haunted House Tour: 1 Per Person,” the narrator reflects on the youthful experiences that ... Continue reading »

Charles’s swashbuckling second Doomsday Books romance (after The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen) enthralls as it transports readers back to the moors of 19th-century Kent. Set 13 years after the previous installment, the story focuses on Luke Doomsday, who was introduced as the intellige... Continue reading »

Angoulême audience award winner Bischoff’s English-language debut is an exhilarating if sometimes disturbing graphic biography of writer and artist Anaïs Nin (1903–1977). “My lies are protective, life-giving,” says Nin, whose deceptions include affairs, clandestine meetings, and a secret diary full ... Continue reading »

“I have no place to put everything/ my children make me feel,” Schlegel announces in his ruminative fourth collection (after In the Tree Where the Double Sex Sleeps). Yet he captures as much as he can with quiet, urgent desperation that gives these poems a flickering liveliness. Writing ami... Continue reading »

In this tour de force from Brotherton (A Bright and Blinding Sun) and Lee (A Single Light), four friends’ lives change irrevocably when America becomes embroiled in WWII. In 1930s Mobile, Ala., preacher’s son Jimmy Propfield shares an idyllic upbringing with childhood sweetheart Cl... Continue reading »

Sociologist Goyal (Schools on Trial) delivers a nuanced and intimate portrayal of three Puerto Rican teens growing up in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia, drawing on a decade of research in the community to demonstrate how poverty is a barely surmountable obstacle for disadvantag... Continue reading »

Iranian-born chef Alikhani imbues her debut cookbook with the rich flavors and modern sensibilities that make her Brooklyn restaurant, Sofreh, a dining destination. “These recipes carry the love I have for cooking,” she writes in the welcoming introduction, “and are inextricably linked to the love o... Continue reading »

McCaulley (Reading While Black), an associate professor of the New Testament at Wheaton College, explores racism, poverty, and faith in his searing memoir. McCaulley grew up in Huntsville, Ala., with a mother who was fundamentally rendered a single parent after his father became addicted to... Continue reading »

Eighteen-year-old Cass lives in the Helia Empire on Sarn, a minor moon of the planet Danae. Cass supports her ill father by scavenging for scrap, pickpocketing unsuspecting passersby, and running cons with her small chosen family. When Cass learns of an opportunity to make “change-your-life-forever”... Continue reading »