In Mark Barr’s engrossing historical novel "Watershed", personal and social changes lead to tension in a rural Tennessee town where a post-Depression federal dam project brings work, strangers, and electricity to the region. Claire is... Read More

“The conversation hobbles on,” Harriet Shawcross observes at a camp for children with selective mutism. “Without daily practice, they grasp at topics like leaves in a stream, exchanging information, but never quite conversing.”... Read More

James Polchin’s "Indecent Advances" extracts more than its title from true-crime press clippings dating back to the 1920s, examining both what appeared in print and what was sanitized or excluded. “Indecent advances” was just one... Read More

When Isla Bell is a teenager, she discovers three dead bodies propped against a wall during her morning run. In Emma Kavanagh’s "I Am Watching", there is a lone survivor of the attacks: one of the victims’ teenage brothers, Ramsay,... Read More

In Jon James Miller’s heartwarming noir "Looking for Garbo", James is dying for a unique story to build a documentary around. Seth, who’s dying of emphysema, lures James in with a tale centered around legendary actress Greta Garbo... Read More

Wars may begin on the battlefield, but they end on a map. "The Bird King" is an exquisite fantasy about the end of Muslim sovereignty in the West, the power of desire to disrupt and transform, and how the privilege of naming can reshape... Read More

Women’s issues are human issues, and Michael Kaufman’s new book "The Time Has Come" calls for men across the political, social, and economic spectrum to speak out about women’s rights. From domestic violence to paycheck inequality... Read More

Walter Mosley’s unconventional novel "John Woman" follows a renegade history professor with a dark secret. Cornelius Jones is the biracial son of a brilliant black man from Mississippi and an Italian-American woman. When his father... Read More