If so great a physicist as Richard Feynman once claimed that “nobody understands quantum mechanics,” what hope do we laypeople have? Luckily, Philip Ball, a freelance writer (formerly of Nature magazine) who has published widely on... Read More

Personal memoir, travelogue, and history combine in María Sonia Cristoff’s "False Calm", a journey that peels back the layers of the ghostly fog blanketing Patagonia to reveal engrossing complexity. With quiet introspection, Cristoff... Read More

Micah Perks’s "True Love and Other Dreams of Miraculous Escape" contains plot twists inside of plot twists. Interconnected short stories reveal how characters’ inner battles to find love and to be loved create a world of conflict,... Read More

Chaya Bhuvaneswar’s stories are brooding, precise, and painful indictments of patriarchal cultures. They primarily follow women of color through harsh personal and postcolonial landscapes. Characters navigate the expectations and... Read More

Beautifully reconstructing three days in Paris, Ersi Sotiropoulos traverses the complex hallways of the poet Constantine Cavafy’s mind in What’s Left of the Night. A poignant meditation on the origins of an individual’s art, the... Read More

"Quiver" is a compelling story about an unlikely friendship between two teens from very different backgrounds. Libby—the eldest daughter of her family, whose life is filled with Bible study and helping care for her siblings—is... Read More

In Kate DiCamillo’s beautiful follow-up to Raymie Nightingale, Louisiana Elefante is back, and she and her granny are out to face the family curse. When they stop to sleep in a small Georgia town, Louisiana is left to wander on her... Read More

Tova Reich’s "Mother India" relies on Meena to tell her family’s story through its women’s stories, from her mother’s to her daughter’s to her own. Born into a famed rabbinical family in Brooklyn, she’s now a lesbian... Read More