A kindred relationship is severed by a winter storm in Jón Kalman Stefánsson’s novel "Heaven and Hell", about grave losses and lucent beginnings. In a place “built of cod bones,” Bárður and an orphaned boy are outliers among... Read More

As a young woman in 1972, Liese Greensfelder took what was supposed to be a short-term summer job working on a sheep farm in the mountains of rural Norway. She recounts what happened instead in her engaging memoir "Accidental Shepherd".... Read More

In her outstanding book-length essay "Immemorial", Lauren Markham compares language, memorials, and rituals as strategies for coping with climate anxiety and grief. Monuments to famous men are passé, the work insists; instead, it is... Read More

A beautiful love letter to the power of reading, Katherine Paterson’s biography of Jella Lepman covers how she built a massive literary collection for the children of post–World War II Germany. Lepman endured the death of her World... Read More

In Olivia Wolfgang-Smith’s scintillating historical novel "Mutual Interest", an unconventional arrangement leads to business success in post–Gilded Age New York. Determined to escape the confines of upstate New York,... Read More

In "Ricochet", Kellyn Carni’s fresh take on the mysterious circumstances surrounding the murder of Russia’s last ruling family, Anastasia Romanov takes the reins and tells her own story. Anastasia and her brother Alexei always had a... Read More

Neil Taylor’s thriller "Anticipation" unravels a high-tech mystery in an unsettling near-future scenario. Riya is a math and machine-learning savant who lost her technology genius father in a plane accident. When she learns that his... Read More

In Alex Mullarky’s novel "The Edge of the Silver Sea", a city girl uprooted by her parents’ dreams tries to find her way home. Upon Blair’s first glimpse of her new home, Roscoe, from the ferry, she is stunned by its terrain, which... Read More