Shtum is a Yiddish word meaning noncommunicative or silent, and that’s where Ben Jewell finds himself in British author Jem Lester’s novel of the same name. Ben’s world is comprised of his autistic son, a troubled marriage, an... Read More

“You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept,” explains the Skin Horse in the children’s story The Velveteen Rabbit.... Read More

Haley Harrigan’s "Secrets of Southern Girls" opens with a confession: “It’s not your fault she’s dead. It’s the same thing Julie has told herself, over and over, for ten years. But it’s a lie, and she knows it.” From that... Read More

It’s 1952, and Elliot Caprice is a man on the run. He owes people: the mob, the Chicago police department, political operatives in Washington, DC. He’s managed to stay one step ahead of everyone until, one day, the racial taunts are... Read More

Unlike other people, Zoe Tussler knows that life is perfectible, and she knows this because of Maine. Thus begins David Ebenbach’s "Miss Portland", winner of the 2016 Orison Fiction Prize, a moving paean to becoming the place where you... Read More

War is always an agent of change, but never more so than for schoolmates Filip and Galina. It’s World War II, and, to protect Filip from being drafted, Galina agrees to marry him when he turns eighteen. Marina Antropow Cramer’s... Read More

Wesolowski is especially skilled at utilizing the setting to enhance his naturally suspenseful story. Inspired by the podcast Serial, Matt Wesolowski weaves a dazzling fictional mystery in his book Six Stories, told in the form of... Read More

This quiet novel explores the little-traversed ground of birdsong and the science of communication. Sylvia Torti’s "Cages" is a thought-provoking novel about the complexity of birdsong and how it parallels human communication, related... Read More