"The Escapist" is a stunning novel about a damaged man. In David Puretz’s unforgettable novel "The Escapist", a troubled young man is haunted by childhood trauma. Twenty-one-year-old Billy can’t keep a job or a girlfriend. He’s... Read More

In busy Beijing, everyone is connected. So a writer discovers when he’s tasked with telling the billionaire Qin’s enmeshed story in Jonathan Tel’s deliciously tangled Scratching the Head of Chairman Mao. In the book’s opening... Read More

The two girls central to Kim Sagwa’s haunting "b, Book, and Me" face bullying, their parents’ indifference, and a sense of helpless displacement. Teachers pretend not to notice what happens to Rang and b, averting their eyes or... Read More

In the novel "Include Me Out", a woman tries to remake her life on her own terms and meets unexpected obstacles. Mara is a simultaneous interpreter who has had enough of a job that demands constant attention to language. All she wants is... Read More

In his compelling collection of stories—most only a few pages long—Michael Credico marshals bold, creative images to depict a grim Midwest dominated by slaughterhouses and fast food restaurants. While not much happens and characters... Read More

Gloom and grief coalesce in Katharine Coldiron’s delicate "Ceremonials", a poetic love story between classmates that erases the line between the living and the dead. Inspired by Florence + the Machine’s album of the same name, this... Read More

Not to up your anxiety about climate change? But: read Just after the Wave, Sandrine Collette’s postapocalyptic novel. The cli-fi thriller follows a large French family’s plans for escape as a tsunami and endless rounds of... Read More

When a teacher takes her life, an unnamed narrator proves determined to ensure that her story is not lost to memory. Driven more by psychology than its plot, "The Teacher" is a chronology-jumping character study about the individual... Read More