Caitlin Chung’s wondrous "Ship of Fates" begins with the ancient legend of Wong Zhi Mei, a Chinese bride promised by her family to a foreign suitor. But teenage Mei yearns for true love, and she steals the suitor’s proffered gold and... Read More

In Margo Orlando Littell’s quiet, compelling novel, "The Distance from Four Points", a woman finds herself reeling from grief and a reversal of fortune. When Robin’s husband, Ray, is killed in a kayaking accident, he leaves behind a... Read More

In Anna Dorn’s "Vagablonde", Prue, a Los Angeles lawyer, hopes to wean herself off of various psychotropic prescriptions. Prue is also an aspiring rapper, despite the fact that she is bourgeois and has “the coloring of a Nazi.” As... Read More

Jean-Michel Fortier’s "The Electric Baths" sets its compressed intrigue in a village where everyone seems to know everyone else’s business. Though the novel is brief, its characters are complex, replete with quirks, anxieties, hope,... Read More

With its pivotal focus on Coco Chanel’s reported World War II work as a Nazi spy, Pamela Binnings Ewen’s novel "The Queen of Paris" fictionalizes the thoughts and motivations of the French design icon––a complex, controlled woman... Read More

Vivek Shraya’s "The Subtweet" is a sharp, encompassing story about a creative friendship that’s promoted, and later imploded, by the kinetic energy of Twitter. Contrasting emotional vulnerability and connective need with desires for... Read More

In Susan M. Gaines’s intricate and informative novel "Accidentals", a twenty-three-year-old, Gabriel, takes an unexpected voyage with his mother, Lili, back to her native Uruguay. To do this, Gabriel quits his well-paying yet... 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