Hermione Granger meets Emily Post in "You Are a Great and Powerful Wizard", Sage Liskey’s appealing grimoire-cum-self-help guide for the magically inclined. Forego expectations of elemental incantations and bubbling potions—at least,... Read More

Once, riot grrrl Atlantis Black’s star was on the rise, but success evaded her, replaced by darkness. Still, the enigmatic musician had the perspicacity to ensure that her legacy would endure via unanswerable questions, many of which... Read More

D. A. Mishani’s "Three" is a gripping novel that begins with an affair and continues through the salacious surprises and everyday horrors of contemporary dating. What pains Orna most about her recent divorce is that her ex-husband is... Read More

In Rochelle Distelheim’s absorbing novel "Jerusalem as a Second Language", a family makes aliyah, considers assimilation, and tests its own bonds. The Zalinikovs—Manya, Yuri, and their daughter, Galina—survived the Soviet Union,... Read More

Adam Wilson’s near-future "Sensation Machines" is a delayed bildungsroman for a whole generation. Wendy and Michael met as college students in New York while navigating the detritus of September 11, 2001. He was a Marshall Mathers... Read More

Kendra Atleework’s radiant, wrenching memoir "Miracle Country" probes a home and its heartbreaks for meaning. Atleework was raised in the Eastern Sierra, in spaces threatened by fire and droughts: “on this obsidian edge of... Read More

Three troubled but tough generations of women, all molded and wounded by the Pentecostal culture around them, are celebrated in Kelli Jo Ford’s masterpiece, patchwork novel, "Crooked Hallelujah". Religion became a source of both... Read More

A sabbatical trip leads to unearthed family secrets in Farzana Doctor’s luminous novel, "Seven". Sharifa and Murtuza’s marriage has settled back into comfortable routines following her emotional affair years prior. Still, Sharifa... Read More