An alternating narrative creates a subtle yet intense and multilayered portrait of Okinawans. Shun Medoruma’s "In the Woods of Memory" is a powerful novel of compact complexity, set in the Japanese prefecture of Okinawa. Beginning in... 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

Comprehensive and scholarly, "Finding Feminism" is best for the seasoned millennial feminist or for the new one truly committed to the cause. Alison Dahl Crossley’s Finding Feminism: Millennial Activists and the Unfinished Gender... Read More

The story is full of the warmth and humor that Landvik is known for. The ladies of Lorna Landvik’s Patty Jane’s House of Curl are back and just as eccentric as ever. In "Once in a Blue Moon Lodge", the focus shifts to Patty Jane’s... Read More

The story’s most heartbreaking disclosures are powerful in their indictment of the unrealistic expectations placed upon struggling families. In Lisa Ko’s "The Leavers", departure is sometimes a matter of fleeing, and sometimes a... Read More

Intricate details make this heist-centered crime story literary and memorable. Leonard Chang’s novel "The Lockpicker" is a bit of a hybrid—a pulp crime novel that also becomes a story about the effects of a violent upbringing on an... Read More

Atmospheric and haunting, this novel about the lingering effects of violence is impossible to turn away from. In Andrée A. Michaud’s intense "Boundary", lurid crimes inspire a panoramic exploration of a lakeside retreat and its... Read More

Pearl Weaver contains the best parts of Southern charm, drawing upon the story part of religious tales, and showing how those literary inheritances belong to all. If Pearl could: she would edit her life to perfection. She would trim out... Read More