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ROMAN STORIES

Lahiri’s third collection follows her Pulitzer-winning debut collection, Interpreter of Maladies (1999), and Unaccustomed Earth (2008), with novels and essays interspersed. In 2011, she moved from the U.S. to Rome, where she has become a prolific translator and editor in Italian, and like its immediate predecessor, the novel Whereabouts (2021), the stories in this book were written in Italian then translated to English. As a group, they evoke her new city from the perspective of an outsider loo

STARTER VILLAIN

Charlie Fitzer, a former business journalist–turned–substitute teacher, is broke and somewhat desperate. His circumstances take an unexpected and dangerous turn when his estranged uncle Jake dies, leaving his business—i.e., his trillion-dollar supervillain empire—to Charlie. Charlie doesn’t really have the skills or experience to manage the staff of the volcano lair, and matters don’t improve when he’s pressured to attend a high-level meeting with other supervillains, none of whom got along wit

RECYCLED

The author grew up knowing that he was adopted—or “recycled,” as his grandfather Papa used to say. Born in Erie, Pennsylvania, in 1966 and adopted by a working-class Italian American family, no one seemed to think of Rocco as anything but a beloved, albeit somewhat spoiled, member of the family. But at the age of 30, everything changed when he went on a blind date with a woman who was also adopted. Learning that she’d been lied to about her birth parents sparked an insatiable curiosity in Rocco

THE LOCKMASTER

After the outbreak of water wars across all the world’s continents, access to freshwater streams and precious inland reservoirs becomes top priority for the planet’s fracturing assemblies of dissolving city- and nation-states. The narrator of Austrian writer Ransmayr’s enthralling short novel, a hydraulic engineer, sets off to build dams in Brazil, only to learn that his father, the Master of the Falls, responsible for manning the locks in their Central European hometown, has committed a horrib

STARLING HOUSE

Opal’s life in Eden, Kentucky, has never been easy. When their mother died, teenage Opal faked her way into getting custody of her younger brother, Jasper, and years later Opal and Jasper are still struggling to make ends meet. Jasper is an exceptionally bright and creative boy, and Opal desperately wants to scrape together enough money to send him out of Eden to a fancy private school with all the resources he deserves. Opal has always been mysteriously drawn to Starling House, a big old mansi

BIG TROUBLE ON SULLIVAN'S ISLAND

Boyer, the author of the Liz Talbot mysteries, launches a new stand-alone series with this novel featuring likable Southern private investigator Hadley Cooper. The story starts out warmly as she reunites with lifelong friends Gavin Kinloch, a local cop; Joe Vincent, a retired investigator; and Gavin’s military macaw to celebrate her 40th birthday early in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, with a vegan meal in her honor. On Hadley’s actual birthday, she bikes over to the shore of Sullivan’s Island

LIBRARY FOR THE WAR-WOUNDED

Austrian writer Helfer explores the life of her father, Josef, in this work of autofiction. The child of a single mother—a maid in the household of his biological father—Josef is a bright child who grows up in poverty and, initially, without educational advantages. A local builder allows him access to his own home library, and Josef’s lifelong love affair with books and libraries begins. Upon his return from the war, Josef eventually secures a position as the manager of an Alpine convalescent h

SOLVABLE

Apocalyptic despair over the issue of climate change is common. However, according to veteran atmospheric chemist Solomon, it is a waste of energy that could be productively employed. She has won acclaim for her four decades of work in her field, and in this book, she examines how a range of environmental crises have been addressed. She was directly involved in some, such as repairing the hole in the ozone layer; regarding other projects, she has drawn together extensive primary and secondary r

TALES OF WHISKEY TANGO FROM MISERY TOWERS

Mike Love is a struggling real estate agent who was once a “a doppelgänger for Bruce Springsteen in his mid-eighties prime.” He speaks in cringeworthy cliches (“Mike Love is the name, real estate is the game!”), a linguistic tendency unfortunately typical of the author’s stale prose. Mike procrastinates marrying his girlfriend, Gloria McKendrick, a former trapeze artist with Ringling Brothers who now teaches at a circus school. His hesitation is exacerbated by the sudden appearance of his old h

UNSETTLED STATES

The story follows the lives of several citizens of fictional Granville, Connecticut, and how they each intersect with the recent horrific murder of local Ann Wheeler. Bradley Davis is a library assistant and voyeur who watches his neighbors from afar between visits to his alcoholic, psychologically abusive mother. When he’s caught peeping by the police, Det. Gerard Mallory asks him if he’d ever spied on the murder victim, who was a regular at the library; Davis denies it. When the cop tells him

JOURNEY TO THE INNER LIGHT

Born in 1946 in the small Pennsylvania town of Monongahela, young Jay Chattaway quickly developed two passions: music and sailing the Monongahela River, which flowed just blocks from his childhood home. These two loves would become the guiding forces of his life. Jay received a full music scholarship to West Virginia University, and, in 1969, faced with his impending drafting into the Vietnam War, he applied to and was accepted by the U.S. Navy Band. In March of 1975, Jay’s original composition

THE CURATORS

In 1915, the Felicitous Five—a (fictional) group of teenage Jewish girls living in Atlanta—become obsessed with the (unfortunately nonfictional) case of Leo Frank, a local Jewish businessman convicted of murdering a 13-year-old factory worker, Mary Phagan, two years earlier. Dedicated to preserving every bit of reportage and memorabilia about Frank they can, the girls draw up a set of ground rules for their curatorial endeavors, stressing mutuality and sharing of information. After Frank’s sent

THE DEVIL'S BERRIES

Zamor, a Black Indian from Bengal, was born into poverty and as a child was sold by his mother to a slave trader. When he was 10 years old, he was purchased by France’s King Louis XV and given as a gift to his favorite mistress, Jeanne du Barry. At the Palace of Versailles, du Barry delights in her gift: Louis-Benoit is the little boy she and the king have never had. As Book Two opens, Zamor is a grown man, albeit still physically small in stature. It is the revolutionary year of 1789, and disc

THE THIRD MAN

The first timeline of Cooper’s novel is set in Germany near the end of World War II. The SS recruits a German American scientist named Walter Muller, and they plan to infiltrate a research facility in Maine to use DNA to build a “superior” race and a Fourth Reich. Shortly after Muller’s arrival in Maine, he meets and marries another conspirator, Catherine Freeman. In the present day, after some Nazi artifacts turn up, college science professor Brad Parker works with his romantic partner, police

ARCHIE AND PIP

Archie, a piglet, is starting kindergarten; big brother Pip, a platypus, is entering first grade. They’re excited but nervous, too: Archie doesn’t know if he can sit still all day and worries about what he’ll learn and how much he doesn’t know yet; Pip frets that Archie will make so many pals, he’ll forget about him. As the siblings play with their friends, Archie hears some silly, improbable stories about school (Pip smiles knowingly); then they shop for new supplies with their parents. At the

WITH LOVE, MISS AMERICANAH

Enore Adesuwa has decided that the best way to manage in her new high school in New York’s Hudson Valley is to study the movies recommended by Adrian, her American cousin. Unlike Esosa, her younger sister who jumps right into things, Enore always needs a plan. She’s also still processing the loss of her beloved father, and it doesn’t take long before she realizes that, despite the 10 rules she’s made for getting along (among them, avoid popular people, control your heart, don’t make enemies, an

ONE WEEK TO CHANGE THE WORLD

What is the World Trade Organization? By some lights, it’s a group that makes sure that international business plays by the rules. By others, it’s a means by which the major capitalist powers keep the developing world on a string. As Gibson, author of 14 Miles and The Edge Becomes the Center, recounts, representatives from a host of nations came to Seattle seeking to lock down an agenda that would make the “Quad”—the European Union, the U.S., Japan, and Canada—de facto rulers of the global econ

WAT TAKES HIS SHOT

The child of Japanese immigrants, Wataru Misaka (1923-2019) grew up in Ogden, Utah, where his talent for basketball was apparent early on. Wat, as he was known, played on intergenerational Japanese American leagues, as the local sports leagues were for white people only. His father taught him a Japanese word: “Gambatte. Do your best.” It became Wat’s motto while enduring discrimination. Soon after the U.S. entered World War II, hundreds of thousands of Japanese Americans were incarcerated; thou

THE PERILS OF LADY CATHERINE DE BOURGH

This time, the bull’s-eye is trained on Lady Catherine de Bourgh, whom Elizabeth Bennet fans may have occasionally wanted to take a potshot at themselves. Gray makes the entitled heiress more sympathetic than Austen does. She’s still vain and preening, but genuinely frightened by the escalating attempts on her life. Some of the sympathy is generated by the protagonists, young Jonathan Darcy, the shy, introverted son of Elizabeth and Fitzwilliam Darcy, and Juliet Tilney, the daughter of a countr

PARADE

Readers of Cusk’s previous fiction will recognize the masterful way she locates specific personal histories within a relatively abstract narrative framework (minimal details of place, time, and chronology) to unsettle the reader’s expectations about what fiction can or should do. An omniscient third-person narrator takes us inside the thoughts and emotions of some Gs: an insecure male artist famed for painting upside-down and his unhappy wife; a male filmmaker fleeing repressive parents; a fema