By David Almond
Delacorte Press, $16.99, 208 pages
One afternoon, Liam finds an old knife while hunting for lost treasure in the backyard with his friend Max. Later, he will pinpoint that moment as the one when everything began to change. Soon after, the pair finds an abandoned child, who is eventually put into foster care. While [...]
By Philip Roth
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $22.00, 160 pages
Simon Axler, “the last of the best of the classical American stage actors” at 65 faces an unimaginable crisis, finding his talent evaporated while performing a double bill of The Tempest and Macbeth. So begins Philip Roth’s 30th novel, The Humbling. Unable to cope, Axler’s personal life crumbles [...]
By Thomas, Jacquelin
Pocket, $14.00, 288 pages
When Jana marries an older, rich man, she’s whisked into the glamorous, fast-paced life of a Hollywood wife. This is a drastic change for Jana, who spent her single life devoted to Biblical study, strengthening her relationship with God. Unfortunately, her new husband uses Jana’s faith to manipulate her into [...]
By Gargash, Maha
Harper Paperbacks, $14.99, 368 pages
The setting of mid-20th Century Dubai is perhaps the most interesting aspect of Maha Gargesh’s debut novel, Sand Fish: A Novel of Dubai. At seventeen, Noora already carries the burdens of her mother’s death and her father’s madness when her brother marries her off to a pearl merchant who [...]
By Tom Piazza
Harper Perennial, $14.99, 403 pages
In City of Refuge, Tom Piazza portrays the tragedy of Katrina in New Orleans. Woven around familiar terrain, the story’s freshness of detail creates a panoramic view of New Orleans and the surrounding cities that functioned as refuges for those who managed to escape Katrina. The story centers on [...]
By Ralph Ellison
Modern Library, $50.00, 1101 pages
The great American novel is the white whale for American writers. In his uncompleted second book, Three Days Before the Shooting, Ralph Ellison personifies the quest for the great American novel and how difficult it can be. After the success of his first novel, Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison spent [...]
By Robert Girardi
St. Martin’s Press, $24.99, 334 pages
Long thought to be a thing of the past, the French Foreign Legion comes alive and current in this new novel by Robert Girardi. Gorgeous East, on the surface, is the story of the Legion’s efforts to save its soldiers taken as hostages by the people of the [...]
By Elizabeth Jolley
Persea, $19.95, 552 pages
The lauded masterpiece of one of Australia’s most acclaimed authors, Elizabeth Jolley’s The Vera Wright Trilogy is shockingly little known here. The first two books are out of print and the third was never released. Persea Books has ridden to the rescue, reissuing the trilogy in one magnificent volume. Loosely [...]
By Joshua Gaylord
Harper Collins, $25.99, 352 pages
In his sophomore novel Hummingbirds, New York author and girls’ prep school teacher Joshua Gaylord introduces his readers to the world of Carmine-Casey School for Girls. At Carmine-Casey, the schoolyard dramas of teenage experience play out through diverse and privileged students, and the teachers who impact their lives. And [...]
By DC Pierson
Vintage, $14.00, 226 pages
When friendless Darren meets friendless Eric it almost seems like they are soulmates, meant to be the very best of friends. Darren is an artist. Eric a storyteller. Together they begin to create a universe all their own in the form of a graphic novel. And each of the boys [...]
By Heidi W. Durrow
Algonquin Books, $23.95, 272 pages
Rachel’s father was a black G.I. and her mother was Danish; this is part of who Rachel is. Also part of Rachel is the fact that her mother left her father and moved to Chicago, and that her mother killed herself and Rachel’s siblings when Rachel was young. [...]
By Elias Khoury; Translated by Paula Haydar
Picador, $14.00, 208 pages
Certain authors can rightfully be said to own the cities where they set their stories: Dickens his Victorian London, Pamuk his Istanbul, Mahfouz Cairo. So it is with Elias Khoury and his beloved Beirut. For those unfamiliar with his work, The Journey of Little Gandhi makes [...]
By Aska Mochizuki
Vintage, $18.95, 231 pages
Aska Mochizuki has crafted a dizzying tale of forbidden love in Spinning Tropics, a lush, lusty debut novel that is part Vietnamese travelogue, part drama, and wholly entertaining.
Translated from its original Japanese for the first time, Spinning Tropics is the story of Hiro, a Japanese language teacher living abroad in [...]
By Anastasia Hobbet
The Permanent Press, $29.00, 344 pages
At first glance, Small Kingdoms may seem like merely another book capitalizing on the current fascination with the Middle East, but Anastasia Hobbet can write extremely well, and this book is less about political forces in the region of Kuwait and more about the personal relationships of three [...]
By Roberto Calasso
Knopf, $40.00, 320 pages
Roberto Calasso’s newest book, Tiepolo Pink, is a study of Giambattista Tiepolo (1695-1769), a classic Venetian painter of the Rococo period. Calasso must no doubt be the foremost authority on this Old Master who has largely been left to history, and he brings an incredible amount of insight and research [...]
By Setiawan, Erick
Simon & Schuster, $25.00, 404 pages
Meridia, the only child of two cold parents, grew up in an equally cold house. The stairs liked to play tricks, ghosts lurked behind mirrors, and the three mists seemed ever present, mocking the mailman or knocking down solicitors. As Meridia grew, few things seemed to cure her [...]
