Book Reviews

Pierce Brown's rip-roaring Romans-in-space series Red Rising seemed to come to a triumphant end with last year's Morning Star. But what was the cost of that triumph, and where will it lead?

Denis Johnson finished his first story collection in 25 years just before he died. The pieces in it are stunning, dark, sometimes as bleak as anything he's ever written — but miraculous to read.

Ana Simo's brash and unsettling debut novel straddles the line between pulp noir and slapstick; it's the story of a struggling writer who decides that murder is the cure for her decade-long block.

A century ago, Hollywood had no stars. Movies were silent and the actors were anonymous. Melanie Benjamin's new novel outlines how actress Mary Pickford and writer Frances Marion changed that.

Most stage and screen versions of Frankenstein are based on a later edition of Mary Shelley's classic — this new reprint of her original text shows the story growing and changing with its author.

Jillian Medoff has spent years in the corporate world, and she puts that experience to good use in this story of a hard-charging boss whose devoted staff has to cover for her when she starts to slip.

Christopher J. Yates' new novel begins with an awful crime — and the teenaged boy who stands by and watches as his best friend commits it. But what becomes of everyone involved as the years pass?

There's nothing quite like the desperation to communicate with loved ones we've lost — and it's that desire that fuels Thomas Pierce's richly imaginative debut novel The Afterlives.

The second volume in Ali Smith's seasonal quartet takes place over a tense family Christmas in Cornwall that reunites two sisters whose lives have taken vastly diverging paths.