Book Reviews

Halloween is a time for surprises, so it's a great time for Satania, by Fabien Vehlmann and Kerascoët — it's a thoroughly surprising story about a young girl searching for her missing brother.

Garner's death at the hands of police on a Staten Island street in 2014 sparked nationwide protests. Matt Taibbi's new book traces his life, and the policing policies that brought him to that moment.

Richard Lloyd Parry looks at the aftermath of Japan's 2011 tsunami in this brutally honest new book, which refuses to mitigate the full horror of the events with feel-good recovery stories.

Graeme Macrae Burnet's stylish, atmospheric mystery can be read just as a dark little detective story — but it's worth paying attention to the novel's playful found-manuscript framing device.

Hodgman's past few books have been jokey compendiums of fake knowledge, but with Vacationland he's getting a little realer with an achingly funny chronicle of his metamorphosis into middle age.

C. Morgan Babst's portrait of a troubled New Orleans family that fractures further during and after Hurricane Katrina is poetic and suspenseful — but the drama sometimes drowns in too much detail.

Lindsey Fitzharris' new book about the horrors of Victorian medicine and the introduction of antisepsis is a vital, effective history — but perhaps you shouldn't read it with a full stomach.

Zach and Kelly Weinersmith's accessible, occasionally goofy new book lays out futuristic fantasies (like matter-printed cocktails) and connects them to projects scientists are working on right now.