Book Reviews

David Mitchell's new novel about a soul-devouring house embraces all the classic horror tropes. Critic Jason Sheehan says you may think it's contrived ... until you realize that you, too, are trapped.

Stacy Schiff's masterful history of the Salem witch trials shines a light on a dark period in American history. Critic Jean Zimmerman says The Witches is engagingly thorough and thrillingly told.

The veteran poet's beloved 1994 novel Chelsea Girls has been reissued alongside a new collection, I Must Be Living Twice. Myles' poems chronicle a life of art and sex in gritty 1970s New York City.

Paul Murray's absurdist tale of banking, art theft and failed schemes might be the funniest book about the European financial crisis you'll read all year — but it's bloated by too many subplots.

The creators of the popular podcast Welcome to Night Vale are now telling their tales of a strange desert town in novel form, in a new book reviewer Amal El-Mohtar calls "splendid, weird, moving."

Sarah Vowell's charming not-quite-a-history gives us a young, glory-hungry Marquis de Lafayette, and the Founding Fathers not as marble statues, but as real men who bicker, bumble and snore.

Alex Mar's half-memoir, half-cultural study of American occultism mixes research with her own search for meaning. Critic Genevieve Valentine says it's a difficult journey, for Mar and for readers.

Michel Houellebecq's dark satire Submission caused a furore in his native France with its depiction of an Islamist takeover. But critic Heller McAlpin calls it "too distasteful to be amusing."

In her third outing as crime novelist Robert Galbraith, J.K. Rowling hits her stride with a fluid, complex mystery. Reviewer Annalisa Quinn says she excels at depicting evil, ordinary or otherwise.