Book Reviews

'Dark, Dark' Doings In A Slick Debut Thriller

Ruth Ware's In A Dark, Dark Wood brings together a group of 20-something women in an isolated rural house for a bachelorette party — a perfect setting for buried secrets and terrible deeds.

Love Lines: A Summer Sampler Of Romantic Manga

Our Summer of Love rolls on with a roundup of romance manga. Japanese comic books can be a daunting field to enter — but we've picked three of the sweetest for your summer reading pleasure.

Kafka Would Love 'The Beautiful Bureaucrat'

Helen Phillips' surreal, dark, funny new novel follows a young woman named Josephine, who gets a job at a mysterious agency. Critic Michael Schaub says the book works as both love story and thriller.

Queen Of The Desert Gertrude Bell, In Her Own Words

Explorer and activist Bell is best remembered today for helping create the modern state of Iraq. A smartly edited new collection of her writings presents a fascinating (if not always smooth) portrait.

A House That's Not A Home In 'Bright Lines'

Tanwi Nandini Islam's debut novel is an understated queer coming-of-age tale, set in a vividly-portrayed Brooklyn brownstone whose residents all ache for some kind of home they've never been to.