Book Reviews

Lisa Gornick's new novel-slash-story-collection turns around the long and stormy relationship between the title characters. Critic Michael Schaub says the book "may not be comforting, but it's true."

The aging characters in Kate Walbert's new novel are learning to go with the flow as waters rise and life takes strange turns. Critic Heller McAlpin praises Walbert's ability to capture women's lives.

Argentinian novelist Alan Pauls' latest kicks off as so many good stories do: With a dead body and a disappearing briefcase full of cash. Critic Juan Vidal calls Pauls a "master builder" of fiction.

The new book The League Of Regrettable Superheroes lovingly recounts the deeply goofy world of weird crusaders that popped up and, just as quickly, disappeared.

Stephen King wields many pens; in Finders Keepers he's examining the role of authors and the masks they wear for the public. Critic Bethanne Patrick says the action zooms after a sluggish start.

Leona Francombe's debut novel is all about rabbits: They eat, they sleep, and they think about the battle of Waterloo. Reviewer Jason Sheehan says it's a lovely story that sometimes lacks a point.

Steve Stern's slice of the mythical South is the Pinch, a hardscrabble immigrant neighborhood of northwest Memphis where the Torah trumps the King James Bible and the rabbis have magical powers.

Fredrik Sjöberg's wry memoir celebrates the beauty of limitations, tiny wonders and intense focus; in Sjöberg's case, a focus on the hoverflies he studies on his home island of Runmarö in Sweden.