'Trail of Echoes' by Rachel Howzell Hall
"The third and best of a finely wrought series (Skies of Ash, 2015, etc.) that gives voice to a rare figure in crime fiction: a highly complex, fully imagined black female detective."Talented African-American teenagers from a poor LA neighborhood are targeted by a serial killer.Read full book review.
'While the City Slept: A Love Lost to Violence and a Young Man's Descent into Madness' by Eli Sanders
"An exceptional story of compelling interest in a time of school shootings, ethnic and class strife, and other unbound expressions of madness and illness."Disturbing, sometimes-horrifying story of true crime and justice only partially served.Read full book review.
'The Long Shadow of Small Ghosts: Murder and Memory in an American City' by Laura Tillman
"A Helter Skelter for our time, though without a hint of sensationalism—unsettling in the extreme but written with confidence and deep empathy."A haunted, haunting examination of mental illness and murder in a more or less ordinary American city.Read full book review.
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'The Sport of Kings' by C.E. Morgan
"Vaultingly ambitious, thrillingly well-written, charged with moral fervor and rueful compassion. How will this dazzling writer astonish us next time?" Morgan follows up her slim, keening debut (All the Living, 2009) with an epic novel steeped in American history and geography.Read full book review.
'Ladivine' by Marie NDiaye, translated by Jordan Stump
"Come for the promise of a big reveal; stay for the beauty of small moments."A trio of women create, discover, and keep disappearing on each other in this melancholy modern fable.Read full book review.
'Imagine Me Gone' by Adam Haslett
"As vivid and moving as the novel is, it’s not because Haslett strives to surprise but because he’s so mindful and expressive of how much precious life there is in both normalcy and anguish."This touching chronicle of love and pain traces half a century in a family of five from the parents’ engagement in 1963 through a father’s and son’s psychological torments and a final crisis.Read full book review.
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"A top-notch tale of domestic paranoia that owes a debt to spooky psychological page-turners like Rosemary’s Baby yet is driven by Millet’s particular offbeat thinking."A mother tries to reconcile the voices in her head and an extortionist estranged husband in a peculiar, stirring thriller.Read full book review.
'The Adventurist' by J. Bradford Hipps
"The arrival of a top-notch talent."A brilliant, introspective, socially awkward software engineer navigates corporate and personal challenges.Read full book review.
'A Life Apart' by Neel Mukherjee
"Consistently confounding expectations, Mukherjee’s story of the gathering descent of a solitary soul is both poignant and unsentimental, the work of a notably sophisticated writer."Historical and contemporary, lit with flashes of magic and violence, this intriguing novel offers multifaceted portraits of India and England as seen from the perspective of a clever, burdened misfit.Read full book review.
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'Hystopia' by David Means
"Means' first novel is a compelling portrait of an imagined counterhistory that feels entirely real."In an alternative universe, John F. Kennedy was not killed in Dealey Plaza, but America is riven by Vietnam nonetheless.Read full book review.
'Modern Lovers' by Emma Straub
"Straub’s characters are a quirky and interesting bunch, well aware of their own good fortune, and it’s a pleasure spending time with them in leafy Ditmas Park."Middle-aged parents and hormone-addled teenagers all have some growing up to do—entertainingly—in the course of one hot Brooklyn summer.Read full book review.