Megan Fishmann

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Chabon hits close to home—literally—with his first novel in five years. In Telegraph Avenue, he brings readers to his very own California East Bay Neighborhood, “Brokeland” (it’s located where Berkeley and Oakland meet up), in the year 2004.

Longtime friends and record-store owning partners Archy Stallings and Nat Jaffe could not be more different on paper in terms of race, mannerisms and attitude. Archy is awaiting the birth of his first child; Nat is discovering more each day about his moody, romantic teenage son, Julius. As the two men navigate the roller-coaster ride of fatherhood and marriage (their wives are partners who run their own midwifery business), they are dealt a life-changing blow when ex-NFL quarterback Gibson Goode announces plans to construct his latest Dogpile mega-music store one mere block away from their shop. Archy and Nat attempt to rally the neighborhood to save their beloved music store, but endless curveballs prevent them from keeping their dream alive.

Like the legendary music of famed jazz musician Sun-Ra, Chabon’s eloquent prose rises and falls in a sing-song tone that lures readers through the novel’s pages in a nonstop riff. Telegraph Avenue is a study of the limits of friendship and the multifaceted layers of race—and a closely observed portrait of a thriving neighborhood that clings to a sense of old-school order.

Best-selling memoirist Deborah Copaken Kogan (Shutterbabe) returns with her second novel, The Red Book, a lively story following several former Harvard roommates at their 20th reunion. Every five years, the infamous “red book” compiles classmates’ personally written recaps of tragedies, divorces, job successes, children and deaths in a bound red volume delivered to each alumni member. Its revealing entries begin each chapter, allowing readers to peer into the private lives of these former Harvard contemporaries.

Readers are introduced to headstrong Clover, a former Lehman banker who recently lost her job in the collapse of the company and is desperately trying to conceive with her husband. There’s flighty wild-child Addison—a former lesbian artist—whose tumultuous relationship with her trust-fund husband is hanging by a thread. Jane is a Korean war orphan who has recently lost not only her mother but also her first husband. And finally there’s Mia, a former star of Harvard’s stage who has now committed to being a full-time mother while married to a famous Hollywood director.

Fans of Mary McCarthy’s The Group will be drawn to these women (and the men who come in and out of their lives) as they struggle with their identities in their respective professional and personal fields. Here, the past affects the present, whether that means an arrest for unpaid parking tickets, furtively copulating with old flings, rediscovering your vocation or hiding financial collapse to keep up appearances. But if the characters in The Red Book learn anything, it’s that their secrets will bury them faster than they think.

Award-winning author Ben Marcus is a writer who dares to take linguistic risks. No stranger to experimental fiction, in his fourth novel Marcus demonstrates what happens when spoken and written language turns into a toxic killer, taking his readers on an eerie ride by imagining that children have the ability to kill off their elders simply by speaking to them.

The Flame Alphabet opens outside Rochester, New York, with Sam and his wife Claire, whose health is severely declining. Their moody teenage daughter Esther runs wild through their neighborhood: indignant, furious and overly emotional as only teenagers can be. At first, it is only the Jews who fall ill from hearing their children speak: their tongues harden to the bottom of their mouths, their flesh falls off the bone. However, soon it is not just Jewish adults who perish but all adults, succumbing not only to teenage admonitions, but also to reading the written word.

The disease is unstoppable, and Sam watches in horror as his town (among others) becomes quarantined. Forced to make a “Sophie’s Choice” type of decision, Sam forces Claire to abandon their daughter and head with him for safety. Unfortunately, Claire does not make it out; Sam barely escapes before being forced to research potential cures in an isolated facility.

What makes The Flame Alphabet an especially thoughtful book (and one that it is necessary to take time reading) is Sam’s discovery of just how easily language can kill. Sam concocts thousands of tests—staring at pictographs, Egyptian ruins, and languages consisting of only vowels in his desperate attempt to search for immunity. He watches in horror as his creations are tested on inmates of the facility, his work reminiscent of the Holocaust’s scientific experiments forced upon prisoners. How far Sam will go to save not only the adults, the children destined to grow old (and become susceptible to the disease), but also his family, is a frightening admonition of one father’s love for his daughter, and will to survive.

From the insanely talented and heavily lauded novelist and short-story writer Ann Beattie comes another tour-de-force, Mrs. Nixon: A Novelist Imagines a Life. Part historical biography, part imaginative fiction, part writing manual, this work is so original it’s impossible to define its exact genre.

Beattie’s unique book is meticulously researched, drawing from numerous historical accounts of the former First Lady, including books by Woodward and Bernstein, old Life magazine articles and television interviews. Beattie creates introspective, revealing narratives of how Pat Nixon might have reacted to a specific incident, or what she might have thought during a specific event. She weaves in actual dialogue from the former president and his wife, so at times, the reader cannot tell what is real, or what is imagined by the author.

Beattie seamlessly manages not only to write about an interesting public figure, but also to create an ode to the art of writing. A professor at the University of Virginia, Beattie is quick to share with her audience how she wrote this book (in the book itself!) while drawing from other writers’ work to display examples of how character is developed (a riff on Raymond Carver’s Cathedral being a particularly intriguing vignette).

One shouldn’t have to classify this book as fiction, or memoir, or nonfiction, because it stands in a category by itself. Beattie is a master at writing lines that one underlines to read again and again. For history lovers, for writers, for fans of Beattie’s work, Mrs. Nixon is a remarkable story from a writer who continues to surprise and dazzle.