In Elif Shafak’s spellbinding novel There Are Rivers in the Sky, a single drop of water falls and regenerates and falls again across continents and centuries, touching four lives linked by the Epic of Gilgamesh.
Matt Haig’s The Life Impossible is part fantasy, part travel saga and part romance with one’s self, and that makes it well worth reading for anyone seeking a hopeful, warm journey that crackles with magic.
Danzy Senna’s tale of a novelist’s venture into Hollywood is hilarious even as the reader senses the despair beneath the laughs. Colored Television is the perfect story for our times.
Rachel Kushner has taken the bones of the traditional spy novel and spun it into something that is as thought-provoking as it is fun, an intellectual thriller that deviously suggests there could be another fate for our disaster-bound species.
Anyone suspicious of the luster of capitalism and its promises will find much to mull over in Entitlement, Rumaan Alam’s slyly provocative fourth novel.
The careful balance between Intermezzo’s brisk pace and its quite fearless exploration of sexual desire makes Sally Rooney’s fourth novel her most ambitious yet.
Olga Tokarczuk’s deft, dark satirical wit is on full display in The Empusium, which challenges the rigid patriarchal world of pre-WWI Europe with horror and humor.
Renowned director Pedro Almodovar turns his deeply textured, boundless talent to 12 short stories involving elements of autobiography and fantasy in The Last Dream.
Following a teen love triangle in a North Dakota community dominated by sugar beet farming, Louise Erdrich’s The Mighty Red might just be a new American classic.
Daniel M. Lavery, author of Something That May Shock and Discredit You, makes his historical fiction debut with Women’s Hotel, a slice-of-life comedy following the residents of a hotel for young working women in 1960s New York City. Lavery was Slate’s Dear Prudence columnist from 2016–2021, and his humor, curiosity and empathy lend themselves perfectly to this charming subject matter.
2024 has brought a number of beautiful novels exploring aging and the experiences of older protagonists, from Julia Alvarez’s The Cemetery of Untold Stories to Claire Lombardo’s Same as It Ever Was. Even in such company, Anna Montague’s debut, How Does That Make You Feel, Magda Eklund?, stands out as the surest bet to bring on both laughter and tears. Magda is a psychiatrist just entering her 70s who sets off on a cross-country road trip accompanied by the ashes of her best friend, hoping to finally face what was left unresolved in their friendship.
No one writes like Haruki Murakami, and his every release spurs massive excitement. For longtime fans, The City and Its Uncertain Walls incorporates familiar elements, like the Town you must give up your shadow to enter, while still delighting with a fresh plot and characters. In true Murakami fashion, this book doesn’t quite fit into one mold—fantasy? a romance? a parable?—but rather offers something for everyone.
Tony Tulathimutte’s facility with verbal stunt-piloting borders on the dazzling in Rejection, a novel in seven stories that chronicles vivid responses to the experience of being turned down, or turned away.
In The Wildes, novelist Louis Bayard shows us Oscar Wilde through the eyes of his wife and sons—presenting a portrait of the poet and playwright as engaged father, loving but distant husband, self-absorbed keeper of secrets and a terrified man unable to love openly.
Anyone suspicious of the luster of capitalism and its promises will find much to mull over in Entitlement, Rumaan Alam’s slyly provocative fourth novel.
Julie Heffernan’s first graphic novel, Babe in the Woods, is a mesmeric work of autofiction loosely retelling how she became an artist while following a hike in the Appalachian Mountains with her infant child.
In the vibrantly illustrated Djinnology, a fictional scientist travels the world to learn about sometimes malevolent, sometimes benevolent spirits of Muslim folklore.
If you’ve ever felt like the odd one out—the black sheep in your family, or loner in your community—you’ll love these four books with protagonists who can’t help but stand out.
Bright I Burn is strongly inspired by Ireland’s first condemned witch, whose 13th-century life author Molly Aitken imbues with a complex and heartbreaking grit.