Literary

Sue Monk Kidd’s first crack at racial tensions in 2003’s The Secret Life of Bees was set in ’64 South Carolina and one of the most affecting books I fell in love with as a teenager. So, of course, her newest Oprah-approved re-imagining of the lives of the famous abolitionist Grimke sisters was top of […]

This is the kind of book that makes me wonder if March is too soon to start a Best of 2014 list—it’s that good. Taking place around the early 1970s, the novel alternates between an African man and an American woman, both changed by meeting a man called Isaac. The man travels from his home […]

The Girl with a Clock for a Heart is an intense debut thriller from Peter Swanson, in which George’s comfortable, ordinary life is upheaved by the return of Liana, his college girlfriend and first love, 20 years later. Liana needs George’s help and in spite of all the reasons he has not to trust her, […]

If you’re ever feeling nostalgic for your teenage days of yore then this curated collection of the Rookie Mag website content will push all the right buttons. Editor Tavi Gevinson, 17-year-old bitch-facing girl wonder, has created the kind of advice, confessional, celebrity interview, opinion, weird fashion with a DIY spirit that I wish existed when […]

At first Marisha Pessl’s horror-mystery Night Film tries a little too hard to draw you in. The book is quick to showcase whatever documents the characters are looking at: police reports, websites, newspaper clippings. This could be fun texture if done right but these extras don’t show us anything that isn’t covered in the narrative […]

Eating healthy is damn hard. Preparation, shopping, the effort required to do more than call for pizza every night—harder still if you’re vegetarian or vegan and not quite sure where to start. This is where popular blogger and recipe conjurer Lindsay S. Nixon comes in. Her new cookbook, hot on the heels of three other similarly […]

This new collection of short stories from UK writer A.L. Kennedy will probably make you sad. All of its characters are in love in ways that are bad for them, and they are all painfully aware of it. In the title story, a man waits for a train with his wife and recalls his years […]

Mark Lavorato’s third novel, Serafim and Claire, plops us into a dirty, cutthroat Montreal in the 1920s. Claire is a dancer whose ambition probably outweighs her talent and who is mostly alone and mostly sad. She dreams of stardom but things go a little wrong along the way. Serafim has just come to Montreal on […]

Claire Cameron’s most powerful gift to readers is the reflective yet juvenile voice of the narrator, five-year-old Anna. Anna leads the reader and her two-year-old brother, Stick, away from the remote campsite and the confusion and horror of the large black beast, her missing father and her dying mother whose last request is that she […]

She did it. Brosh’s most excellent blog is now in book form. Hyperbole and a Half is hilarious and heart-breaking. Her writing is great, her illustrations fantastic (with herself in a pink shift and a poof of yellow hair). Much loved: stories about her simple dog and helper dog, described with words not usable here. […]

A catalogue of possibilities. Guaranteed you will want 4,000 things from this huge catalogue. The web site is kk.org/cooltools; the book harkens back to The Whole Earth Catalog: everything under the sun. Just as big and heavy. They don’t sell anything—but they do tell you where to get it or how to make it. 3D […]