Hal Niedzviecki’s new collection, Look Down, This is Where it Must Have Happened, asks us what is essential to narrative. …more

Set during the ’70s inflation crisis, David Anthony’s first novel, Something for Nothing, is a suspenseful thriller with literary realism. You just may miss your next train stop. …more

Ann Joslin Williams’ first novel, Down from Cascom Mountain, follows troubled young people in an idyllic lodge in New Hampshire for one summer.

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Michael Alenyikov’s award-winning new book, Ivan and Misha, explores many-faceted love—from the intense and fleeting to bonds of familial obligation. …more

Michael Sledge’s novel The More I Owe You imagines Elizabeth Bishop’s life, and love, in Brazil. …more

No, Beatty! Don’t start telling your English teacher about your essay on Pope when he has his fingers in your knickers! …more

In a series of violent encounters, Peter Nathaniel Malae’s debut novel asks, What are we to do with men? …more

A collection of stories from a Romanian-American writer, nominated for a Northern California Book Award, juxtaposes stories from the old country and the new. …more

A first novel by playwright Jillian Weise tackles the moral and ethical questions surrounding both medical research and human relationships. …more

Kurt Caswell’s memoir describes his year teaching in a place of violence, despair, doubt… and hope. …more

Despite this novel’s serious flaws, it is a gratifying experience. You don’t so much read Lorrie Moore’s books as inhabit them—after which they inhabit you. …more

Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Olen Butler takes a crack at the underworld in a hit-and-miss new novel. …more

Lydia Peelle’s stories focus on scurrilous ne’er-do-wells who flail about in circumstances beyond their control. …more

A playwright’s first novel takes on adolescence and grief in a post-9/11 world …more

Cecilia Rodríguez Milanés’s stories about refugees from the Mariel Boatlift present the conflicts and loneliness of exile.

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Two recent novels bend history to the will of their authors. …more

A review of So Many Ways to Sleep Badly, by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore …more