Starred Reviews for Emily St. John Mandel, Francesca Albanese, Naina Kumar, Caroline Bicks, and More!

“Mandel (Sea of Tranquility) always writes with clarity and precision. Her perceptive new dystopian novel explores what is lost in a rush to safety; it’s a hymn to what falls when the center doesn’t hold.”
—Library Journal, starred review

“Winman (Still Life) melds historical fiction and magical realism in this irresistible fairy tale set in post-WWII Cornwall…This is one to savor.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review

“Readers will fall head over heels for this deeply romantic story featuring South Asian characters and a stunning Scottish backdrop. For fans of emotional, slow-burn romances, such as those by Kate Clayborn.”
—Library Journal, starred review

“(A) vivid fictionalization . . . With silky finesse, perceptive insight, and genuine affinity, Parmar empathically recreates the magical, mythical world of 1930s Hollywood, embracing what’s known and interpreting what can only be imagined about the lives of two people who epitomized epic stardom.” —Booklist, starred review

“Priya Parmar drops readers into the thick of pre-Hays Code Hollywood, where careers were made and broken, fantasies were fabricated and fractured, and skeletons lurked not only in closets, but on sets and in bedrooms.” —BookPage, starred review

“[An] exceptional debut . . . Jabore keeps the intensity at a fever pitch throughout, balancing raw terror with the more subtly haunting collapse of long-standing friendships. Readers will be on tenterhooks from the first page to the finale.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review

“[Buntin’s] language is superb; for all Will’s self-assuredness, the precarity of her situation, tied so inextricably to Nathaniel, is rendered in such exacting and heartrending detail as to make the reader’s teeth ache. . . . A searing, brilliant novel about power, and stories, and who gets to tell them.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review

“With astonishing economy, clarity and suggestiveness, Karan Mahajan creates a memorable family and depicts the conflicted India of the 1970s lurching into the present in The Complex…This piercing novel is a book to read and read again.” —BookPage, starred review

“It’s an indispensable, at times deeply sickening, overview of the situation on the ground in Palestine.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review

“This important work will find a readership among the many people struggling to comprehend today’s increasingly chaotic world and should be included in most collections.” —Library Journal, starred review

“The first scholar to gain access to Stephen King’s archives, Caroline Bicks explores the master of horror’s seminal works in her superbly shudder-inducing Monsters in the Archives…Monsters in the Archives is superbly shudder-inducing, inside and out.” —BookPage, starred review

“This sprawling, immersive account from historian Pearsall (Atlantic Families) explores “the effect of the world on the American Revolution” rather than the “too often” emphasized opposite.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review

“The chilling, yearslong confessions of a serial killer will be sought by true crime readers who enjoyed Michelle McNamara’s I’ll Be Gone in the Dark or Ann Rule’s The Stranger Beside Me.”
—Library Journal, starred review

“It’s a remarkable depiction of a transformational businesswoman.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review

“Calling verbs “the secret superpower of language,” Kaufman posits that “nouns are our reality; verbs are our dreams.” Indeed, this verb-filled outing reads like a dream.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review