Modern American war novels, including Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five, Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead and Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, often cast a cool eye on the traditional notion of heroism, given the absurd conditions under which they are often fought. Matterhorn, published in 2010 and released in paperback this spring, takes on this big theme of futility beautifully as it… Read More >>

In her first novel, Haley Tanner takes us to Brighton Beach, Brooklyn and introduces us to Vaclav and Lena, two best-friend Russian immigrant kids who, even as youngsters, recognize that they’re in love with each other. The pair dreams of performing a magic show on the Coney Island boardwalk — Vaclav is a hard-working aspiring magician and Lena is his… Read More >>

The new case for Mickey Haller, also known as the “Lincoln lawyer” for his maverick ways, involves a woman accused of murdering a mortgage banker. Reviews call the book a legal thriller, but honestly it’s more of a legal procedural, just like Connelly’s Detective Harry Bosch books are police procedurals. Connelly gets into Haller’s brain and… Read More >>

If you think your family is weird, dysfunctional or both, you’ll want to pick up Kevin Wilson’s novel, The Family Fang. For nearly their entire lives, Child A and Child B—that is, Annie and Buster Fang—have willingly played their parts in the bizarre performance art pieces dreamed up by their parents, Camille and Caleb. The elaborate hoaxes occur in public… Read More >>

You might not expect the autobiography of a Liberian political activist to be a page-turner, but it is one—and that's because Leymah Gbowee's story is as riveting as a can't-put-down novel. An average teenager when her country was torn apart by civil war, Gbowee found herself fleeing violence on the streets and, after having children with an abusive… Read More >>

Jeffery Deaver reboots the James Bond franchise. keeping all the adventure, the romance and, of course, the license to kill. Deaver makes James Bond his own, first, by scrupulous attention to detail. His James Bond is absolutely Ian Fleming’s James Bond; Deaver has absorbed the canon and been completely true to it, even as he’s modernized it. But at… Read More >>