Annalisa Quinn

Curtis Sittenfeld's new collection gives sustained, compassionate attention to the inner lives of women — middle-aged, middle-American, moms — who are often dismissed and devalued in fiction.

Memoirs now tend toward the unique and superhuman, recounting experiences most of us will never have. But Meaghan O'Connell's wry new book is brutally honest about something commonplace: pregnancy.

Madeleine Miller's lush, gold-lit new novel is told from the perspective of Circe, the sorceress whose brief appearance in the Odyssey becomes just one moment in a longer, more complex life.

Author Leslie Jamison's new memoir of her years of alcoholism walks in the paths of drunken icons like Raymond Carver and John Cheever, describing the effects of intoxicants with gorgeous, exact care.

At the start of Meg Wolitzer's new novel, a young woman is groped at a fraternity party — and her question, "Why is it like this, and what are we supposed to do about it?" echoes through the book.

Alissa Nutting's new novel has a deviant instinct that makes it fascinating at first — but after a promising start, it falls back on shallow sex slapstick rather than authorial skill.

Anne Helen Petersen's new book is a thoughtful consideration of several public women — from Nicki Minaj to Hillary Clinton — who've run up against the invisible expectations our culture has of them.

Sarah Perry's historical novel is gloriously alive, teeming with bugs, moss and marsh, unconventional spirits and a darker undercurrent of fear about a legendary monster haunting the Essex coast.

David Sedaris is great company in this new collected volume of his diaries. He buries emotions deep, but describes the world around him (and his love for IHOP) in chaotic and delightful fashion.

Patricia Lockwood's scabrous memoir of growing up with a married Catholic priest for a father is a little overreliant on quirky family details, but scorching in its approach to the Catholic Church.

Ivanka Trump's new book — named after her brand's marketing campaign — is packed with anodyne advice borrowed from others, and a striking lack of awareness about economic and racial realities.

Deb Olin Unferth's story collection delights in going in unexpected directions, and her sensitively-drawn characters feel the full, real, often contradictory and uneasy layering of human emotion.

Jean Hanff Korelitz's latest is set at a tony New England college rocked by racial unrest. It's a suggestive exploration of tough issues, but lacks the nuance and intellect of the best campus novels.

Elif Batuman has sung the praises of "long novels, pointless novels," and she puts her money where her mouth is with The Idiot, a tale of youthful confusion that can be both boring and beautiful.

Jamie Attenberg's newest novel follows a woman living her life unapologetically, and on her own terms. But that kind of life can is not necessarily a good one.

Katie Kitamura's new novel follows an unnamed narrator who tails her estranged, disappeared husband to Greece — while keeping the ominous surroundings and disquieting emotions at a cool remove.

Reporter Claudia Rowe documents her fascination with serial killer Kendall Francois in The Spider and the Fly — but the book focuses on Rowe's thoughts and needs at the expense of the victims.

In Han Kang's sharp, almost painfully sensitive new novel, set during and after South Korea's 1980 Gwangju student uprising, people spill blood — but they also brave death to donate it.

Aravind Adiga's new novel centers on Manju, a boy from Mumbai, and his tyrannical father, who wants just one thing: To raise the world's best cricketers. But what does Manju want for himself?

Matt Fraction and Christian Ward's splendidly trippy, genderbent retelling of the Odyssey sets the story in space, as warlike Odyssia, "witchjack and wanderer" winds her way home to far Ithicaa.