The real drama in Lara Prior-Palmer's memoir is the interplay of power and powerlessness; she is at once dominant and entirely at the mercy of the horse, the weather, the landscape and the reader.

If Melinda Gates had fully owned her goal — writing a book that would strengthen some readers' abortion-rights convictions and open others' minds — she would have called for greater advocacy.

Duanwad Pimwana is one of Thailand's preeminent female writers, and this newly translated story collection — while not uniformly flawless — lets readers watch her grow into a true master of the form.

María Gainza's protagonist — also named María — combines the her experiences of art with her personal experiences for an unpretentious, imaginative and compelling account of her life.

Erin Lee Carr's memoir about her relationship with her dad, David Carr, provokes gratitude and empathy — but she fails to investigate herself with the rigor she brings to her own journalism.

Miriam Toews' new novel follows a group of women in an isolated religious colony as they struggle to reconcile their faith with a series of horrific sexual assaults committed by the colony's men.

Leanne Shapton's new short story collection feels like walking through an art gallery, each piece linked in ways that are ineffable but clear. And many sections use artwork, including Shapton's own.

For half a decade, Matti Friedman has been working hard, and publicly, to dispel easy narratives about Israel. In his book about four spies, he aims to show that Israel is "more than one thing."

Sara Gran's first novel, now reissued, takes an astrological concept as the jumping-off point for a messy, prickly, realistic depiction of a difficult year in a young woman's life.

Sharma Shields' new novel follows a young woman working at a secretive nuclear research center during World War II. She has terrible premonitions of atomic disaster, but never truly thinks about them.

Akiko Busch sets out to argue against visibility, "the common currency of our time." But she neglects to expose why she dislikes social media and networked culture.

Roberto Bolaño's early novel, about the adventures of two young Chilean writers fleeing the Pinochet dictatorship, reads like a dress rehearsal for his masterwork The Savage Detectives.

Author Hanif Abdurraqib has a seemingly limitless capacity to share what moves him and to invite the reader in: His love for these music-makers is contagious, even when it breaks his heart.

Kristin Roupenian went viral with her New Yorker short story "Cat Person." And that story is in her new collection, but she goes much further, with genre switches, shock endings, even a fairy tale.

Michael Muhammad Knight's new book on the religious figure is designed to seduce, educate, and irritate its audience into curiosity about Islam and Muhammad — and on all three fronts it succeeds.

Cuban writer Wendy Guerra has lived under surveillance in her home country, and she works that experience into her intense new novel about a young poet in Havana whose success causes trouble.

"If we fail to take the simple steps to remember and understand our dreams, we are throwing away a gift from our brains without bothering to open it," writes Alice Robb.

Marci Vogel's new novella spans a year in the life of April, a young woman blindsided by loss. It's the perfect length for a story, and the perfect balance of humor, anger, sorrow and beauty.

The Uruguayan writer Armonía Somers was part of a generation of talented artists — but she stood out, so wild, surreal and uncompromising that she scared critics and other authors alike.

Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah's intellectually hefty debut works through ideas about racism, about classism and capitalism, about the apocalypse, and, most of all, about the corrosive power of belief.