Heller McAlpin

Michael Cunningham's Day joins a new wave of pandemic novels, including Ann Patchett's Tom Lake, Chris Bachelder and Jennifer Habel's Dayswork, and Sigrid Nunez's The Vulnerables.

Talk about a dream, kill a conversation. But not in the case of graphic novelist Roz Chast. Even her subconscious emanations present deliciously skewed takes on life's absurdities and fraught moments.

The writer W. Somerset Maugham plays a central role Tan Twan Eng's entrancing new novel that encompasses at-the-time risky interracial and homosexual love stories and a scandalous murder trial.

In her return to short stories, the Interpreter of Maladies author returns to fiction that powerfully conveys her characters' efforts to navigate geography and culture to find a place in the world.

Lydia Davis' focus has shifted largely from issues of parenting and domestic relationships to aspects of aging — but the results are as penetrating as anything she's written.

Daniel Mason's gorgeous fifth novel tells of a yellow house deep in the woods of western Massachusetts — and its motley succession of occupants who leave their mark on the property.

Most novels set in bookshops are heartwarming paeans to bonds forged among readers. The Door-to-Door Bookstore by Carsten Henn and Days at the Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagisawa are no exception.

Ellis' latest collection is full of hilarious, off-the-wall personal — and, at times, intimate — essays about home life and marriage.

We've seen jealous, possessive friends and housewreckers with no boundaries before, though perhaps not quite so thoroughly, unapologetically unlikeable as in Ore Agbaje-Williams's debut novel.

Max Porter's compulsively readable primal scream of a novel offers a compassionate portrait of boy jerked around by uncontrollable mood swings that lead to self-sabotaging decisions.

Literary editor Will Schwalbe's new book is a tale about connecting across divides — which is particularly heartening in our polarized culture.

Patrick Bringley's story — he jumped off the career ladder, deliberately taking a position divorced from ambition in order to find the space for quiet contemplation — is oddly suited to our times.

The New Yorker writer's posthumously published quasi-memoir is succinct and thought-provoking — and manages to capture so much of what made her so unfailingly interesting.

In Jane Smiley's latest novel, inspired by Edgar Allan Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," characters Eliza and Jean are determined to figure out who killed their missing colleagues.

This year's selection of visual delights highlights the work of artists and designers who have made an enduring impact, including Lucian Freud, Elsa Schiaparelli and Patti Smith.

Three new art books feature female subjects of every shape and hue from all over the world, doing the things that women have historically done — and also the things that men have historically done.

Atypical of inspirational weight-loss books, Fatty Fatty Boom Boom by Rabia Chaudry — an advocate of Serial podcast subject Adnan Syed — is a love letter to the author's native cuisine.

More than most books four times its size, Foster does several of the things we ask of great literature: It expands our world, diverting our attention outward, and it opens up our hearts and minds.

Elizabeth McCracken promised her mom she'd never write about her. But this work of fiction strives to conjure her up in order to prevent her from "evanescing."

Elizabeth Strout's latest is a chronicle of a plague year — and also of the main character's growing insights into herself, her family, and their changing relationships during this period.