"Witnessing these two families as they commingle and clash is an utterly engrossing, often heartbreaking, deeply empathetic experience. ... Its this vast and complex network of moral affiliations -- and the nuanced omniscient voice that Ng employs to navigate it -- that make this novel even more ambitious and accomplished than her debut. ... It is a thrillingly democratic use of omniscience, and, for a novel about class, race, family and the dangers of the status quo, brilliantly apt." -- The New York Times

Mbue is a wonderful writer with an uncanny ear for dialogue -- there are no false notes here, no narrative shortcuts, and certainly no manufactured happy endings. Its a novel that depicts a country both blessed and doomed, on top of the world, but always at risk of losing its balance. It is, in other words, quintessentially American.-- NPR

A Little Life asks serious questions about humanism and euthanasia and psychiatry and any number of the partis pris of modern western life. ... A devastating read that will leave your heart, like the Grinchs, a few sizes larger. -- The Guardian

"Groffs story of a marriage in which neither partner truly understands the other uses a sophisticated technique to tell its simple story, subverting our expectations with a two-voice counterpoint as meaningful as it is dazzling. -- Time magazine

Though Thomass story is heartbreakingly topical, its greatest strength is in its authentic depiction of a teenage girl, her loving family, and her attempts to reconcile what she knows to be true about their lives with the way those lives are depicted -- and completely undervalued -- by society at large. -- Publishers Weekly

"[Her Body and Other Parties is] a vibrant collection that presents women in their vulnerabilities and strengths in relationships with men, in relationships with other women, and in reflection upon their own bodies as they sort through the social conventions that have long stifled their full expression of self. -- The Seattle Review of Books

"After two half sisters are separated, we follow their family lines over the course of two centuries through a series of short stories. Some of their descendants are in Africa, some are in America; some are free, some are enslaved. In the end, the two separate family sagas merge into one, back in the place where it all began." -- NPR

"A vivid, immediate dispatch from the front lines of mortality and a record of a life by someone who wasn't done living yet. But there is nothing maudlin about it ... her warm portraits of each of [the members of her closest circle] are a large part of the book's emotional power. So is something we don't notice fully until it's gone: the strength and clarity of Riggs's voice, which never faded on the page, and which we won't get to hear again." -- Boston Globe

"With essays such as 'A Starlet's Confessions,' which tackles Hollywood's idea of beauty, and 'How to Get Your Own Show (And Nearly Die of Anxiety),' addressing the troubled course of her sitcom, Kaling once again applies humor and pop-culture savvy to topics like body image, career and finding love." -- Los Angeles Times

"Loss is the black hole at the centre of Ariel Levys maelstrom of a memoir. The events of her life surge around this absence, and loss is the centrifugal force -- not just loss of love (though love goes), or of hope, though that too, but loss of her sense of self as a ceaseless, marvellous act of becoming." -- The Guardian

"A poetic, bittersweet meditation on faith, family, and belonging, Lila embraces the depths of human doubt and misery while uncovering hope through the power of grace." -- HuffPost

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichies fourth book, Americanah, is so smart about so many subjects that to call it a novel about being black in the 21st century doesnt even begin to convey its luxurious heft and scope. Americanah is indeed a novel about being black in the 21st century in America, Great Britain and Africa, while answering a want ad, choosing a lover, hailing a cab, eating collard greens, watching Barack Obama on television but you could also call it a novel of immigration and dislocation, just about every page tinged with faint loneliness. NPR

"Not all works of history have something to say so directly to the present, but Heather Ann Thompsons Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy, which deals with racial conflict, mass incarceration, police brutality and dissembling politicians, reads like it was special-ordered for the sweltering summer of 2016. But theres nothing partisan or argumentative about Blood in the Water. The power of this superb work of history comes from its methodical mastery of interviews, transcripts, police reports and other documents, covering 35 years, many released only reluctantly by government agencies. ... Its Ms. Thompsons achievement, in this remarkable book, to make us understand why this one group of prisoners [rebelled], and how many others shared the cost. -- The New York Times

"Nadja Spiegelman has written a memoir of a mother she thought she knew, which resonates through the recollections of the grandmother she might have misunderstood." -- NPR

"With simple honesty, the author brings readers into the world of transgender identity, of what it meant and felt like to be born and thought of as a boy, only to know deep inside that she was not that boy. From learning her father was addicted to crack to the childhood sexual abuse she sustained to the street sex she performed to gain enough money for her sex-change operation, Mock allows readers into the deepest and darkest moments of her life." -- Kirkus Reviews

"Moshfeghs fiction is nothing if not distinctive. As in her debut novel, Eileen, the narrators of the 14 stories in Homesick for Another World are gloomy, narcissistic and self-pitying. Their lives are claustrophobic and squalid. Theyre constantly squeezing their acne, having sex with people they despise, eating candy and drinking until theyre sick, developing meth addictions just for kicks, and always feeling slightly superior to their own surroundings despite their listless lives. They crave adoration, but look on anyone who gives it to them with contempt." -- HuffPost

"The unknown Americans of Cristina Henrquez's novel are Hispanic tenants of a run-down apartment building in a down-at-heel Delaware town. In particular, the novel centres on Maribel Rivera, a teenage girl with a severe brain injury. Her parents have left a comfortable life in Mexico, hoping that American special-needs education will restore their only child to her former self. The story of the poverty and isolation they find is told from two points of view: that of Maribel's mother, Alma, and of Mayor, a lonely neighbour boy who falls in love with Maribel." -- The Guardian

So groundbreaking is Rankine's work that it's almost impossible to describe; suffice it to say that this is a poem that reads like an essay (or the other way around) -- a piece of writing that invents a new form for itself, incorporating pictures, slogans, social commentary and the most piercing and affecting revelations to evoke the intersection of inner and outer life. -- Los Angeles Times

Solnit tackles big themes of gender and power in these accessible essays. Honest and full of wit, this is an integral read that furthers the conversation on feminism and contemporary society. -- San Francisco Chronicle

"Marlenas vivid portrait of a friendship between two teenage girls in a troubled community one who made it out, and one who didnt viscerally captures the sensations and heartaches of adolescence." -- HuffPost

"If you read The Mothers, you will learn a lot. You will learn what its like to experience a mother-shaped absence at the center of your life, as well as what its like to feel your mothers hot, judgmental breath on your shoulder every second. Youll learn that men, even when they do the wrong thing again and again, have feelings about babies born and unborn. Youll learn that rigidly cruel actions have roots in sad, earned wisdom. And youll learn that Brit Bennett is a writer to watch." -- The Washington Post

[Ferrantes Neapolitan Novels] dont merely offer a teeming vision of working-class Naples, with its cobblers and professors, communists and mobbed-up businessmen, womanizing poets and downtrodden wives; they present one of modern fictions richest portraits of a friendship. -- NPR

"Reckoning with the past leads to a more fully realized present. The novel is a sensitive and subtle exploration of the experience of gender nonconformity across cultures. Though Ella emerges as the most changed character, this is more than her story -- it's a transcontinental, transgenerational tale of a family and its secrets." -- Kirkus Reviews

"While the magical element is new in Wards fiction, her allusiveness, anchored in her interest in the politics of race, has been pointing in this direction all along. It takes a touch of the spiritual to speak across chasms of age, class, and color. ... The signal characteristic of Wards prose is its lyricism. 'Im a failed poet,' she has said. The length and music of Wards sentences owe much to her love of catalogues, extended similes, imagistic fragments, and emphasis by way of repetition. ... The effect, intensified by use of the present tense, can be hypnotic." -- The New Yorker

"At once a suspenseful novel of noir intrigue, a gorgeously wrought and richly allusive literary tapestry, and a transporting work of lyrical beauty and emotional heft, Manhattan Beach is a magnificent achievement. -- Boston Globe

"Laceys debut novel has emotional power, depth, and subtle humor. The protagonist, Elyria, makes the impulsive decision to leave her luxurious New York City apartment, her husband, her job as a scriptwriter for soap operas, and, most importantly, the charade of happiness she has kept up since her sisters suicide. Elyria decides to take a trip to New Zealand, after going to a party and meeting Werner, a successful novelist who said she could stay at his cottage there. ... Lacey rejects the typical dramatic trajectory of a self-discovery story. Instead, she keenly constructs a believable universe composed not of disasters or miracles, but of choices and consequences." -- Publishers Weekly

"Debut author Honeyman expertly captures a woman whose inner pain is excruciating and whose face and heart are scarred, but who still holds the capacity to love and be loved. Eleanors story will move readers." -- Publishers Weekly

"Building upon the promise of White Teeth, written almost two decades ago, Zadie Smiths Swing Time boldly reimagines the classically English preoccupation with class and status for a new era -- in which race, gender, and the strange distortions of contemporary celebrity meet on a global stage. ... No detail feels extraneous, least of all the books resonant motif, the sankofa bird, with its backward-arching neck -- suggestive less of a dancer than of an author, looking to her origins to understand the path ahead. -- Vogue

"[Jamison] combines the intellectual rigor of a philosopher, the imagination of a novelist and a reporter's keen eye for detail in these essays, which seamlessly blend reportage, cultural criticism, theory and memoir. Los Angeles Times

"In The Dark Dark, Samantha Hunt has a knack for capturing the mundane, and more often painful or disgusting, inner thoughts of a woman -- the fleeting fixations that haunt the body of the so-called fairer sex. ... Hunts short stories -- like the one involving an act of infidelity so banal but strange it resurrects a dead dog; or the one that ends with a husband and wife, newly transformed into deer, parting ways from each other on four legs -- are filled with bits of speculative horror that hit acutely close to home." -- HuffPost

"At a time when there is no shortage of recommendations for women on how to discipline or make peace with their bodies, Roxane Gays book, Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body, stands out precisely because she begins it by declaring that she hasnt overcome her 'unruly body and unruly appetites.'" -- The Atlantic

Claire Messuds fourth novel is that rare work of fiction seemingly destined to become a cultural benchmark, a byword even. It provides an indelible label for a member of society (and a long recurring figure in literature) who has somehow been confined to anonymity. Ms. Messuds coinage -- the Woman Upstairs -- is so broadly defining and so necessary that even those who never read the novel may soon find themselves making unwitting use of it. -- The Wall Street Journal

"After an efficient strain of the flu wipes out civilization in a handful of days (fevers, air travel, overcrowded hospitals, clogged highways, silence), the survivors, mostly huddled into small 'cities' of 100 people or less, face struggles similar to those they encountered pre-apocalypse: In addition to warding off predators, they squabble over living spaces, question their childrens education and debate the quality of different artistic mediums." -- HuffPost

"My Life on the Road, Ms. Steinems first book in more than twenty years, is a warmly companionable look back at nearly five decades as itinerant feminist organizer and standard-bearer. If youve ever wondered what it might be like to sit down with Ms. Steinem for a casual dinner, this disarmingly intimate book gives a pretty good idea, mixing hard-won pragmatic lessons with more inspirational insights. -- The New York Times

"Spanning nearly 100 years and moving from Korea at the start of the 20th century to pre- and postwar Osaka and, finally, Tokyo and Yokohama, the novel reads like a long, intimate hymn to the struggles of people in a foreign land. Min Jin Lee meticulously reconstructs the relatively overlooked history of the large ethnic-Korean community in Japan, referred to as zainichi, whose perpetual status as outsiders obliges them, like Noas nephew Solomo in the novel, to renew their alien registration card every three years: a state of administrative limbo that mirrors their divided identities and condemns them to the role of the perpetual outsider." -- The Guardian