Intemperance

by Sonora Jha

In her third novel, Intemperance, Sonora Jha (Foreign; The Laughter) crafts an ingenious and triumphant story of a "pathbreaking feminist sociologist," as her 28-year-old son, Karan, puts it, who wants to be married for a third time.

The unnamed narrator will turn 55 years old in five weeks. She has chosen this date for her swayamvar, a Hindu ceremony in which a woman of upper-class status chooses her husband from a group of eligible suitors. She will design a feat for them to compete at, and--on

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Art on Fire

by Yun Ko-eun, trans. by Lizzie Buehler

After exposing global voyeurism in The Disaster Tourist (2020), award-winning Korean writer Yun Ko-eun, with agile translator Lizzie Buehler, skillfully skewers the art industry in Art on Fire. Nine years ago, the photo Canyon Proposal transformed the art world when the photographer was revealed to be canine--a Papillon named Robert. The photo caught the late daughter of octogenarian businessman Mr Waldmann, who invites Robert to his Palm Springs, Calif., villa, where Robert becomes a "permanent

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A Sea of Lemon Trees: The Corrido of Roberto Alvarez

by María Dolores Águila

The lyrical middle-grade novel-in-verse A Sea of Lemon Trees: The Corrido of Roberto Alvarez by María Dolores Águila (Barrio Rising) is based on the true story of the Lemon Grove Incident, when a boy and his California community fought against the forced segregation of Mexican students during the Great Depression. This National Book Award longlisted title is both a history lesson and a spotlight on a century of advocacy by the Latino community in the United States.

Twelve-year-old Roberto Alvarez

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If Looks Could Kill

by Julie Berry

Printz Honor author Julie Berry proved her skill at high-concept historical fiction with mythological elements in her 2019 novel, Lovely War. She ups the ante with If Looks Could Kill, which ponders what might have happened if Jack the Ripper had encountered Medusa.

It's 1888, and Francis Twomblety--a real Ripper suspect, as Berry's copious back matter reveals--has fled London for New York City's Bowery neighborhood. Also recently arrived to the neighborhood are Tabitha Woodward and Pearl Davenport, recruits

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Joyride: A Memoir

by Susan Orlean

When Susan Orlean chose the title for her memoir, it wasn't merely an apt description of the "joyride of a life" she's lived as a journalist for nearly 50 years. It also teases the pleasure her readers will derive from a book that illuminates her fascinating career while serving as a textbook of sorts for anyone eager to look behind the scenes at a highly accomplished writer's craft.

For Orlean, the drive to write has always seemed as elemental as the need to eat or sleep. After graduating from the University

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The Phoebe Variations

by Jane Hamilton

Jane Hamilton blends dark comedy and high drama in her marvelous eighth novel, The Phoebe Variations. The story is narrated by a woman in her 60s, reflecting on her younger self's eagerness to shed her old life and the pivotal events that spectacularly derailed her senior year of high school.

When readers meet 17-year-old Phoebe in 1974, she is a piano prodigy who is "in love with several of the dead composers." She lives with her adoptive mother, Greta, outside Chicago. Hamilton (A Map of the World) has a

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