Made-Up Books

Edward P. Jones sets the stories in this collection (and in his second, All Aunt Hagar's Children) in the streets and buildings of Washington, D.C., with an almost obsessive geographical exactitude, b... (Tom)

A Hanging at Cinder Bottom opens in the town of Keystone, West Virginia, in 1910, with Abe Baach, the town's most skilled card player, and Goldie Toothman, the graceful madam of the local brothel, hea... (Laura)

The first rule of Bridge, Tab, and Em's club: no fighting. But as they enter seventh grade, Em has developed curvy new curves, Tab has a newfound interest in social justice, and Bridge has a pair of f... (Tom)

Wow, this book just jumps off the shelf! The Day-Glo realism of surf-dad Gorman's illustrations explode his simple, boldface story of paddling, falling, and persevering into something unlike anything... (Tom)

There was a time (the early '90s, specifically) when there were few things more exciting than seeing a new issue of Eightball on the racks at Fallout Records & Comics. There were lots of artists r... (Tom)

Okay, let's actually do an old Old Book this week, from an old favorite of mine, the master of doom himself, Thomas Hardy. Why do we (or at least I) enjoy stories where bad things happen to good peopl... (Tom)

What Pet Should I Get? is, unmistakably, a Dr. Seuss book, from its eyelashed fish and oddly antlered beasts to its headlong monosyllabic rhythm, and for that alone it's comfortable and endearing. But... (Tom)

You know how sometimes the only thing that will hit the spot is an episode or twelve of Law & Order? Well, these stories, by a lawyer and bestselling author in Germany, satisfy in a similar way. L... (Liz)

Harry Potter is a good guy, without question. So are Pippi, Percy, and (it seems) all the other heroes for middle readers. And the evil they fight is unequivocal too. So it's refreshing to read a stor... (Laura)

If you liked Ready Player One, prepare to like Armada. Ernest Cline has done it again, creating a great book filled with action, funny moments, and all of the nerdiness that we love so much. Ready Pla... (Peter)

Who is the brilliant friend? Is it Lila, the narrator's mercurial pal, sharp of elbow and tongue, who can do anything she sets her mind to in their poor neighborhood in postwar Naples (where not many... (Tom)

Well, here's a book unlike any other. Ernest Shackleton's heroic failure to cross Antarctica has drawn many chroniclers, but none like William Grill, a young illustrator who just won the Greenaway Med... (Tom)

The Story of an New Name (Book 2) The new name is Lila's (her wedding at the end of book one makes her Signora Carracci), but the story of this book, on the surface at least, is Elena's, as Lila, so d... (Tom)

It's wondrous enough when a child realizes that he or she has a past—"When I was a little kid," the little kid says—but with a slight twist, this simple tale adds to the wonder. Every night, Henry's f... (Tom)

It's hard to recommend a book you think has flaws. As soon as I express ambivalence, I can see people turn their attention elsewhere. And why not? There are so many good books in the world. The Dog qu... (Tom)

"Rad" as in "radical," or "rad" as in "cool"? How about both? With woodcut portraits and short, lively biographies, Schatz and Stahl profile twenty-six activists (E is for Ella Baker), artists (P is f... (Tom)

Oh, good gravy, what a gorgeous and gigantic book. If you're like me, and grew up with Drawn & Quarterly, the scrappy Montreal comics publisher that along with Seattle's own Fantagraphics has led... (Tom)

The greatness of Fitzgerald's third novel (published, like all her others, after she turned 60) lies in its modesty. Its characters live, literally, on the margins, in a small group of leaky barges on... (Tom)

A customer request tipped me off to this webcomic-turned-book, and I think it might find a lot more fans, young and old. Orientation is an apt title for this first volume, as its two intrepid girl her... (Tom)

The other day a customer was nearly jumping up and down in happiness that we had a copy of Scranimals in stock, and I was nearly as excited that there was someone else who loved the book as much as we... (Tom)

It was not my plan to get sucked into an 861-page book the past couple of weeks, but when I read the first line of Seveneves—"The moon blew up with no warning and for no apparent reason"—my head was t... (Tom)

Miéville's best known as a baroque and endlessly inventive fantasist, but in this novel he harnesses his imagination to the rules and the spare language of a police procedural, which he turns inside-o... (Tom)

There is no red-haired girl strong enough to lift a horse in Astrid Lindgren's Seacrow Island, but fans of Lindgren's Pippi Longstocking will still recognize her appealingly anarchic outlook in this s... (Tom)

Let's be clear: this book is not for everybody, perhaps not even for many of the readers who loved DeWitt's fantastic debut novel, The Last Samurai (which, inexplicably, has gone out of print). That b... (Tom)

The Rise of David Levinsky, if it's read at all these days, almost a century after it was written, is usually examined for sociological and historical evidence of Jewish immigrant life at the turn of... (Tom)

Our Phinney neighbor Sanae Ishida's debut picture book stars a little ninja so adorable she might almost be a Teletubby. But that doesn't mean she can't wield a throwing star or nunchucks once she lea... (Tom)

There's no shortage of fact books on animals for kids—especially yucky and/or scary animals—but there's something about We Dig Worms! that stands out. Maybe it's the kids'-eye view, asking the things... (Tom)

I admit that when I open a book and find it has no dialogue, I feel like I'm a sixth grader all over again, made to read A Tale of Two Cities against my will (it took me a long time to learn to love D... (Laura)

Nathan Hale's Hazardous Tales: The Underground Abductor With all their magic wonderlands and scary dystopias, I sometimes despair that my kids will ever be interested in actual History. So I'm a littl... (Liz)

"Terse and exact about the work they do," as his many admirers know, describes the fiction of James Salter too (although The Dig makes even Salter seem a little gabby!). He's better known for his late... (Tom)

Any fan of S Is for Salmon, one of our favorite picture books last year, will immediately recognize Hannah Viano's distinctive papercut style in her new book. Arrow to Alaska is a story for slightly o... (Tom)

His author bio says Cynan Jones has published, along with his novels, a "retelling of a medieval Welsh myth," which isn't surprising after reading The Dig. It has the fatalistic momentum of myth or fa... (Tom)

Our Phinney by Post picks have gotten an excellent response so far, and I sure hope that extends to #4, but we'll see. It's a book so self-serious that it skirts the edge of parody, told in sternly fo... (Tom)

Noggin is the most absurd realistic-fiction book ever written. A 16-year-old boy wakes up after a full head transplant only to realize all his friends have grown up and moved on. As he gets accustomed... (Henry)

Sometimes a book sits on your shelf for years before you find the key to open it. I've grown more interested in Bishop as I've learned more about her over the years, but it was only Toíbín's friendly... (Tom)

Whether you're a last-minute Easter shopper, or just a lover of the bright and delightful, this new picture book by Seattle writer and illustrator Julie Paschkis is nearly impossible not to pick up an... (Tom)

I've generally been immune to Richard Powers's novels: for a time I tried almost every one, intrigued by their premises, but found myself left cold by their earnest brilliance. But my searching stoppe... (Tom)

I like the book Wildwood by Colin Meloy because it is a book of never-ending adventure, starting when Prue McKeel's brother is abducted by a murder of crows, and spiraling into a long-lasting baby hun... (Sada)

The title of this 1964 picture book (just brought back into print by—of course—NYRB Classics) may be the greatest in the history of publishing—how could you not want to read about its hero's oddly spe... (Tom)

It's not easy to be funny for 300 pages, but Paul Beatty pulls it off in this topsy-turvy, never-know-which-way-is-up satire, which leaves you no comfortable ground on which to rest, least of all the... (Tom)

As I was becoming comfortably immersed in high-society, pre-WWI Europe in Bedford's 1956 novel, just republished by NYRB Classics, I began to sense an ominous undercurrent: time seemed to be speeding... (Liz)

You don't need to know that Carson Ellis is the hip Portland illustrator for the Wildwood series and the band the Decembrists to appreciate her delightful solo picture book debut. Beginning with the m... (Tom)

Johnson's debut novel starts like a (really well-written) sitcom, when four freshmen at "Berzerkeley" meet at a party: a white woman (who occasionally claims to be Native American) and three guys (a w... (Laura)

I'm not sure of all the artistic and/or contractual reasons why Richard Price wrote his latest novel under (or, rather, as the cover has it, over) a pen name, but any Price fan will be glad to hear th... (Tom)

Kids' Books of the Week Red: A Crayon's Story by Michael Hall I Don't Want to Be a Frog by Dev Petty and Mike Boldt You are what you are. Or are you? I sat down with these two appealing new picture bo... (Tom)

Kids' Books of the Week Red: A Crayon's Story by Michael Hall I Don't Want to Be a Frog by Dev Petty and Mike Boldt You are what you are. Or are you? I sat down with these two appealing new picture bo... (Tom)

What do you call what Kelly Link does? She takes a story that at first seems to follow the usual rules of realism, and turns it slightly—and then not so slightly—toward the strange, the magical, the f... (Tom)

In this heart-wrenching, pulse-pounding story of a brother and sister evacuated from London to the countryside during World War II, Bradley's storytelling is pitch-perfect: she reveals Ada's feelings,... (Liz)

I'll read anything Rachel Cusk writes. I've long admired her intelligence and her sure-footed style, and the way she will break the surface of her stories and demand you ponder something big and abstr... (Liz)

Imagine the future Ada Lovelace, the first computer programmer, as an 11-year-old Sherlock Holmes, with the future Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein, as her 14-year-old Watson (and the young Charle... (Tom)