Made-Up Books

If you've seen Miranda July's movies or read her story collection, No One Belongs Here More Than You, you might have an idea of what to expect from her first novel. But otherwise, how to explain Miran... (Tom)

At first I was just smitten with the title, and imagined what story inside could live up to it. Unsurprisingly, a word-drunk one. After all, September, the thoroughly admirable girl of the title, "lik... (Tom)

Preparation for the Next Life is very much about this life, as lived in the blind tunnel of poverty and illegality traveled by Zou Lei, a young Uighur woman who has made her way from western China, vi... (Tom)

What kid doesn't have a 13-floor treehouse in his or her head, featuring a man-eating shark tank, a lemonade fountain, a giant catapult, and plenty more? Griffiths (the writer) and Denton (the drawer)... (Tom)

I first heard about It's Useful to Have a Duck when Mac Barnett (author of former Kids' Book of the Week Sam and Dave Dig a Hole) called it "a perfect board book," so I brought it in the store, and it... (Tom)

The stories in this book were written a half-century ago, and in a preface he wrote for them halfway between then and now their author was surprised even then that they were still being read, survivin... (Tom)

[The story of an 11-year-old foodie who becomes a secret restaurant reviewer] This book is a great book if you love food ... or if you don't. It's realistic fiction. It's light and funny but you won't... (Henry)

To say almost anything about the new William Gibson novel would be a spoiler, since a big part of the fun of reading him is orienting yourself in the world he's dropped you into and mapping out its ex... (Tom)

You can't tell from the photo, but Animalium is huge, as big as previous newsletter favorite Maps (it's from the same publisher, the well-named Big Picture). But while Maps brings a doodly whimsy to i... (Tom)

Dash Shaw is willing to bewilder you. His comics layer images and stories in a dream logic that I find helpful to approach with a wide-eyed openness. And when they've worked for me—as his new one, Doc... (Tom)

Yup, that's pretty much what Sam and Dave do: dig and dig (with breaks for chocolate milk and animal cookies), hoping to find something spectacular. They do indeed, but the real fun of the book comes... (Tom)

Let's just get going with some of the sentences: (Tom)

After their Costa Award-winning Dotter of Her Father's EyesM/em>, Mary and Bryan Talbot have collaborated with Kate Charlesworth for an exhilarating look at the fight for women's suffrage in Britain a... (Liz)

No Nobel Prize again for Philip Roth? No matter. You can still read him, and if you haven't before, you might start here. I've loved, variously, Goodbye, Columbus, The Counterlife, Operation Shylock,... (Tom)

You may have read Alec Wilkinson's New Yorker profile this summer of his friend Edward Hirsch and the long poem he'd written about the death of his son, Gabriel. The poem came out last month, and it's... (Tom)

Is A Moose Boosh a kids' book? A food book? An art book? A poetry book? I'm not sure where in the store to put it, so for a while I'll keep it on our front counter, because it's just the sort of exube... (Tom)

Robinson's second novel, Gilead, took the form of a letter written by an elderly preacher to his young son, the fruit of a late and utterly unexpected marriage to a much younger woman named Lila, and... (Tom)

Was it a blessing or a curse that Walter Tevis's first two novels, The Hustler and The Man Who Fell to Earth, were turned into memorable movies? He didn't publish again for nearly two decades, but lat... (Tom)

I recommend this delightful book with a warning: it may threaten the most blissful hours any new parent has—nap time. What (Tom)

As anyone who walks into Phinney Books can see, I am very fond of the NYRB Classics series. There are a dozen or two NYRBs I could (and likely will at some point) choose as an Old Book of Week, but Ro... (Tom)

YA Book of the Week More Than This by Patrick Ness More Than This opens in the last, few precious moments of a life. How can there be more than this? Oh, but there is! A boy wakes up after he was cert... (Leighanne)

In the fine American tradition of Tom Sawyer and the Great Brain, meet Harris, nine years old and full of spit, foul language, and half-baked ideas for making life on the farm a little less dull. Paul... (Tom)

"There's only two times in a restaurant," Marie learns before her first shift at the Olive Garden, "before and after." In between, you just white-knuckle it until your last table is cleared. You might... (Tom)

Whether your house has a dog or a cat—or better yet, both—you and your young readers will appreciate Gall's new picture book, which finds the sitcom-worthy setup—an odd couple forced to become roommat... (Tom)

If you let go of your expectations of a thriller plot from Caught's thriller premise—a young man, caught smuggling pot by boat into Newfoundland four years ago, escapes from prison and makes his way w... (Tom)

Through the Woods is a kids' book in the same way that Grimm's original fairy tales are: murderously bloody and almost gleefully unsettling. Carroll (another Canadian!) makes her book-length debut wit... (Tom)

As with Caught, the most dramatic element of Winter's novel—a tragic mishap among military contractors in Afghanistan—is almost a red herring, setting the stage for a story back home in Newfoundland t... (Tom)

Leaving the Atocha Station, poet Ben Lerner's first novel, became an unlikely hit (by literary standards) in 2011, an event that's now part of the story of his second novel, 10:04, which (like his fir... (Tom)

An archeologist discovers the ancient body of a small woman buried deep in the earth of a remote British island. A young reporter, seeking answers, meets the love of his life on that same island, year... (Leighanne)

The rest of the book's pretty great too, but Milo's right—the part where she ets the pudding is the best. (Unsigned)

Fi-Fi, Foo-Foo, Ooh-La-La, and Gaston: Mrs. Poodle's new puppies, one of whom--guess who?--doesn't look quite like the others. In fact, he looks rather bulldogish, which becomes particularly interesti... (Tom)

Your Face in Mine begins with the narrator's encounter with an old friend transformed: a white man who has become, through surgery and chemistry, a black man. It's the old Black Like Me premise, but R...

Ever since I read an advance copy of The Narrow Road to the Deep North a couple of months ago I've been looking forward to telling you how good it is. I'll be surprised if I read a better book this ye... (Tom)

"It's the books that have the power, but a good bookstore will influence what a person chooses to read." So ponders Mort, one of several endearing characters in Acampora's novel of literary rebellion,... (Kim)

Can there be a Dr. Seuss book that's actually underrated? Though it's overshadowed by the tongue-twister nonsense of Green Eggs and Ham and Fox in Socks and by (Tom)

Denis Johnson may well be the best writer going. He can do big, in the Vietnam epic Tree of Smoke, and small, in the stories of Jesus' Son and in this haunting jewel, which appeared in The Paris Revie... (Tom)

This is the best novel I've read in I don't know how long. Written in the '60s about Australia in the '40s and recently republished, it's about two sisters who live first with their mother and then a... (Tom)

We Were Liars is the perfect book to give you chills on a hot summer day. Summer after summer, Cadence's family has met up on their private island where everything is perfect and everyone is perfect.... (Leighanne)