Heller McAlpin

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.

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.

With her new essay collection, Jamison reverses the arc of The Empathy Exams by moving from the external to the internal, from others' longings and hauntings to her own.

R.L. Maizes' new story collection is a quirky mix of humor, gravity and warmth. She's drawn to outsiders who yearn for connection and who display behaviors and feelings they're not proud of.

Ocean Vuong's debut novel is a painful but extraordinary coming-of-age story, about a young Vietnamese American writer whose fractured family was torn by their experiences during the Vietnam War.

For decades, Quindlen has been channeling Baby Boomers' concerns, from motherhood and life-work balance to aging and downsizing. Her new book comes with a stern warning: Grandparents, know thy place.

In its searching honesty and multi-layered, visual and verbal storytelling, Nora Krug's memoir investigates mixed feelings about being German and her family's role in the Holocaust.

Keggie Carew's father was a genuine war hero, but he was on shakier ground close to home. And after he began to suffer from dementia, Carew set out to reconstruct — and demythologize — his life.

Julian Barnes' slim but powerful new novel chronicles the difficulties composer Dmitri Shostakovich suffered under repressive Soviet regimes, and mourns what is lost when tyrants try to control art.

Thomas Mallon's new novelization of the infamous political scandal re-imagines the events through the eyes of the perpetrators. Critic Heller McAlpin says Mallon manages to capture both the metastasizing dishonesty and the ludicrousness of this great American tragedy of political ambition run amok.