Books

Jill Ciment was 17 in 1970 when she got involved with the 47-year-old teacher who would become her husband. Now widowed, she reconsiders the relationship — and its "poisonous" beginnings.

Claire Messud is known for contemporary novels rich in psychological insight like "The Emperor's Children" and "The Woman Upstairs." Our book critic Maureen Corrigan says that the title of Messud's latest novel signals something different. It's called "This Strange Eventful History."

Tóibín's latest, a sequel to his 2009 novel, Brooklyn, is a devastating portrait of an Irish immigrant whose Italian American husband is expecting a baby with another woman.

This new collection of The Letters of Emily Dickinson is published by Harvard's Belknap Press and edited by two Dickinson scholars, Cristanne Miller and Domhnall Mitchell.

Shriver's new novel is one of her best. It takes place in an alternative America, where the last acceptable bias — discrimination against people considered not so smart — is being stamped out.

It's shaping up to be quite a moment for Percival Everett. His 2001 novel "Erasure" was made into the acclaimed film "American Fiction," and his latest novel, "James," has just come out. It's a reimagining of Mark Twain's 1885 classic "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." Our book critic Maureen Corrigan has a review.

In her 2013 debut novel "The Love Affairs Of Nathaniel P.," Adelle Waldman wrote about love and narcissism among literary hipsters in Brooklyn. Waldman's long-awaited second novel "Help Wanted" is set in another world entirely - a big-box store in a depressed town in the Catskill region of New York state. Our book critic Maureen Corrigan has a review.

The Freaks Came Out To Write captures the elements that made a great American newspaper and the forces that killed it: the internet, the loss of advertising revenue, corporate greed, a changed New York City.

The Kamogowa Food Detectives is an off-beat bestselling Japanese mystery series that began appearing in 2013. In every story, a client enters the restaurant, describes a significant-but-hazily-remembered meal. And, after hearing their stories, Nagare, the crack investigator, goes to work.

Francis Spufford's novel imagines a 1920s city in which Native Americans still hold territory and political power, and the "color line" doesn't exist — until a grisly murder disrupts everything.