By G. Willow Wilson (Grove)
50 notable works of fiction
Readers chose "Dear Life: Stories" by Alice Munro as one the year’s best 50 fiction books.
Wilson’s marvelous first novel takes events similar to those of the Arab Spring, adds a runaway computer virus, an unconventional love story and the odd genie to create an intoxicating, politicized amalgam of science fiction and fantasy. — Elizabeth Hand
By Ivan Doig (Riverhead)
In this subtle and engaging narrative, a 12-year-old boy tries to figure out the adult world, including his saloonkeeper father. Doig, 73, delivers a slow-paced novel filled with the joys of careful and loving observation. — Jon Clinch
By Jess Walter (Harper)
Hopscotching between 1960s Italy and today’s Hollywood, the story sends a young Italian in search of a long-remembered starlet in a plot that’s lively and well constructed — a lemon meringue pie of a novel: crisp and funny on top, soft and gooey inside. — Allegra Goodman
By Chase Novak (Mulholland)
One could think of this horror story about a couple trying to conceive a child as “Rosemary’s Baby’s Parents,” redolent of Roald Dahl at his creepy best, with enough humor to make the mayhem palatable.
— Dennis Drabelle
By Laura Moriarty (Riverhead)
In Moriarty’s captivating novel, we meet silent-screen star Louise Brooks long before her arrival in Hollywood. Fifteen-year-old Louise has been invited to take summer classes with a legendary New York dance troupe, but she may go only with a proper chaperone. This is a nuanced portrayal of social upheaval during the Jazz Age. — Caroline Preston
By Alice Munro (Knopf)
With her stunning new collection, Munro demonstrates that there is no writer quite as good at illustrating the foibles of love, the confusions and frustrations of life, or the inner cruelty and treachery that can be revealed in the slightest gestures. — Ron Hansen
By Victor LaValle (Spiegel & Grau)
When a 42-year-old man with occasional anger-management issues gets hauled off to the psychiatric unit of a local hospital, it’s not clear whether he’ll ever get out. LaValle balances social satire, horror and mordant humor but never jettisons genuine affection for even the most damaged of his characters. — E.H.
By Mario Vargas Llosa (Farrar Straus Giroux)
A fiendishly clever re-imagining of the true story of Roger Casement, an Irishman who published reports of human-rights abuses in Congo and Peru at the cusp of the 19th and 20th centuries. — Luis Alberto Urrea
By Barbara Kingsolver (Harper)
Yes, this is a climate-change novel, but not the op-ed in story form one might fear. The book’s success stems from Kingsolver’s willingness to stay focused on a conflicted young woman and her faltering marriage, while a strange symptom of the degraded environment — millions of lost butterflies — overwhelms her remote Tennessee town. — Ron Charles
By Bernice L. McFadden (Akashic)
In a voice ethereal, ancient and wise, McFadden tells the story of Money, Miss., where 14-year-old Emmett Till was killed in 1955. — Lisa Page
By Hari Kunzru (Knopf)
On the gaping expanse of the Mojave Desert, lost souls — including a Manhattan couple and their autistic son — seek salvation in the shadow of a rock formation. Then someone disappears; it’s a whirling wheelwork of a novel. — Marie Arana
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Adam Mansbach at the Gaithersburg Book Festival
The fourth annual book fair offered 100 authors and a dozen workshops.
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Book review: ‘The Golem and the Jinni,’ by Helene Wecker
Can modest golem and a mercurial jinni find love in Lower Manhattan?
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Book review: ‘Cheat the Clock’
A science writer for The Washington Post, Margaret Webb Pressler decided to unravel the mystery of her husband’s biology.
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Book review: ‘Wash,’ by Margaret Wrinkle
The harrowing story of a black man pressed into sexual slavery after the Revolutionary War.
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Washington Post Bestsellers May 19
The books Washington has been reading.
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Book review: ‘The Philosopher, the Priest, and the Painter’
Steven Nadler’s fascinating survey of Golden Age Dutch culture, Cartesian philosophy and art connoisseurship.
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Book review: Eleanor Morse’s ‘White Dog Fell from the Sky’
A novel about the unusual friendship between a South African refugee and an American expatriate.
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Timothy Egan wins the Chautauqua Prize for "Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher"
Egan's biography of American West photographer Edward Curtis garners $7,500 and a week at the summer program in New York State.
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Book review: ‘Flora’ by Gail Godwin
Things fall apart when a young girl is left alone in the house with her emotional cousin.
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Book review: ‘Raven Girl,’ by Audrey Niffenegger
The author of ‘The Time Traveler’s Wife’ returns with a novella for the Royal Ballet in London.
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Book review: Dan Brown’s ‘Inferno’
Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon races to solve a mystery based on Dante’s “Divine Comedy.”
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Paul Muldoon fed and feted at Irish ambassador's residence
The Irish poet will speak tonight at the Folger Library
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Book review: ‘Murder as a Fine Art,’ by David Morrell
Writer Thomas De Quincey must apprehend a murderer terrorizing London — or take the fall himself.
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Washington Post Bestsellers May 12
The books Washington has been reading.
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