Out of Some Bygone Era
/Master stylist Donald Ray Pollock returns in a violent, beautifullly-written novel about three brothers on a murderous rampage. Aaron Botwick reviews The Heavenly Table
Read MoreFrom the Archives: Summer Reading 2012
/As the haze and heat of summer kick into full swing, the folk of Open Letters break out their annual Summer Reading recommendations!
Read MoreComfort and Joy
/Mary Balogh’s Survivors’ Club novels are romances, which means they tell hopeful stories about people whose struggles end happily. Why should that optimism earn them such disdain?
Read MoreBook Review: The Cavendon Luck
/The Second World War closes in on the two families bravely struggling to keep Cavendon Hall alive.
Read MoreBook Review: The Summer Dragon
/In fantasy illustrator Todd Lockwood's debut novel, a young woman from a family of dragon-breeders faces an ancient evil
Read MoreHow We Got From There to Here
/A thoughtful new book about Victorian concepts of space, nation, and mobility reminds us that our own world is vulnerable to unraveling as we move from here to wherever’s next.
Read MoreThe Smooth Handle
/Did Thomas Jefferson love his slave, the mother of his children Sally Hemings? A new novel asks the question factually and counterfactually, and Kenyon Gradert sums up the results.
Read MoreOccasional Fiction
/As a collection of stories about the complexities of marriage, Reader, I Married Him is good, sometimes even excellent. But how is it as a provocation to rethink Jane Eyre?
Read MoreBook Review: The Risen
/The familiar story of the Spartacus rebellion gets a lavish new telling
Read MoreIn Paperback: Manhattan Night
/A terrific ten-year-old noir novel is given a new paperback edition on the occasion of its translation to the Hollywood screen.
Read MoreBook Review: The Loney
/A violent, desolate stretch of the English coastline forms the setting for Andrew Michael Hurley's much-heralded debut novel
Read MoreBook Review: The Summer Guest
/A young woman's diary of her friendship with Anton Chekhov raises the tantalizing possibility of a long-lost work by the master.
Read MoreBook Review: Ice Station Nautilus
/Rick Campbell's new novel features a fight to the death deep under the Arctic ice
Read MoreBook Review: The Fireman
/In Joe Hill's new novel, a plague of spontaneous combustion is sweeping the world ...
Read MoreDiscussion: Middlemarch for Book Clubs
/Open Letters Senior Editor Rohan Maitzen discusses her new ebook, Middlemarch for Book Clubs
Read MoreAtomic Turquoise Bat Mitzvah
/A startling alien legacy is dug up out of the ground in Sylvain Neuvel's stellar debut novel Sleeping Giants. Justin Hickey reviews.
Read MoreSimulacrum
/The intense problematics of Don DeLillo's literary preoccupations are on full display in his latest, Zero K. Dan Green explores the legacy of an author's postmodernism.
Read MoreSecond Glance: Njal’s Saga
/Njal's Saga is a myth based on history, a narrative about the effect of religion on a culture of revenge. Matt Ray takes us to medieval Iceland.
Read MoreAnswer in Paradox
/An intimate new biography gives us a Charlotte Brontë for our times - and raises questions about the entanglement of life and art.
Read MoreOn Edwin O’Connor’s The Last Hurrah
/In his essay on a new reprint of Edwin O'Connor's great and indispensable novel of old-style American ward politics, Jack Beatty introduces readers to the serious comedy of The Last Hurrah.
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