Publishers write the breathless, rhapsodic text you’ll find on the inside flap of a book cover. It’s their job to make a book’s description as moving as possible so you’ll buy the book. We always skip that stuff and head right to the opening pages. That’s where we get our highs. We want a writer to move us, bewitch us or make us think about something or someone we hadn’t thought about before. We expect to be enchanted. The books on this week’s list had us hooked from page one. After all, book critics want to feel transported just like readers who aren’t paid to read want to feel transported.
FICTION
Released: March 5, 2013
"A challenging read, yet remarkably entertaining and ultimately gripping."
A hugely ambitious, wildly imaginative novel by Miller (
The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, 2008, etc.) about a dead 18th-century French Jew brought back to life as a fly in 21st-century America.
Read full book review >
NONFICTION
Released: Sept. 18, 2012
"Essential reading for anyone interested in justice or memoir."
FICTION
Released: June 26, 2012
"Riveting, heartbreaking, profoundly moving."
In Walker's stunning debut, a young California girl coming-of-age in a dystopian near future confronts the inevitability of change on the most personal level as life on earth withers.
Read full book review >
FICTION
Released: June 19, 2012
"There is much to admire in this novel. The subtle insight on sibling rivalry and the examination of love make for a poignant debut."
Brunt's first novel elegantly pictures the New York art world of the 1980s, suburban Westchester and the isolation of AIDS.
Read full book review >
FICTION
Released: April 17, 2012
"An evocative work about love, fate and redemption."
Up beyond Asheville, near where Gunter Mountain falls into Tennessee, evil has come to preach in a house of worship where venomous snakes and other poisons are sacraments.
Read full book review >
FICTION
Released: March 25, 2012
"The river, the raft, a stash of money coveted by bad guys, nonstop adventures that edify, terrify and deepen the bond between Sue Ellen and Jinx. A highly entertaining tour de force. "
The author of the prize-winning Hap and Leonard series (
Devil Red, 2011, etc.) charts a course that may remind you of a distaff Huck and Jim.
Read full book review >
