Gabino Iglesias

Nat Cassidy's wildly entertaining novel is a superb example of how to work with clichés. When the Wolf Comes Home might sound like a werewolf novel — but it's an entirely different animal.

Lydia Millet's characters in Atavists interact and have little dramas of their own — the author's talent is on full display here. Not every story is strong, but they work well together.

The prose is gorgeous and the plot is complex. The author of The Only Good Indians returns again with a spellbinding yarn about one of the bloodiest, most significant parts of the nation's history.

Willow Winsham's new book on witches, past and present, offers a fun, fast, well researched historical summary that is also a stunning work of art.

Raven Leilani's new novel will make you cringe for all the right reasons. It's an intergenerational, interracial love story with a heart of noir and gallows humor, so honest it will make you squirm.

Betsy Bonner presents her sister with love, but also with honesty; she is the storyteller, but Atlantis Black is the story, the mystery, the victim, sometimes the perpetrator and always the question.

As "traditional bonds disintegrate in the face of industrialization, urbanization, and secularization, brands and objects become a means to curate and project who we are," writes reporter Adam Minter.

Timothy C. Winegard has written a well-researched work of narrative nonfiction that offers a history of the world through the role that mosquitoes — and mosquito-borne illnesses — have played in it.

While the prolific Hollywood writer's career is well-documented, his personal history has been a mystery. His memoir is painful and inspiring, infuriating and full of hope, humorous and depressing.

Relying on a wealth of research and documents, Casey Rae deftly maps out how one of America's most controversial literary figures transformed the lives of many notable rock musicians.