Senior Metro Editor | Nights


When a sibling vanishes, three sisters are doing it for themselves in 'The Alternatives'

FICTION: A reunion in rural Ireland becomes a reckoning.


In novel, 'The American Daughters' are Black women, fighting to end slavery

FICTION: In Civil War-era New Orleans, an enslaved girl becomes a spy for the Union.


Book reveals where art history happened, with 7 queer artists as guides

NONFICTION: Traveling through time and space to capture "unrecorded history" in "Nothing Ever Just Disappears."


'Hilarious' and 'wrenching' novel 'Last Acts' depicts a hapless father and son

FICTION: John Updike's Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom meets Voltaire's optimistic Candide and Walter White of "Breaking Bad" in the hero of a deliriously dark debut.


Novel's Iranian characters struggle to be themselves in a repressive 'Country'

FICTION: Salar Abdoh's characters must keep their lives secret from their own government.


Review: Inspired by diaries, 'Room' author returns with 'spellbinding' 'Learned by Heart'

FICTION: Emma Donoghue's masterwork centers on the intoxication of young love at a girls' school.


Review: 'Swim Home to the Vanished' finds a young man transformed by grief

FICTION: A young man's quest for understanding takes him to a very fishy village.


Review: Friends and frenemies pursue life, love and MFAs at a Midwestern university

FICTION: Brandon Taylor follows grad school novel "Real Life" with another look at the lows of higher learning.


Review: 'Diary of a Misfit,' by Casey Parks

NONFICTION: A journalist chases "a good Southern tale" and discovers herself.


Review: 'Trust,' by Hernan Diaz

FICTION: In his engrossing second novel, Hernan Diaz gives us four versions of the life of an early capitalist.