Books, New and Old, from Writers We Love

The first installment of her new Great Cities trilogy. Another eerily resonant story for today–as a group of New Yorkers band together to save their city from evil.

This trilogy reaches its conclusion beginning with the decapitation of Anne Boleyn in this final volume. A masterpiece of historical fiction, the three books follow Thomas Cromwell’s trajectory under Henry VIII, and are altogether brilliant. We will miss you, Cromwell!

Offill’s little gem of a novel stars a Brooklyn librarian who ruminates about her life and the state of the world in the face of impending disasters both environmental and political.

Anyone with ambitions to write should read this sweetly resonant coming-of-age novel that examines a young woman’s passage from innocence to becoming full-fledged adult–and a real writer.

This hilarious essayist’s new book finds her at forty. Beloved for her blog, “bitches gotta eat,” we need her irreverent confessions more than ever.

A must read—hilarious and inventive, bristling with a zany energy. From Victorian taxidermy to present-day politics, it follows a hapless, Reagan-loving, unacknowledged homosexual politician as his hubristic life unravels. A perfect palate cleanser for our troubled times!

Alvarez’s first novel in 15 years features an unforgettable heroine whose retirement takes some unexpected turns that challenge her inclination to withdraw into a life of the mind circumscribed by lines from her favorite books. An urgent message to all readers that it isn’t over till it’s over.

Though a continuation of Barry’s brilliant historical novel Days Without End, this novel stands on its own as a portrait of an orphaned Lakota girl adopted as a child by a self-exiled Irishman and his partner in crime and love who fight in the Civil and Indian Wars. A tough and tender look at makeshift families, in which love takes so many surprising forms.