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Byline: Ron Charles For millions of masked readers wringing their Purelled hands during the covid summer of 2020, Matt Haig's novel âThe Midnight Libraryâ was an answer to a prayer. [...]

Byline: Ron Charles âCreation Lakeâ By Rachel Kushner Scribner. 407 pp. $29.99 - - - Forty thousand years too late, Neanderthals are finally getting a chance to stand erectus and [...]

Byline: Ron Charles By now, we can all spot the symptoms: that little tickle in the front pages, some congestion along the dust jacket, a certain stiffness in the spine. [...]

Byline: Ron Charles Because the violent confrontation between federal agents and the Branch Davidians had captured the nation's attention for weeks, when the finale came, Americans watched the conflagration live [...]

Byline: Ron Charles It was obvious from the start that Dinaw Mengestu was adding something extraordinary to American literature. His debut novel, 'The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears' (2007), told [...]

Byline: Ron Charles I'll never forget the moment in Colson Whitehead's novel âThe Underground Railroadâ when subterranean train tracks first appear stretching off into a dark tunnel. That 19th-century metaphor [...]

Byline: Ron Charles Let's get this out of the way up front, so to speak: The title of Taffy Brodesser-Akner's new novel, âLong Island Compromise,â is a reference to anal [...]

Byline: Ron Charles In 2019, Julia Phillips published a celebrated novel called âDisappearing Earth,â set on a remote Russian peninsula called Kamchatka. It's not a place many Western readers were [...]

Byline: Ron Charles At Trump Tower in August 2021, journalist Ramin Setoodeh was listening to Donald Trump natter on about how much he had helped the late comedian Joan Rivers. [...]

Byline: Ron Charles Women have never had to look far for condescending advice about why they should embrace the joys of child-rearing, but lately the guidance has sounded unusually suspect. [...]

Byline: Ron Charles âNetherlandâ may not have revived cricket in the United States, but it sparked a craze for Joseph O'Neill. His third novel, about a Dutchman who becomes a [...]

Byline: Ron Charles Death has not appreciably slowed Michael Crichton's publication schedule. Since he passed away in 2008, several of his manuscripts caught in the amber of time have been [...]

Byline: Ron Charles The multitalented artist Miranda July has written a wildly sexual book about a woman approaching menopause, so of course it's time for a square old man to [...]

Byline: Ron Charles Toward the end of Fred Gipson's 1956 classic, âOld Yeller,â Travis says, âIt was going to kill something inside me to do it, but I knew then [...]

Byline: Ron Charles Claire Messud opens âThis Strange Eventful Historyâ with a prologue that announces, âI want to save lives. Or simply: I want to save life.â That may sound [...]

Byline: Ron Charles Weâll never know exactly what happened, but the hoary remains are terrifying enough. In 1845, more than 120 men under the command of Sir John Franklin set [...]

Byline: Ron Charles In 1949, when Danielle Steel was just a toddler, Theodor Adorno declared that âto write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.â It took her awhile, but Steel has [...]

Byline: Ron Charles Me again, banging on about Sunjeev Sahota. I wonât stop until you read him. Across the pond, this argument isnât so hard to make. A decade ago, [...]

Byline: Ron Charles You can still smell the smoke. Eleven years ago this month, Claire Messud published a brilliant, incendiary novel called âThe Woman Upstairs.â The narrator, Nora, is that [...]

Byline: Ron Charles T.S. Eliot claimed, âThis is the way the world ends/Not with a bang but a whimper.â That whimper is the sound of me being buried under novels [...]

Byline: Ron Charles In 2011, a woman born in Belgrade and raised around the world published âThe Tigerâs Wife.â Although it was a debut by a new writer, an earlier [...]

Byline: Ron Charles The terrors in Colin Barrettâs debut novel, âWild Houses,â seep across the page like black mold. Oh, thereâs action in this thriller, too - fights! kidnapping! extortion! [...]

Byline: Ron Charles Samuel Clemens, who took the steamboating term âMark Twainâ as his pen name, knew the Mississippi was a deadly river to navigate. But it feels like a [...]

Byline: Ron Charles In a political roman à clef, anonymity can leave a lot to be desired. When âPrimary Colorsâ appeared in 1996, the rabid quest to identify its author [...]

Byline: Ron Charles Six years have passed since Tommy Orange published his debut novel, âThere There,â but the echoes of that story still reverberate in the minds of those who [...]

Byline: Ron Charles Kelly Link is a genius. Thatâs not just my opinion. In 2018, Link won a $625,000 âgeniusâ grant from the MacArthur Foundation. Her strange and surreal short [...]

Byline: Ron Charles Held By Anne Michaels Knopf. 220 pp. $27 - - - The Canadian poet Anne Michaels publishes novels so deliberately that each one entrances readers of a [...]

Byline: Ron Charles Twenty years ago, Tom Wolfe created a bright naif named Charlotte Simmons and followed her to college, where they both discovered that students were having sex. In [...]

Byline: Ron Charles With the country locked in ice, âTrue North,â Andrew J. Graffâs warmhearted story about a summer of white-water rafting, sounds like the vacation we all need. Graffâs [...]

Byline: Ron Charles By Hisham Matar Random House. 394 pp. $24.99 - - - This spring marks a grim 40th anniversary. On April 17, 1984, after months of tension between [...]

Byline: Ron Charles By Bonnie Jo Campbell W.W. Norton. 383 pp. $30 - - - Bonnie Jo Campbell knows rural Michigan right down to the vertical pupils of the massasauga [...]

Byline: Ron Charles Although I hold both figures in high regard, I'm embarrassed to say that I've read 'How the Grinch Stole Christmas!' many more times than I've read the [...]

Byline: Ron Charles By Kate Christensen Harper. 214 pp. $28.99 - - - If you're facing a painful trip home this month, resist stocking up on wine and Candy Cane [...]

Byline: Ron Charles By Paul Lynch Atlantic Monthly Press. 309 pp. $26 - - - If Paul Lynch's 'Prophet Song' were a horror novel, it wouldn't feel nearly as terrifying. [...]

Byline: Ron Charles By Elizabeth Crook Little, Brown. 279 pp. $29. - - - In this murky world of cowardly self-interest, we crave someone courageous and honest. We need Benjamin [...]

Byline: Ron Charles By Michael Cunningham Random House. 288 pp. $28 - - - The only problem with Michael Cunningham's prose is that it ruins you for mere mortals' work. [...]

Byline: Ron Charles By Jonathan Evison Dutton. 318 pp. $28 - - - You should know the name Jonathan Evison because he's the author of several exuberant, thoroughly charming novels, [...]

Byline: Ron Charles By Sigrid Nunez Riverhead. 242 pp. $28 - - - Even before I worked through all the toilet paper I'd panic-bought during the pandemic, I was receiving [...]

Byline: Ron Charles By Sandra Newman Mariner. 385 pp. $30 - - - George Orwell never went down the memory hole, but a layer of gray dust settled over his [...]

Byline: Ron Charles By Jesmyn Ward Scribner. 305 pp. $28 - - - 'Let Us Descend,' the title of Jesmyn Ward's overwhelming new novel, alludes to Dante's 'Inferno,' but her [...]

Byline: Ron Charles By Teju Cole Random House. 239 pp. $28 - - - Exaggerated rumors about the death of the novel have been spreading for at least a century, [...]

Byline: Ron Charles By C Pam Zhang Riverhead. 232 pp. $28 - - - Robert Frost gave us so little choice when he wrote, 'Some say the world will end [...]

Byline: Ron Charles By Ben Fountain Flatiron. 531 pp. $31.99 - - - In 2008, Malcolm Gladwell published an essay in the New Yorker about late-blooming geniuses who gather their [...]

Byline: Ron Charles By Daniel Mason Random House. 372 pp. $28. - - - By the time ghosts start gathering in Daniel Mason's 'North Woods,' it's too late to flee. [...]

Byline: Ron Charles By Lauren Groff Riverhead. 256 pp. $28 - - - Start on Page 37. At that point in Lauren Groff's 'The Vaster Wilds,' something surprising and creepy [...]

Byline: Ron Charles By Zadie Smith Penguin Press. 454 pp. $29 - - - Zadie Smith is clever enough to make anything sound plausible, but the most outrageous elements of [...]

Byline: Ron Charles By Richard Russo Knopf. 464 pp. $29 - - - The reassuring theme of Richard Russo's new novel is that it's never too late to try again. [...]

Byline: Ron Charles By Daniel Hornsby Anchor. 276 pp. $27 - - - Elizabeth Holmes, the infamous Stanford dropout, is no longer the world's youngest self-made female billionaire. Forbes estimates [...]

Byline: Ron Charles By Patrick deWitt Ecco. 342 pp. $30 - - - In 2011, a Canadian-born writer named Patrick deWitt rustled up praise from around the world for his [...]