Maureen Corrigan

Senna's main character, Jane, is a mixed-race writer and college teacher struggling to finish her second novel. Desperate for money, Jane cons her way into a meeting with a Hollywood producer who's cooking up a biracial situation comedy. Disaster ensues. Senna's writing is droll and fearless. Listen to Jane's thoughts about teaching.

One of the worst parts of teaching was how, like a series of mini-strokes, it ruined you as a writer. A brain could handle only so many undergraduate stories about date rape and eating disorders, dead grandmothers and mystical dogs. Two other novels invite readers to catch up with familiar characters.

One of the worst parts of teaching was how, like a series of mini-strokes, it ruined you as a writer. A brain could handle only so many undergraduate stories about date rape and eating disorders, dead grandmothers and mystical dogs. Two other novels invite readers to catch up with familiar characters.

One of the worst parts of teaching was how, like a series of mini-strokes, it ruined you as a writer. A brain could handle only so many undergraduate stories about date rape and eating disorders, dead grandmothers and mystical dogs. Two other novels invite readers to catch up with familiar characters.

Long Island is Colm Tobin's sequel to his 2009 bestseller, Brooklyn, whose main character, Eilish Lacey, is now trapped in a marriage and a neighborhood as stifling as the Irish town she fled. It's Tobin's omissions and restraint, the words he doesn't write, that make him such an astute chronicler of this working-class Catholic world.

Long Island is Colm Tobin's sequel to his 2009 bestseller, Brooklyn, whose main character, Eilish Lacey, is now trapped in a marriage and a neighborhood as stifling as the Irish town she fled. It's Tobin's omissions and restraint, the words he doesn't write, that make him such an astute chronicler of this working-class Catholic world.

Long Island is Colm Tobin's sequel to his 2009 bestseller, Brooklyn, whose main character, Eilish Lacey, is now trapped in a marriage and a neighborhood as stifling as the Irish town she fled. It's Tobin's omissions and restraint, the words he doesn't write, that make him such an astute chronicler of this working-class Catholic world.

I've come to dread a new novel by Elizabeth Strout because I usually can't avoid putting it on my best-of-the-year list. Tell Me Everything reunites readers with writer Lucy Barton, lawyer Bob Burgess, and retired teacher Olive Kitteridge, all living in Maine.

I've come to dread a new novel by Elizabeth Strout because I usually can't avoid putting it on my best-of-the-year list. Tell Me Everything reunites readers with writer Lucy Barton, lawyer Bob Burgess, and retired teacher Olive Kitteridge, all living in Maine.

I've come to dread a new novel by Elizabeth Strout because I usually can't avoid putting it on my best-of-the-year list. Tell Me Everything reunites readers with writer Lucy Barton, lawyer Bob Burgess, and retired teacher Olive Kitteridge, all living in Maine.

Nobody nails the soft melancholy of the human condition like Strout, and that's a phrase she would never write because her style is so understated. Martyr is Iranian-American poet Kaveh Akbar's debut novel about a young man named Cyrus Shams struggling to make sense of the violent death of his mother and other martyrs, accidental or deliberate, throughout history.

Nobody nails the soft melancholy of the human condition like Strout, and that's a phrase she would never write because her style is so understated. Martyr is Iranian-American poet Kaveh Akbar's debut novel about a young man named Cyrus Shams struggling to make sense of the violent death of his mother and other martyrs, accidental or deliberate, throughout history.

Nobody nails the soft melancholy of the human condition like Strout, and that's a phrase she would never write because her style is so understated. Martyr is Iranian-American poet Kaveh Akbar's debut novel about a young man named Cyrus Shams struggling to make sense of the violent death of his mother and other martyrs, accidental or deliberate, throughout history.

Akbar's tone is unexpectedly comic, his story antic, and his vision utterly original. Two literary novels on my best list are indebted to suspense fiction. Rachel Kushner's Creation Lake is an espionage thriller sealed tight in the plastic wrap of noir. Her main character, a young woman, is a former FBI agent turned freelance spy who infiltrates a radical farming collective in France.

Akbar's tone is unexpectedly comic, his story antic, and his vision utterly original. Two literary novels on my best list are indebted to suspense fiction. Rachel Kushner's Creation Lake is an espionage thriller sealed tight in the plastic wrap of noir. Her main character, a young woman, is a former FBI agent turned freelance spy who infiltrates a radical farming collective in France.

Akbar's tone is unexpectedly comic, his story antic, and his vision utterly original. Two literary novels on my best list are indebted to suspense fiction. Rachel Kushner's Creation Lake is an espionage thriller sealed tight in the plastic wrap of noir. Her main character, a young woman, is a former FBI agent turned freelance spy who infiltrates a radical farming collective in France.

You don't read Kushner for the relatability of her characters. Instead, it's her dead-on language and orange threat alert atmosphere that draw readers in. In Cahokia Jazz, Frances Spufford summons up a femme fatale, crooked cops and politicians, and working-class resentment as bitter as bathtub gin.

You don't read Kushner for the relatability of her characters. Instead, it's her dead-on language and orange threat alert atmosphere that draw readers in. In Cahokia Jazz, Frances Spufford summons up a femme fatale, crooked cops and politicians, and working-class resentment as bitter as bathtub gin.

You don't read Kushner for the relatability of her characters. Instead, it's her dead-on language and orange threat alert atmosphere that draw readers in. In Cahokia Jazz, Frances Spufford summons up a femme fatale, crooked cops and politicians, and working-class resentment as bitter as bathtub gin.

He weds these hard-boiled elements to a story about the actual vanished city of Cahokia, which before the arrival of Columbus was the largest urban center north of Mexico. Spufford's novel is set in an alternative America of 1922, where the peace of Cahokia's indigenous, white, and African-American populations is threatened by a grisly murder. One straightforward suspense novel sits on this list.