Heller McAlpin
Heller McAlpin is a New York-based critic who reviews books regularly for NPR.org, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Christian Science Monitor, The San Francisco Chronicle and other publications.
-
Daniel Mason's gorgeous fifth novel tells of a yellow house deep in the woods of western Massachusetts — and its motley succession of occupants who leave their mark on the property. -
Most novels set in bookshops are heartwarming paeans to bonds forged among readers. The Door-to-Door Bookstore by Carsten Henn and Days at the Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagisawa are no exception.
-
Ellis' latest collection is full of hilarious, off-the-wall personal — and, at times, intimate — essays about home life and marriage.
-
We've seen jealous, possessive friends and housewreckers with no boundaries before, though perhaps not quite so thoroughly, unapologetically unlikeable as in Ore Agbaje-Williams's debut novel.
-
Max Porter's compulsively readable primal scream of a novel offers a compassionate portrait of boy jerked around by uncontrollable mood swings that lead to self-sabotaging decisions.
-
Literary editor Will Schwalbe's new book is a tale about connecting across divides — which is particularly heartening in our polarized culture.
-
Patrick Bringley's story — he jumped off the career ladder, deliberately taking a position divorced from ambition in order to find the space for quiet contemplation — is oddly suited to our times.
-
In Jane Smiley's latest novel, inspired by Edgar Allan Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," characters Eliza and Jean are determined to figure out who killed their missing colleagues.
-
Three new art books feature female subjects of every shape and hue from all over the world, doing the things that women have historically done — and also the things that men have historically done.
-
Atypical of inspirational weight-loss books, Fatty Fatty Boom Boom by Rabia Chaudry — an advocate of Serial podcast subject Adnan Syed — is a love letter to the author's native cuisine.
