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.
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Most readers spend a lot of time happily immersed in words. But for a change of pace, these gorgeous art books provide hours of blissful visual diversion. -
Lily King's first story collection demonstrates her range, pulling you in and making you wonder where she's going, whether it's a brutal encounter between former roommates or a sudden act of kindness. -
The writer and artist Tamara Shopsin takes a fond look at the past in her new novel, set at the famous Manhattan computer repair store Tekserve in the days before Apple and its Genius Bars took over. -
Lucy Barton — the redoubtable memoirist we've met in two previous novels — returns in Elizabeth Strout's Oh William!, reconnecting with her estranged first husband after her second husband dies. -
Powers climbs down from the treetops of The Overstory in his latest novel, to tell the story of a widowed father and his troubled son who head into the wilderness to try to figure out their lives. -
Author Hilma Wolitzer, mother of Meg Wolitzer, tackles the ups and downs of a long, not always happy marriage in her excellently named new story collection, Today a Woman Went Mad in the Supermarket. -
Beautiful World, Where Are You? follows two women, college friends now on the cusp of 30, as they struggle to live and find meaning in a world that's become increasingly unlivable on many levels.
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James Rebanks' new book Pastoral Song urgently conveys how the drive for cheap, mass-produced food has impoverished both small farmers and the soil, threatening humanity's future. -
Helen Ellis, author of American Housewife and Southern Lady Code, is back with her third book in five years — in which the connection with her longtime, close-knit female friends features prominently. -
Jhumpa Lahiri's new novel — which she wrote in Italian, then translated back to English herself — centers on a middle-aged Italian woman trying to figure out her place in the world.
