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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Patchett's new novel is a story of paradise lost, dusted with fairy tale. It follows two siblings who bond after their mother leaves the family home — an ornate mansion she always hated.
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In her first essay collection, Rachel Cusk writes like someone who has been burned and has reacted not with self-censorship but with a doubling-down on clarity.
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Jacqueline Woodson's exquisitely wrought new novel follows two black families of different classes whose lives become intertwined when their only children conceive a child together in their teens.
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The success of Sigrid Nunez' The Friend sparked the reissue of this early work, also about a beloved pet — but Mitz the marmoset was real, and she belonged to Leonard and Virginia Woolf in the 1930s.
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R.L. Maizes' new story collection is a quirky mix of humor, gravity and warmth. She's drawn to outsiders who yearn for connection and who display behaviors and feelings they're not proud of.
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Marcy Dermansky's new novel is a tart lemonade of a summer read, full of outspoken characters, libidinous activity — much of it unwise — around a swimming pool, and a beautiful standard poodle.
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Claire Lombardo's sweeping family drama — fueled by power plays between spouses and between sisters — is a wonderfully immersive read that packs more heart and heft than most first novels.
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Ocean Vuong's debut novel is a painful but extraordinary coming-of-age story, about a young Vietnamese American writer whose fractured family was torn by their experiences during the Vietnam War.
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For decades, Quindlen has been channeling Baby Boomers' concerns, from motherhood and life-work balance to aging and downsizing. Her new book comes with a stern warning: Grandparents, know thy place.
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Ian McEwan imagines an alternate, technologically-advanced 1982 England in his new novel, in which the development of lifelike, artificially intelligent cyborgs leads to some uncomfortable questions.