Critics' Picks Out in Paperback

"Deeply funny and achingly true... Reading All Fours feels like being seen, like being caught and held, making those connections and realizing that our experiences are not so isolating... July's commitment to widening the space when it comes to our sexuality is joyfully radical." Jessica Ferri, Los Angeles Times

"It is the only book I have read this year that has made me cry... Van der Wouden has produced the rare novel about World War II, the Holocaust, and their aftermath that succeeds in feeling fully, intimately human... [The plot] twist is not what makes The Safekeep remarkable; what does is the extraordinary, emotional story Van der Wouden crafts around it, and the pitch-perfect voice she brings to the characters who experience its consequences." – Talya Zax, The Washington Post

"Joins the pantheon of great American novels... Long Island Compromise is an exploration of intergenerational trauma and an unabashed critique of income inequality... Brodesser-Akner has written a humane, brazen, gorgeous novel whose words dance exuberantly on the page." – Leigh Haber, Los Angeles Times

"This monumental novel, which is a work of salvage and salvation... Quilted from scraps of memory treasured in the author’s attic for decades... A novel of such cavernous depth, such relentless exploration, that it can’t help but make one realize how much we know and how little we confess about our own families. I strove to withhold judgment, to exercise a little skeptical decorum, but I couldn’t help finishing each chapter in a flush of awe." – Ron Charles, The Washington Post

"In lush, cozy prose, Mellors guides us into the lives of Avery, Bonnie, and Lucky Blue, reuniting to clean out their childhood apartment in New York City on the first anniversary of their sister Nicky's death... She is... able to capture the ferality, stickiness, and beauty of both sisterhood and grief." – Melissa Lozada-Oliva, The New York Times

"Karla Cornejo Villavicencio's debut work of fiction captures the paradox of immigrant identity in the United States... Cornejo Villavicencio's fluid, digressive prose shines brightest when Catalina's theatrical self-presentation takes center stage... Cornejo Villavicencio delivers irrefutable proof that, when it comes to depicting courtship, she is a worthy student of Gabriel García Márquez." – Nicolás Medina Mora, The Atlantic

"The thing that shines through in Osman's writing, for me, is that he really likes people and revels in all their foibles and eccentricities. All of which makes for a delightful read - and another little slice of warmth in time for autumn."– Alison Flood, The Guardian

"Sandwich is my idea of the perfect summer novel: shimmering and substantive. One more aspect of Newman's book deserves highlighting: like many other recent novels by best-selling female authors--I'm thinking of Jennifer Weiner, Ann Patchett, and Megan Abbott--Newman introduces a storyline here about abortion. She writes about that contested subject--and the emotions it engenders--in a way that I've never encountered in fiction before." – Maureen Corrigan, NPR

"An unflagging and acridly funny assault on that story, but also a formally canny study of how such tales get told — and how fragile our replacements may turn out... John is very much his own creep, but also quite generic... A question the novel will not easily answer: How to know when you are telling stories to those you love, let alone to yourself?" – Brian Dillon, The New York Times

"Henríquez's smart writing starts at the choices made on a national level but it concentrates on the consequences for towns and families when the hole of the canal causes so many other losses. This absorbing novel expresses the experiences of those often overlooked by dominant narratives, and The Great Divide creatively reminds readers of a different way to ground our histories and stories." – Abby Manzella, The Star Tribune