Critics' Picks Out in Paperback

"I admire Intermezzo almost without reservation... Anyone who has read Rooney’s previous work...is aware that her primary subject is love in its various permutations, the minutiae of falling in and out of it. She writes as well about this topic as anyone alive... There is so much restraint and melancholy profundity in her prose that when she allows the flood gates to open, the parched reader is willing to be swept out to sea... Rooney has an exquisite perceptiveness and a zest for keeping us reading... This book charmed and moved me. – Dwight Garner, The New York Times

"Reading [Small Rain, ] you feel as though you were holding a single grain of rice in your hand which, upon examination under a microscope, reveals itself to be engraved with the history of the world... Greenwell's protagonist is sustained by this determination to offer up work that will provide sustenance, and in giving us this vivid, generous novel, Greenwell himself has made just such an offering." – Lauren J Joseph, The Observer

"The book's great virtue is in its close attention to the individual lives of its small group of central characters... toggling between the macro and the micro: the globe-spanning, incomprehensibly vast forces that have brought these smugglers' lives into being, as well as their own individual struggles to make something of what the world has made of them." – Jack McCordick, The New Republic

"As ever, Tokarczuk’s prose — and Antonia Lloyd-Jones’ glorious translation thereof from the Polish — will knock the wind out of you. As in her previous novels, Tokarczuk infuses the physical with the metaphysical, making even the dullest objects and places glow with meaning." – Chelsea Davis, San Francisco Chronicle

"Not until I picked up Tony Tulathimutte's Rejection did I realize how fun it could be to read a book about a bunch of huge fucking losers... it's a thrill for the sickos among us, the king being Tulathimutte, who gives loserdom its own rancid carnival. Tulathimutte understands the project–both his own and that of his characters–with diagnostic, comprehensive hyper-precision; as you behold his parade of marketplace failure and personal pathology, he's ten steps ahead of any reaction you could muster." – Jia Tolentino, The New Yorker

"It is with unabashed joy that I am here to report: The City and Its Uncertain Walls, Murakami's first novel in six years, is also one of his best. It feels at once sweeping and intimate, grand and tender, quiet and charged with feeling. The City and Its Uncertain Walls is a paean to books, reading, and libraries, an investigation into the relationship between romance and realism, and a timely fable about how relationships, societies, and communities both protect themselves against threats and foster beauty and truth." – Priscilla Gilman, Boston Globe

"Outstanding... There are no throwaways here... This book will please any horror reader, but loyal King fans will find these stories particularly rewarding, especially because of the callbacks to his previous works." – Gabino Iglesias, The New York Times

"At once edifying and entertaining, Miller’s book traces the history of the global semiconductor industry—and examines the key flash points today, with Beijing seeking to build up design and manufacturing capabilities and Washington hoping to slow China’s progress." – Foreign Affairs

"Above all she tells a captivating tale about how a poor, immigrant Chinese girl could land in the US and end up at the forefront of a scientific revolution. The book is a loving portrait of Li’s familial past as well as an exploration of our technological future..." – John Thornhill, Financial Times

"A charmer... Unfolds in a series of comic and sometimes deeply poignant vignettes built around one or another Biedermeier resident. Contained within each profile is rich social and political history... Mr. Lavery’s wit and descriptive powers are considerable, his affection and sympathy for his characters something more. Even without that first important meal of the day, Women’s Hotel is a feast." – Joanne Kauffman, The Wall Street Journal