The Mars Room
Critics were bonkers for Kushner’s The Flamethrowers (2014), and this third novel—about a stripper serving consecutive sentences for killing her stalker—has been called ʀawless. It’s the bleakest of comedies, skewering racism and classism but with an inti
Black No More By George S. Schuyler PENGUIN CLASSICS
Reissued in 2018, this 1931 novel is a scathing satire of the hypocrisy of freedom. Its plot: A doctor invents a procedure that permanently transforms black people into whites— denying the South lynching opportunities, among other things. The combative Schuyler was a black conservative contrarian—he disliked Martin Luther King Jr.—but this is as brilliant a takedown of racism as exists in ɿction.
Dinner at the Center of the Earth By Nathan Englander ALFRED A. KNOPF
The second novel from the Pulitzer Prize– winning author turns the unending Israel and Palestinian conʀict into a tragicomic fable, full of wisdom and humanity.
The House of Broken Angels By Luis Alberto Urrea LITTLE, BROWN AND CO.
The Mexican-american de la Cruz clan is messy, in the best way, and so is this book, with Urrea’s vivid, visceral prose propelling a noisy celebration of promiscuity and sorrow, joy and hate, birth and death. A sprawling, life-afɿrming, multigenerational epic. The Immortalists By Chloe Benjamin PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE Could you change your destiny if you were told the day you will die? Four siblings spend 50 years grappling with that knowledge—a cunning premise for a bittersweet novel that became an instant best-seller. The Overstory By Richard Powers W.W. NORTON & CO. Powers is the least known of America’s greatest novelists, perhaps because he frequently weaves science into his art. If you haven’t read his previous 11 books, start here, with this astonishing and ingenious tale of nature’s salvation—and our urgent need to save it. <ou will never look at a tree the same way again. The Ruined House By Ruby Namdar HARPERCOLLINS PUBLISHERS A wildly original novel about the mental, physical and spiritual undoing of an arrogant college professor—a secular Jew living in elitist New <ork on the eve of 9/11. Unsettling and beautifully written, Namdar captures the seduction of an ancient religion as the world begins to crack. Sea of Strangers By Lang Leav ANDREWS MCMEEL PUBLISHING Credit the serene Leav with popularizing poetry, which she seamlessly mixes with prose in her empowering international bestsellers. This one, about love and loss and selfdiscovery, might be best left for the privacy of your room, unless you don’t mind shedding a few tears at the beach.