Genevieve Valentine

Alex Mar's half-memoir, half-cultural study of American occultism mixes research with her own search for meaning. Critic Genevieve Valentine says it's a difficult journey, for Mar and for readers.

David Jaher's account of Harry Houdini attempt to debunk Boston society psychic Mina Crandon mixes history with high-wire theatricality — even though most readers will know who came out on top.

Ann Leckie's powerhouse space-opera trilogy followed a soldier out to bring down a galactic empress. Critic Genevieve Valentine says the final volume is rich in detail, and a fitting capstone.

In ancient Greece, philosophers denied that women were capable of friendship. Marilyn Yalom and Theresa Donovan Brown trace the way those perceptions changed over the years in this engaging history.

This autobiographical novel about a South Korean girl who moves from the countryside to the city in search of work and education blurs the line between fiction and reality.

Amy Stewart's new novel is inspired by the real-life tale of the Kopp sisters, three women who faced down a cruel factory owner after he crashed into their buggy and refused to pay restitution.

Tanwi Nandini Islam's debut novel is an understated queer coming-of-age tale, set in a vividly-portrayed Brooklyn brownstone whose residents all ache for some kind of home they've never been to.

Explorer and activist Bell is best remembered today for helping create the modern state of Iraq. A smartly edited new collection of her writings presents a fascinating (if not always smooth) portrait.

Historian Alex Kershaw's latest book focuses on an American doctor and his family who worked with the French Resistance from their apartment just down Avenue Foch from the Paris SS headquarters.

This collection of the author's early fiction, unpublished stories and personal essays is a delightfully uneasy mix of wry family observation and the chills her eerie later work is known for.