“The Sacrament” opens in 1987 with the brief account of a young student witnessing a harrowing death. From that point, the novel quickly focuses itself on the destructive nature of repression. It is a construct that Olaf Olafsson examines forthrightly in both the individual and in one of the…

The hardest job a reviewer probably has is deciding how to structure one of those “Best of the Year” lists. So, how about a few parameters for 2019?

Comic or satiric, that’s what the big question is going to be about “The Captain and the Glory.” However, deciding that question is certainly not going to affect any reader response to this deeply funny new book from Dave Eggers, author of “The Parade,” published earlier this year.

The dust jacket of “The Movie Musical!” is the perfect complement to film historian Jeanine Basinger’s book-length tribute to a film genre that she believes to be one of the greatest contributions America made to world cinema.

“The Cheffe,” the new novel from Marie NDiaye, has at its center a female culinary artist determined to make her way in a traditionally male profession. 

“Olive, Again” is Elizabeth Strout’s continuation of the life of her most cantankerous and best-known creation.

“Life Undercover: Coming of Age in the CIA” is the astonishing first-hand account of one woman’s literal and figurative initiation into adulthood during her nearly two decades as a member of the CIA. It is also the equally absorbing account of the emotional price she paid by accepting that a…

“The World That We Knew” continues to explore the ideas that readers have come to expect from the works of Alice Hoffman. Like those before it, this novel is about mothers and daughters, good and evil, magic and faith. It is very much about survival, too — take a minute to think about the us…

The title of “Tell Me a Story: My Life with Pat Conroy” pretty much says it all. The book is certainly not meant to be an exhaustive biography of one of the South’s most admired contemporary literary voices. 

The latest book from Ann Patchett, “The Dutch House,” is one of the most satisfying novels of the year. It’s very much about family, forgiveness and the myriad meanings of inheritance.

“The Guardians,” the newest legal thriller from John Grisham, a true wizard of the form, is certainly not going to disappoint. Fans of the author are going to find it wholly satisfying, even as Grisham seems to be rather subtly experimenting with the genre that has afforded him the acclaim h…

“Jerome Robbins, by Himself” is a valuable companion piece to “Somewhere: The Life of Jerome Robbins,” Amada Vaill’s well-received 2007 biography.

“The Memory Police” is the latest novel from Japanese author Yoko Ogawa. Readers who admire George Orwell’s “1984” or Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451” or even “The Diary of Anne Frank” will immediately embrace it.

Shaun Hamill’s debut novel, “A Cosmology of Monsters,” is about a family that struggles with sickness, loss, finances, communication — all sorts of metaphorical monsters in the room. But this family is also haunted by real monsters.

“Lady in the Lake,” the new novel from Laura Lippman, is a lot of things. It is part newspaper procedural, part psychological drama, part social history — and, taken as a whole, thoroughly gripping.

“MacTrump” is a caustically funny, frighteningly cautionary play in the fashion of William Shakespeare. Its authors call it “a fictionalized satire of the first two years of the Trump era, which means it’s very fake.”

Bruce Holsinger’s new novel “The Gifted School” is going to seem snatched straight from recent headlines, even though he first conceived the book a decade-and-a-half ago.

“A Cosmology of Monsters” is the first novel from Shaun Hamill, a recent Texas transplant to Alabama. The book is a family saga about the anguish of coming of age. It is a horror novel about the horrors of living. It is also very much about the redemptive nature of love.

 “The Secrets We Kept,” the compelling debut novel from Lara Prescott, has already been called one of the most anticipated new books of the fall. It is an often-moving mash-up of recent political and literary history, cleverly arguing that art can be as important a weapon as firearms.

The eight stories that comprise “Everything Inside” are simply breathtaking.

It’s a crowded couple of weeks in August during which “The Girl Who Lived Twice” unfolds. The thriller is the sixth Lisbeth Salander novel in what has come to be known as The Millennium Series, begun by Swedish author Steig Larsson a decade-and-a-half ago.

Javier Marías is the author of 15 novels and three collections of short stories. His work has been translated into 46 languages. “Berta Isla” was first published in Spain in 2017 and in Britain last year in Margaret Jull Costa’s provocative translation.