Heller McAlpin
Heller McAlpin is a New York-based critic who reviews books regularly for NPR.org, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Christian Science Monitor, The San Francisco Chronicle and other publications.
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Emma Straub's new novel is a charmer that unleashes the magic of time travel to sweeten its exploration of some heavy themes like mortality, the march of time, and how small choices can alter a life. -
By exploring binaries such as imagination versus reality and surface versus depth — with their often blurred boundaries — Ali Smith's latest challenges readers to embrace the indeterminate.
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Phyllis Fischer, a 40-year-old wife and mother, is drawn into a liberating relationship with a much younger man. She soon realizes that perhaps she wasn't so content as she thought.
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Most readers spend a lot of time happily immersed in words. But for a change of pace, these gorgeous art books provide hours of blissful visual diversion.
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Lily King's first story collection demonstrates her range, pulling you in and making you wonder where she's going, whether it's a brutal encounter between former roommates or a sudden act of kindness.
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James Rebanks' new book Pastoral Song urgently conveys how the drive for cheap, mass-produced food has impoverished both small farmers and the soil, threatening humanity's future.
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With her new essay collection, Jamison reverses the arc of The Empathy Exams by moving from the external to the internal, from others' longings and hauntings to her own.
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R.L. Maizes' new story collection is a quirky mix of humor, gravity and warmth. She's drawn to outsiders who yearn for connection and who display behaviors and feelings they're not proud of.
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Ocean Vuong's debut novel is a painful but extraordinary coming-of-age story, about a young Vietnamese American writer whose fractured family was torn by their experiences during the Vietnam War.
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For decades, Quindlen has been channeling Baby Boomers' concerns, from motherhood and life-work balance to aging and downsizing. Her new book comes with a stern warning: Grandparents, know thy place.
