Jason Heller

NPR's Ari Shapiro speaks with Kristen Lovell, co-director of the HBO documentary The Stroll. It's the story of the trans women who worked the streets of the Meatpacking District in New York City.

Rickly's first book is a solid and promising literary debut. He's a natural, albeit a germinal one. He is best known as a singer and songwriter of the rock band Thursday.

Set in Mexico City in 1993, Silvia Moreno-Garcia's latest novel is steeped in cinematic history and lore, as well an eerie well of myth that recalls H.P. Lovecraft, albeit in a more progressive form.

The playful second book in the author's Harlem Trilogy shows Ray Carney scheming how to get his teenage daughter into the concert of her dreams. Alarming capers ensue.

In her fourth collection of essays, the bestselling author and TV writer renews her love/hate vows with the human race — as well as her relationship with her own flaws and failings.

Ramona Ausubel's tale has a very recognizable family nucleus — a mother and her two teenage daughters, bound by blood yet fractured by tragedy. But it soars in its addition of an animal element.

In Nick McDonell's new novel, sentient animals control the fate of the few remaining humans — and must decide to do about the fear that humans will regroup and seize supremacy over the Earth again.

Carrie Vaughn is a veteran science fiction and fantasy author who puts her years in the scene to good use in this rollicking tale about a high-tech fantasy theme park (think Westworld) gone wrong.

Author Nesrine Malik is reclaiming the terms of defense against ignorance and bigotry, ones that she says have become rote in the mouths of some and insults in the mouths of others.

Brenda Peynado's new collection yanks readers straight into her stories, punchy and powerful tales that mix the everyday and the fantastic to search for meaning in the immigrant experience.

Heartbreaking and uplifting in equal measure, I Have Been Buried Under Years of Dust is a chronicle of not only finding one's voice, but of learning to make others understand that voice.

Sarah Gailey's new novel follows a famed geneticist whose husband uses her methods to clone her — and has an affair with the clone. When he's murdered, the two women must figure out to do next.

Nnedi Okorafor's multi-faceted new novella follows a young girl in a near-future version of Ghana who becomes the Adopted Daughter of Death — but she can't quite figure out how that happened.

Felicia Luna Lemus' memoir chronicles her attempt to make a life in California with her new wife — dealing with casual racism and homophobia, and then, terribly, the impact of the recent wildfires.

Love isn't the main subject in Chloe N. Clark's debut collection, but it's an important one — these stories dig into the ways we evolve towards each other, form bonds, and feel the earth spin.

Horror may not be readers' first choice in times like this, but Emma J. Gibbons' new collection, influenced by both punk rock and classic literature, is full of great characters and genuine scares.

Eddie Robson's slim but punchy new novel is set in an unnamed city, made mostly of wood. The city has a King. The King talks to a cat. It's a gem of offbeat weirdness — with a deeply thoughtful core.

Michael Zapata's debut novel is a straightforward literary mystery on the surface — but his simple tale of a lost sci-fi manuscript goes deep on themes of family, displacement and mythology.

Sarah Gailey's new novella is set in a dystopian future where the United States resembles the Old West, and bands of women on horseback distribute government-approved media to distant villages.

Sean Adams' debut novel is set in the collapsed remains of a gargantuan, 500-story building somewhere in the American desert, once an entire metropolis and now surrounded by scavenger camps.