Jason Heller

Bullying has become a hot-button issue in recent years, a fact that Allen Kurzweil hasn't overlooked in Whipping Boy. It's his first volume of nonfiction, and the premise is as ripped-from-the-headlines as they come: Forty years after suffering the vicious abuse of a bully in school, Kurzweil has written an ...

In 2012 Sarah Gerard wrote a powerful essay for The New York Times about her experiences with bulimia, anorexia, and addiction. It's a harrowing read, but only half as much so as her debut novel, Binary Star. In it, Gerard's unnamed, semi-autobiographical protagonist takes a road trip with her ...

J.G. Ballard didn't exactly predict California's current drought in his 1964 novel The Burning World (later renamed The Drought). But like so many of his books, it does carry eerie hints about humanity's accelerating race to stay ahead of nature.

The Burning World is part of a series of dystopian ...

"There is a town in north Ontario / With dream comfort memory to spare," sings Neil Young on the 1970 CSNY track "Helpless." "Helpless" also happens to be the title of the tenth and final story in Gemma Files' new collection, We Will All Go Down Together. The similarity isn't ...

You're a sixth-grader in New York City. Your principal gives you a choice: Get free tickets to a Columbia University football game, or participate in a music video in which your assistant principal is the lead singer.

The 66 fifth- and sixth-graders who chose to sing, dance and act are ...

Young Woman in a Garden brings together 24 previously published short stories by the fantasy fabulist Delia Sherman. Reviewer Jason Heller says it's full of dazzle and heart, with a dark edge.

English translations of foreign-language science fiction are becoming more common, still, they face an uphill battle. The American market is already crowded with books written by native English speakers, and it takes a conscientious reader to seek out treasures that originate from other parts of the world — that is, ...

What would a young man's life be like if he suddenly found he could heal from any wound? It's a fantastic premise for a book, especially one as swift and easygoing as Fred Venturini's debut, The Heart Does Not Grow Back.

Dale Sampson is a nerdy schmuck living in a ...

Boring can be beautiful, and Bedhead proved it. The band walked the walk — or sleepwalked it, as the case may be — throughout its existence in the '90s. While groups like Nirvana, the Pixies and Weezer had mastered the art of ...

In the foreword to his new novella The Slow Regard of Silent Things, Patrick Rothfuss gives the reader a warning: "If you haven't read my other books, you don't want to start here." The other books he's referring to are The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man's Fear, ...

Rock 'n' roll was built on rebellion, but too often today, that's about as deep as the conversation goes — especially now that rock is so completely woven into the mainstream, it's hard to imagine a time when it wasn't pop-culture wallpaper.

Peter Bebergal, however, remembers. In his new book, ...

Blake Butler's new novel, 300,000,000, is not for the squeamish. Then again, it's hard to imagine anyone whose blood won't curdle reading it. Or their brain. Or possibly their soul.

"The mnemonic American mush" — it's one of many poetic turns of phrase that pepper 300,000,000. As with his previous ...

In 1859, Philadelphia surgeon Richard J. Levis published a piece in The Medical and Surgical Reporter titled "Memoir of Thomas Dent Mütter." It was a eulogy for his former teacher, a surgical pioneer who had died earlier that year at the tender age of 47. Mütter is also the subject ...

What makes a hero? Untold numbers of authors have tried to answer that question, all the while knowing that there can never be a simple solution to such a complex equation. Defining heroism is as slippery as defining humanity — as well as defining the culture that happens to be ...

The recent wave of dystopian novels — okay, let's call it a glut — has focused attention on all kinds of Earth-threatening ills, from climate change to genetically modified food. The plight of student-loan debtors and struggling academics, however, hasn't usually topped that list. Which is partly what makes Darin ...

In the 21st century, it's no longer a debate: Geeks rule. From industry to politics to pop culture, those with a quirky, obsessive passion for specialized knowledge are the uncontested leaders in their fields. Two of those notable geeks, Vikram Chandra and Randall Munroe; have written new books — Geek ...

What's the line between falsehood and fantasy? Between fear and horror? Between other worlds and the ones we carry inside our heads? Graham Joyce has been asking — and brilliantly answering — these questions for years. His latest book, The Ghost in the Electric Blue Suit, is no different. One ...

In A.J. Colucci's 2012 debut, the sci-fi thriller The Colony, she describes a world where ants rise up to challenge the tyranny of pesticide-wielding humans. Instead of Planet of the Apes, it's Planet of the Ants — and with her second novel, Seeders, she's written a veritable Planet of the ...

When fantasy has gotten so grim and dark that the term "grimdark" has been coined to describe certain authors, things may have gone slightly overboard. With Traitor's Blade, the first installment of a new fantasy series called the Greatcoat Quartet, author Sebastien de Castell seems to be taking a stand ...

The illegal gambling operation is accused of taking millions of dollars in bets on FIFA World Cup soccer games.