Jason Heller

This week, the NPR Books Time Machine is rewinding Elizabeth Hand's gritty, punk-inflected Cass Neary mystery series. "Scary Neary" is an aging rocker with addiction issues and a talent for trouble.

Angry, righteous and redemptive, The Last Days Of Oakland celebrates survival, as Xavier Dphrepaulezz infuses his songs with hard-bitten perspectives on life, love, art, commerce, class and society.

Dan Vyleta's new novel imagines an alternate Victorian England where ill deeds (and even ill thoughts) are made visible by vile black Smoke; it's a marker not just of personal worth but also class.

Stephen Dixon's new book is a loopy, madcap tale with a simple premise: A young man is trying to call an old friend. But he's foiled at every turn, by a series of events that get increasingly weird.

Tom Petty's old band returns with a cleansing wash of classic rock, crafted with just the right touch of sweet-natured sentimentality.

Ada Palmer's dizzying debut novel is dense and complex, packed with philosophy and visions of what life might be like in the year 2424: Radically different, yet based on Enlightenment ideals.

Violinist and author Anna Smaill's musical training shows through in her debut novel. The Chimes is set in a post-apocalyptic London where a mysterious order controls the population via music.

Sylvain Neuvel's debut begins with a young girl who falls into a hole in the ground and is found soon after, sitting on a 20-foot-long mechanical hand. And that's just the (finger) tip of the iceberg.

Steve Toutonghi's new novel imagines an America where people can fuse their psyches together and share a single body — but the story's compelling urgency is sometimes buried in exposition and theory.

Manuel Gonzales' ambitious debut novel has a great hook — a top secret organization battling aliens, zombies and evil masterminds — but dry humor and spirited dialogue get lost in a convoluted plot.

Seanan McGuire's new novella takes the classic portal fantasy — a group of kids who stumble into magical worlds and are forever changed — and gives it poignant new life.

Frank Trentmann's sprawling new history looks at several centuries worth of consumerism. It's a huge, and hugely readable survey of all the ways we accumulate — and exhaust — material goods.

Glen Weldon's new book lays out the history of Batman — from pow-biff-zap camp icon to dour Dark Knight — with the witty, informed perspective of a diehard fan. To the Batcave, readers!

The Archers of Loaf and Crooked Fingers frontman keeps his rough edges and wit in a charming, impressionistic meditation on America.

Fatalism and hope, realism and romance from the acidic, adrenalized Portland punk trio.

Sofia Samatar returns to the world of her award-winning debut, A Stranger in Olondria, with a companion tale of four women caught up in war and turmoil, trying to preserve and pass on their stories.

Jurado finishes a trilogy of albums with a sprawling, 17-song story arc that leaves loose ends while remaining anchored in gorgeous songwriting and lush, layered indie-folk arrangements.

The rock legend's new album with Queens Of The Stone Age's Josh Homme is all sharp angles, hard muscles and decadent ecstasy.

Books that imagine a different version of the World War II era are as old as Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle and as new as Philip Roth's 2005 novel The Plot Against America. But few of these alternate histories are as bold and unnerving as Lavie ...

A few years ago, Olivia Laing found herself an expatriate Brit living in New York City. No stranger to urban life, she nonetheless grew overwhelmed — by the quirks of each new sublet, by the slight social differences in an otherwise familiar language, and most of all by the blurry ...