Sigrid Nunez’s It Will Come Back to You, Lauren Collins’s They Stole a City, and Julie Buntin’s Famous Men all feature among the best reviewed books of the week.
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Fiction
1. It Will Come Back to You: Collected Stories by Sigrid Nunez
(Riverhead)
9 Rave
Read a profile of Sigrid Nunez here
“It Will Come Back to You invites readers to savor every line Nunez has crafted. In a publishing landscape dominated by celebrity worship and algorithmic shallowness, the fact that a deep, idiosyncratic writer continues to earn widespread praise and a substantial readership offers a hopeful sign.”
–Hirsh Sawhney (Times Literary Supplement)
2. Famous Men by Julie Buntin
(Random House)
6 Rave • 1 Positive
“Superb, incendiary … There are a number of ways to describe this exceptional novel. It reads as a coming‑of‑age story that probes power, ambition, and sexuality with the pulse and intricacy of a sharp thriller, all rendered in precise prose. Buntin has outdone herself, pushing boundaries from every angle; what’s striking is her bold choices, her fearless voice, and her lucid, provocative writing. It’s as if she’s raising her fist in triumph, and we can hear the roar.”
–Leigh Haber (The Boston Globe)
3. Cloudthief by Nathaniel Rich
(MCD)
4 Rave • 2 Positive • 2 Mixed
“[A] rambunctious, thoroughly entertaining heist novel … Daddy issues go hand in hand with the surveillance state, and they provide welcome ballast to Cloudthief’s buddy-comedy.”
–Dan Pipenbring (Harper’s)
4. I Want You to Be Happy by Jem Calder
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
3 Rave • 4 Positive • 1 Mixed • 1 Pan
Read an excerpt from I Want You to Be Happy here
“What stands out is the book’s meticulous sensitivity to the setting in which such a narrative now unfolds… In some respects, beneath the surface, this is a warmly traditional novel: its characters possess inner lives; their feelings matter to them and to us. The third-person perspective lets Calder subtly reveal the gaps between how they view each other and how they view themselves, while watching their performances in the digital spaces we inhabit only half, if at all. It’s a reminder that dating in the modern world can feel pretty isolating.”
–Sam Leith (The Guardian)
5. Please Don’t Touch the Body by Emily Doyle
(Bloomsbury)
4 Rave
“The 11 stories in Emily Doyle’s bracing debut collection, Please Don’t Touch the Body, thrum with veiled desire, seething anger, and the strange mysteries of the underworld… Doyle’s prose is graceful and hypnotic, producing a compelling blend of high drama and supernatural intrigue… Spanning a notably diverse range of readers, Doyle’s characters often seek respite from life’s burdens by turning inward, drawn to the captivating pull of their own vividly imaginative minds.”
–Shahina Piyarali (Library Journal)
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Nonfiction
1. They Stole a City: Wilmington’s White Supremacist Coup and the Families Who Live with Its Legacy by Lauren Collins
(Penguin Press)
6 Rave
“Remarkably successful in its scope and depth, They Stole a City is a urgent argument for reckoning with history in order to understand the present backlash and the rise of white nationalism.”
–Laura Chanoux (Booklist)
2. The Renoir Girls: A Hidden History of Art, War & Betrayal by Catherine Ostler
(Atria Books)
3. Catch the Devil: A True Story of Murder, Deception, and Injustice on the Gulf Coast by Pamela Colloff
(Knopf)
3 Rave • 2 Positive
“One of the fascinations here is the detective‑like profile of Skalnik… With limited cooperation, Colloff leans on formidable investigative reporting to build the case. The book’s unusual antagonist keeps the suspense high, and its broader policy implications give it real significance.”
–Ted Conover (The New York Times Book Review)
4. Sisters of the Midnight Sun: A Murder in Arctic Alaska by Rebecca Wright Stevens
(Counterpoint)
3 Rave • 1 Positive • 1 Mixed
“It delivers the satisfaction of a legal thriller while offering a thoughtful investigation into a corner of the country that readers from the Lower 48 seldom grasp clearly. It’s a haunting, meticulously crafted reminder that the strength of the law depends on the people who uphold it.”
–Elizabeth Denova (Shelf Awareness)
5. The Gospel According to Hobby Lobby: Inside a Billionaire Family’s Quest to Craft a Christian Nation by Michael Blanding
(PublicAffairs)
3 Rave • 1 Positive
“An eye‑opening book … Blanding tells this story with notable sensitivity … He makes clear that American evangelicalism, while broadly aligned with Trump, is not a single, uniform movement… Blanding excels at showing how Hobby Lobby’s explorers strayed in their quest to rescue so many lost and fictitious arks.”
–Virginia Heffernan (The New York Times Book Review)
