Michael Schaub
Michael Schaub is a writer, book critic and regular contributor to NPR Books. His work has appeared in The Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Portland Mercury and The Austin Chronicle, among other publications. He lives in Austin, Texas.
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Viet Thanh Nguyen's new collection looks at how it feels and what it means to be a refugee. It's a wonderful group of stories that prove fiction can do more than tell stories, it can bear witness.
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Paul Auster's new novel is a departure for the author — 880 pages of flowing prose about four versions of one character, living four mostly-parallel lives. It's sometimes confusing, but never boring.
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The characters in Ottessa Moshfegh's new collection are cold, unfiltered, frequently pathetic — all suffering from unease and nameless longing, made understandable by each perfectly-built story.
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Emily Fridlund's electrifying debut novel History of Wolves is a contemporary coming-of-age story about a young woman — but it avoids the familiar story arc so common to other novels in that genre.
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Maria Semple's new novel centers on erratic, overworked mother Eleanor, who makes a promise before the book begins: Today will be different. And it is, but not the way she expected or hoped for.
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Emma Donoghue's latest follows a nurse in 19th century Ireland who agrees to monitor a famed fasting girl. But both the unsympathetic nurse and the credulous villagers are hard to like or understand.
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Imbolo Mbue's debut novel is one of the best books to deal with the financial crisis of 2007-2008. It's the story of a Cameroonian immigrant couple and the rich, troubled Americans they work for.
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The Underground Railroad is a literal train running underground in Colson Whitehead's new novel, which follows escaped slave Cora. It's both brilliant fiction and searing historical document.
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Nicole Dennis-Benn's assured, gorgeous debut novel follows Margot, a worker at a rich Jamaican resort, whose home life is a series of sacrifices as she struggles with family and forbidden love.
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Bob Proehl's sprawling novel follows actor Valerie and her son Alex on an epic road trip, punctuated by stops at comic conventions. It's a charming but messy debut that crams in too many ideas.