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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In her hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking semi-autobiographical novel, Toronto author Sheila Heti chronicles her struggle to interact with people.
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The second novel in Hilary Mantel's trilogy positions Thomas Cromwell as Henry VIII's trusted consigliere and a specialist at getting unwanted wives out of the way. But if the machinations in Bring Up the Bodies are of the cruelest kind, Mantel's language couldn't be more sublime.
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The young poet Christina Rossetti is haunted by the ghost of her uncle in steampunk pioneer Tim Powers' latest, an elegant supernatural thriller rife with literary references.
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Dan Chaon's short stories depict the weight and strain of mourning with impressive sensitivity and authenticity.
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Chan Koonchung's smart, incendiary new novel takes place in a dystopian (but all too believable) future, after the collapse of the global economy. Only China has emerged unscathed — and mysteriously, an entire month has been erased from the public memory.
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Gil Scott-Heron's posthumously published memoir, The Last Holiday, is a triumphant and moving account of a life dedicated to art and activism.
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These five books take us inside the minds of a founding father and the father of the iPod; the vexing artists who brought us Starry Night and Slaughterhouse-Five; and the couple whose scientific discoveries changed the world in awesome, and awful, ways. -
Not long after Chilean novelist Roberto Bolano died in 2003, his heirs found an unpublished manuscript written more than 20 years ago. The Third Reich chronicles a month in the life of Udo Berger, a young German war game prodigy — and explores the origins of the brutality that lurks within us all. -
In King's latest novel, 11/22/63, a high school teacher is recruited to travel back in time to prevent the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The masterful science fiction writer revisits a real American horror story — a day when truth was scarier than fiction.
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Mark Feldstein's gripping new account of the long-running rivalry between Richard Nixon and columnist Jack Anderson examines what is likely the all-time low point in American journalist-politician relations. His analysis of their relationship is even-handed, and hard to put down.
