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Tupelo Hassman's novel about a group of teenagers at loose ends in a tiny town run by Christian fundamentalists has some dark moments, but ultimately it's as heartwarming as it is beautifully written.

The strangely addictive Japanese series is set in a small, all-night joint, run by a chef whose dishes helps strangers tap into something deep and universal.

Don't be put off by the size of Devotion: A Rat Story by Maile Meloy. It's a small book, hardly larger than a pack of cigarettes, but the horror it delivers is real (and rat shaped).

Some people of faith claim that the world is meaningless without belief in God or gods or an afterlife. Commentator Barbara J. King says the view of some atheists is mirrored in two recent novels.

If you're the kind of person who'd wear a hot dog costume to a princess party, you'll love Lisa Hanawalt's lushly illustrated, off-the-wall diary/food meditation/travelogue Hot Dog Taste Test.

Chandler Klang Smith's novel, set in a crumbling far-future metropolis menaced by dragons, is a dizzying, delirious crash of wonders and grotesqueries, spiked with crackling dialogue and detail.

Charles Soule and Ryan Browne's neon-drenched comic is giddily over-the-top, featuring a buffed-up wizard named Wizord, his talking koala sidekick and many, many glowing blasts of mystical fire.

Singer and actress Eartha Kitt has died of colon cancer. She was 81. Kitt, who was ostracized as a child in South Carolina because of her mixed-race heritage, got her start in show business as a dancer and vocalist, and earned early international notice as a featured singer in a Paris nightclub.

Emiliano Monge's prose is brilliant, but that often obscures the moral questions around his protagonists, both human traffickers who transport their cargo while worrying about their relationship.

In his experimental new memoir, Matt Young conveys the chaos of his three deployments in Iraq. Critic Maureen Corrigan calls Young "a frank, funny and mercilessly self-lacerating narrator."

Ben Loory's new story collection is dreamlike in the best way: both cheerfully surreal and cosmically unsettling, full of lovelorn cephalopods, discontented sloths and the occasional darker touch.

Han Kang's new novel isn't quite a novel — it's a gorgeous, hard-to-categorize series of reflections, themed around the color white, on grief, mourning and what it means to remember those we've lost.

Deb Olin Unferth's story collection delights in going in unexpected directions, and her sensitively-drawn characters feel the full, real, often contradictory and uneasy layering of human emotion.

The proposed barrier would cut off 70 percent of the National Butterfly Center's property, putting it in a no man's land along the Rio Grande. More than 200 species have been documented at the center.

Quindlen's novel Still Life with Bread Crumbs is predictably comforting and readable, even as it details the challenges of a modern middle-aged woman: the fallout of divorce, a career on the wane, and the endless financial and emotional support demanded by her family.

In her newest novel, Lauren Groff uses a split narrative to tell the story of a long marriage. Critic Jason Sheehan says the device works thanks to Groff's stunning language.

The famous 1978 Lufthansa robbery is a great crime story — it was even a plot point in GoodFellas. But a new book about the heist falls flat, hampered by purple prose and pointless details.

Ursula Vernon (writing as T. Kingfisher) delivers a fleet, stripped-down fairy tale with echoes of Bluebeard and Peter Beagle. Critic Tasha Robinson praises Vernon's tough-minded, distinctive women

Aimee Bender's new story collection, The Color Master, is full of fractured fairy tales that flavor everyday lives and neuroses with a liberal dash of magic. Reviewer Alan Cheuse says Bender's work is "akin to the best of Italo Calvino in its matter-of-fact treatment of the fantastic."

While Dr. Seuss, David Rakoff was not, the author, it's clear, cared a whole awful lot. This book — his last — is a rhymed, pensive story: A triumph, says Heller McAlpin, in all its sly glory.