Lizzie Skurnick
Lizzie Skurnick's reviews and essays have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and "many other appallingly underpaying publications," she says. Her books blog, Old Hag, is a Forbes Best of the Web pick and has been anthologized in Vintage's Ultimate Blogs: Masterworks from the Wild Web. She writes a column on vintage young-adult fiction for Jezebel.com, a job she has been preparing for her entire life. She is on the board of the National Book Critics Circle.
-
Danzy Senna's poet mother was a Boston Brahmin, her father the son of a black piano player and a Mexican boxer. Her memoir, in which she examines her family history, is part detective story, part the story of a nation.
-
When the stock market crashed, writer Lizzie Skurnick turned to her childhood bookcase, where she found a bunch of girls who learned to survive life's downsizing. Here are three heroines whose belt-tightening serves as great advice.
-
It's hard to look at the perpetually dissatisfied sophisticates in Caitlin Macy's Spoiled and not see a nod to F. Scott Fitzgerald. Her stories demonstrate not only Fitzgerald's wit and insight, but deep empathy for her subjects.
-
This clever, poignant spoof tells the story of a relationship gone wrong in the form of a precisely annotated auction catalog that puts the detritus of a love affair — notes, photos, keepsakes — up for sale.
-
Eula Biss' dazzling leaps and odd juxtapositions have the knack of seeming brilliant and obvious at the same time. Notes from No Man's Land collects forceful, beautiful essays that examine race through a frame of reference both personal and wide-ranging.
-
Not always nice, the characters in The Piano Teacher are always interesting. The novel tells a romantic tale of smoky mysteries, near misses, two-faced villains and secretive lovers.
-
In this smart and funny follow-up to his previous story collections, The Book of Ralph (2004) and America's Report Card (2006), John McNally revels in a gallery of Midwestern misfits and their stories of hard-luck love.
-
After a flirtation with literary fiction, King returns with Just After Sunset, a collection of lurid, gore-spattered tales that can be both horrifying and heartbreaking.
-
In the author's third Jackson Brodie mystery, a train crash connects a tangle of characters and crimes. The novel explores the line between protectiveness and violent possessiveness.
-
Pulitzer Prize-winner Marilynne Robinson returns to the town of Gilead, scene of her last novel. Home has a less meditative tone that suits its younger characters, especially Jack, the wayward son who returns in search of redemption.
-
A young man enters a world of power and privilege when he is summoned to live on the estate of the local industrial baron in Ethan Canin's epic America America.
-
Former GOP finance director Nicole Sexton's young heroine has a knack for throwing parties and tapping rich donors. But as the former intern becomes a big wheel in the Republican money machine, her ideals take a beating.