Heller McAlpin

America's literary highways may be plenty crowded with middle-aged runaways fleeing lives that increasingly feel like a bad fit. But Ben Markovits adds a moving tale to the collection.

The punk rock star has produced several books that braid thoughts on her newest endeavors with memories and photographs of her lost lovers and friends. Bread of Angels is her most autobiographical.

In this follow-up to her hit novel, Catherine Newman reprises her beloved Rocky, a sharp-witted, neurotically doting mother.

With her new essay collection, Jamison reverses the arc of The Empathy Exams by moving from the external to the internal, from others' longings and hauntings to her own.

R.L. Maizes' new story collection is a quirky mix of humor, gravity and warmth. She's drawn to outsiders who yearn for connection and who display behaviors and feelings they're not proud of.

Ocean Vuong's debut novel is a painful but extraordinary coming-of-age story, about a young Vietnamese American writer whose fractured family was torn by their experiences during the Vietnam War.

For decades, Quindlen has been channeling Baby Boomers' concerns, from motherhood and life-work balance to aging and downsizing. Her new book comes with a stern warning: Grandparents, know thy place.

Ian McEwan imagines an alternate, technologically-advanced 1982 England in his new novel, in which the development of lifelike, artificially intelligent cyborgs leads to some uncomfortable questions.

Leslie Jamison's new book of essays, The Empathy Exams, combines the intellectual and the emotional to explore the humanizing effect of empathy. Heller McAlpin calls it a "soaring performance."

Nicholson Baker's latest novel, Traveling Sprinkler, revolves around Paul Chowder, a lonely poet who's fascinated by drone warfare and Debussy. Chowder was the star of Baker's 2009 novel The Anthologist, and reviewer Heller McAlpin welcomes his reappearance — though not his political rants.