Proving that a dystopia can still be a fun read, Gary Shteyngart’s novel Super Sad True Love Story is set in the not-too-distant future of New York City, providing many parallels that hit disturbingly close to home. Our hero Lenny Abramov, a nerdy and overzealous 39-year-old, is a relic of the recent past: He loves reading bound books; his body, nose and hairline are not perfect; but most of all, he is striving for some authentic human connection in a world of self-absorption. 

If you have encountered the Bosnian writer Aleksandar Hemon, citizen of Chicago since 1992, you know the pleasures and sustenance his work offers. And if this is your first introduction, then welcome. Hemon, who won a MacArthur Grant in 2004, has published four compelling books of fiction. His short stories and novel, inflected by personal experience, loss and memory, probe what it means to be deeply affected by war, and what's inexplicable accompanying it. In Hemon’s case: what it means to exist within the experience of war, yet remain outside.

What living novelist brings more baggage to the publication of a new book than Martin Amis? Each occasion triggers a recounting of wildly irrelevant details from his past (no need to repeat them here), generating a media frenzy to which Amis often contributes with outspoken views on culture, politics and history. By now (Lionel Asbo is his 13^th novel), this frenzy serves not to enlighten but to distract from the work itself. In that respect, Amis remains one of the most consistently interesting and—on a purely sentence-by-sentence level—one of the best writers we have.

Book lovers around the country are wondering what will happen to their favorite bookstores as the increase in digital publishing and the closure of brick and mortar book monoliths like Borders signifies. When Borders announced its closing last year, NPR published an article questioning how much longer the “bookstore experience” might last, and what the store’s closure might mean for other bookstores. Many have speculated that independent bookstores will thrive, while others project a gloomy end for anyone associated with the book business. 

In Every Love Story is a Ghost Story, a sympathetic and engrossing biography of David Foster Wallace, literary journalist D.T. Max deftly outlines the early years of the writer’s life, from his birth in Ithaca, New York, growing up in Champaign, Illinois, where he became a promising junior tennis player, to his education (with a double major in English and philosophy) at Amherst College. The novel he wrote for his senior thesis, The Broom of the System, was published when Wallace was 25 years old, launching a career that went on to see creation of a range of exceptional works of fiction and nonfiction.

British author John Lanchester displays an impressive range of skills in his books—from a gourmand/serial killer’s disturbing confessions in his first novel, The Debt to Pleasure, to a beguiling memoir Family Romance and an incisive examination of the global economic crisis in IOU: Why Everyone Owes Everyone and No One can Pay! Lanchester’s interest in the global economy bears full fruit in Capital, the finest novel yet from this hugely talented writer.

Knowing which co-workers to kiss on the cheeks, watching Claudia Schiffer model lingerie below your office balcony, and being berated for eating lunch at your desk are just part of the job for an American living and working in Paris.  Rosecrans Baldwin’s Paris, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down, is an insightful memoir of his 18 months at a Paris ad agency. His follow-up to You Lost Me There, this funny narrative shows the joie de vivre and frustrations of Gallic living. He recently spoke with Highbrow Magazine.

Peter Behrens’ first novel, The Law of Dreams, received the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction, and he has also published Night Driving, a collection of short stories. His prose is clear and lyrical, and he demonstrates a deep empathy for all of his characters. If the intensity of the early chapters of The O'Briens gives way to a less focused, more rambling account of the lives of the O’Brien clan, this may be as much a function of this type of novel as his conception and execution. But throughout, Behrens’ affinity for landscape and family shine through. 

Countless pages have been written about Nixon’s downfall, but novelist Thomas Mallon explores this episode through the prism of a multitude of characters caught in the scandal’s wake. Mallon sets himself a near-impossible goal—to write a novel about real-life people (some dead, some still living) who, by and large, lived on the fringes of this earthshaking event, and make it work.

What has now become a popular HBO television show named after the first book, Game of Thrones, started out as a fantastical book series written by George R.R. Martin. Upon the first book’s release in 1996, fantasy enthusiasts everywhere flocked to the bookshelves.  Then came the anxious wait between each release that kept fans waiting with anticipation, with the fifth book released this past winter.