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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Gabriel Tallent's devastating debut novel about a young girl and her abusive but charismatic father has memorable characters, the pacing of a thriller, and still manages to work in some light moments.
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Orhan Pamuk is almost synonymous with Turkish literature; he's won the Nobel Prize for his work. But his latest, about a well-digger and his apprentice, doesn't reach the heights of his earlier books.
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Kamila Shamsie's new book — beautifully written and paced — updates the ancient story of Antigone to tell an explosive story of two families tangled together by love, grief and religious radicalism.
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Tom Perrotta's new novel about a divorced mom and her college-aged son addresses some serious issues with dark humor. The result is uncompromisingly obscene, but still somehow good-natured.
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Patrick Dacey puts his characters through the wringer in his new novel, a wrenching saga of a profoundly unhappy family set against the ostensibly idyllic background of Cape Cod.
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Scott McClanahan's semi-autobiographical novel is packed with loss, pain and existential anguish, but his narrator — also named Scott — refuses to give up, no matter how often he's knocked down. -
By turns funny, shocking and heartbreaking, Everett's new novel follows a painter who's deeply ambivalent about his apparently idyllic life and digs into the moments in his past that shaped him.
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Gabe Habash's audacious coming-of-age novel follows a charismatic, troubled, sometimes repellent college wrestler who comes close to the edge of madness after an injury derails his final season.
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The great American dancer Isadora Duncan led a tragic life, and her worst year — just after the deaths of her first two children in an accident, forms the core of Amelia Gray's powerful new novel.
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Slovak author Jana Beňová's English language debut is a bizarre, oblique — but beautiful — series of vignettes about a couple who spend their time drinking and smoking in Bratislava coffee shops.
