Heller McAlpin
Heller McAlpin is a New York-based critic who reviews books regularly for NPR.org, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Christian Science Monitor, The San Francisco Chronicle and other publications.
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Set during a uniquely stressful summer for one Nantucket family, Gabriella Burnham's second novel highlights the strong bonds between a mom and her daughters. -
In a heartrending follow-up to his beloved 2009 novel, Brooklyn, Colm Tóibín's handles uncertainties and moral conundrums with exquisite delicacy, zigzagging through time to a devastating climax. -
Russell Perreault hired Crosley when she was 25 and the two became very close. He died by suicide in 2019. Her first full-length book of nonfiction is a noteworthy addition to the literature of grief. -
An eloquent indictment of the effects of the massacre, dislocation and forced assimilation of Native Americans, it is also a heartfelt paean to the importance of family and of ancestors' stories. -
These books, including Roxana Robinson's Leaving, which comes out on Tuesday, all concern older women — some in their 60s, others in their 90s — who fully intend to enjoy all their years. -
All three of these books would make great gifts for gardeners and armchair oglers alike, and may tempt you to book a garden tour — or maybe even plant some bulbs and seeds yourself. -
This group ranges from a fabulous collection by contemporary, neurodiverse artists to Milton Glaser's pop art, and Aino and Alvar Aalto's Finnish modernist designs to a survey of Islamic architecture. -
Michael Cunningham's Day joins a new wave of pandemic novels, including Ann Patchett's Tom Lake, Chris Bachelder and Jennifer Habel's Dayswork, and Sigrid Nunez's The Vulnerables. -
Talk about a dream, kill a conversation. But not in the case of graphic novelist Roz Chast. Even her subconscious emanations present deliciously skewed takes on life's absurdities and fraught moments. -
The writer W. Somerset Maugham plays a central role Tan Twan Eng's entrancing new novel that encompasses at-the-time risky interracial and homosexual love stories and a scandalous murder trial.
