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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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.
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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.
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Degas's sculpture "Little Dancer Aged Fourteen" is known the world over. But who is that young lady he depicts? Camille Laurens aims to find out — and realizes something about herself in the process.
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John Kaag extracts ideas from Nietzsche and his followers — but also from his own experience — in this stimulating book about combating despair and complacency with searching reflection.
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Sedaris' new story collection is earthy, to say the least — concerned with all the gross things that happen as we live and age — but also full of wonder at his life, and appreciation for his family.
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April Ayers Lawson's debut story collection features young, often sheltered characters struggling with intimacy in a world where ordinary uncertainties are amplified by a fundamentalist upbringing.
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Anne Tyler's latest is part of a series of Shakespeare plays turned novels; she's turned The Taming of the Shrew into a modern screwball comedy about an absent-minded scientist and his daughters.
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Max Porter's darkly funny, fiercely emotional new novel centers on a family — a husband and two sons — devastated by the loss of their wife and mother. And then the crow appears.
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Adam Haslett's new novel focuses on a family tormented by father-and-son battles with chronic depression and anxiety. He captures the lasting reverberations of suicide with precision and tenderness.
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Elizabeth Poliner's book takes a familiar dramatic trope — the death of a child — and makes it the linchpin for an intricate tale that follows a close-knit family at a cultural turning point.