1. Rafael Alvarez’s review of A Horse Walks into a Bar: A Novel by David Grossman. “I have never read a book like this, or even thought that one could exist. Maybe that’s because Buddy Hackett never wrote his autobiography. From concept to execution (was it imagined whole or did the squeamishly discomfiting tale emerge in waves that startled the author?), in A Horse Walks into a Bar, David Grossman has created a hard, fast, and bumpy ride through the deserts of Israel and the soul.”


2. “5 Rappers to Book.” In his August column, E.A. Aymar tuned readers in to a handful of artists whose work resonates with literary types. Check them out — and prepare to start getting shushed at the library…


3. Bob Duffy’s review of Since We Fell: A Novel by Dennis Lehane. “Then Lehane stomps on the gas pedal, and we’re suddenly enmeshed in a headlong woman-on-the-run thriller, another, more frantic species of summer read. Rachel — by this point an agoraphobic whose second marriage seems to be dissolving before her eyes — finds herself in a deadly faceoff with a pair of real-life thugs and is forced to recover her fleeting resourcefulness if she’s to survive the chase that ensues.”


4. Erika Swyler’s review of Fierce Kingdom: A Novel by Gin Phillips. “The book unfolds across three hours in the zoo, following the event from beginning to its presumed end. Phillips uses this simple framework to its best advantage, creating suffocating tension, forced introspection, and a close variety of terror that is as different from the news cycle as a helicopter shot is to a closeup. Fierce Kingdom operates in the intense intimacy of being trapped.”


5. Carrie Callaghan’s review of The Half-Drowned King: A Novel by Linnea Hartsuyker. “It’s no coincidence, then, that many epic myths begin with a betrayal. Linnea Hartsuyker, in The Half-Drowned King, her white-knuckled retelling of the protohistory of Norway’s Harald Fairhair, channels that same emotional power when she opens her novel with the attempted killing of her protagonist, Ragnvald.”

Click here to get our free biweekly e-newsletter, and follow us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest! And if you’d like to advertise with us, click here.