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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In Benjamin Markovits' new novel, a far-flung family reunites in their home town of Austin for Christmas, bringing all their baggage. And while it's an emotional book, it never descends into pathos.
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The '50 City College of New York Beavers were the only team to win the NIT and the NCAA tournaments. Matthew Goodman's book details how a point-shaving plot came to dominate the team's legacy.
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Journalist and Brain on Fire author Susannah Cahalan writes in an urgent, personal book that the '70s study by David Rosenhan had an outsized effect on psychiatry — and may have been fatally flawed.
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Anne Nelson links "the manpower and media of the Christian right," "finances of Western plutocrats," and "strategy of right-wing Republican political operatives" via the Council for National Policy.
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Mimi Lok's debut story collection — a perceptive look at the connections we make and fail to make — doesn't read like a debut. Lok writes with the self-assuredness of a literary veteran.
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The singer-songwriter's new book is an unconventional rock memoir that doesn't hew to the genre's norms. And like her entire musical catalog, it's honest and original.
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Maaza Mengiste's new novel is set just before the second Italo-Ethiopian War, and follows a woman who becomes a guard to a "shadow king," a man impersonating exiled Ethiopian ruler Haile Selassie.
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In Kevin Barry's grim but compassionate new novel, two weary Irish ex-crooks sit waiting in a run-down Spanish ferry terminal, waiting for one man's estranged daughter who may or may not show up.
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Etgar Keret at his best can be brilliant, and some of the stories in his new collection are nearly perfect, but over all it's an uneven read, weighed down by pointless whimsy and unearned pessimism.
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Tupelo Hassman's novel about a group of teenagers at loose ends in a tiny town run by Christian fundamentalists has some dark moments, but ultimately it's as heartwarming as it is beautifully written.