Editorial reviews

If you enjoy books that keep you on edge, wondering how things will work out, then No Bad Deed is perfect for you. There are twists, followed by more twists, and plenty of excitement and mystery.

In addition to The Bad Seed, THE ONLY CHILD carries overt references to The Silence of the Lambs. It’s easy to imagine this suspenseful, multilayered novel being adapted into a pretty sinister film in its own right.

The Gimmicks impressively characterizes the enduring nature of Armenian contradictions in which “everything you’ve heard is true, everything you’ve heard is false.”

It’s a fun, rip-roaring read that draws you in and leaves you short of breath from both action and laughter. It’s hard not to be captivated.

Good elevator pitch, not so great final result, though I can actually picture a fairly cool movie coming out of this if adapted properly. Netflix, take note.

Ferociously alive, this is an immensely impressive first collection from a fresh literary voice.

You get the sense that Vermes didn’t know quite how to tie it all up, but tie it up he does, and with whizz-bang energy and gleeful imaginative savagery.

On literary and ethnographic expeditions, Hurston packed a pistol along with her notepads. These stories share that same wild spirit – unnerving at times, they are always a thrill.

Readers will quickly turn the pages of Perfect Little Children to discover whether those things really are there.

If you’re a devotee of David Foster Wallace, you’ll devour this memoir with pleasure. If not, you may enjoy the cultural scavenger hunt and appreciate how much Adrienne Miller makes you stretch.

The setting is marvelous. Venice isn’t just a scenic background for the action of A Beautiful Crime. Its capricious tides and twisty, deceptive geography seem to mirror the characters’ secrets and intrigues.

Perfect Little Children is one of the most ingenious psychological thrillers I have ever read, and the ending is completely satisfying.

Hilariously necessary.

The result is engrossing, but McCormick doesn't quite get the ratio right. Fewer gimmicks, ultimately, would have served The Gimmicks well.

This is a beautiful, intensely moving debut.

This is a penetrating, fresh look at the indomitable spirit of black pioneers and their descendants.

An imaginative, time-fragmented thriller about the bitter and potentially deadly consequences of body-snatching.

Loose-limbed, prodigiously inventive, plotted with infernal logic, and riotously implausible from beginning to end.

Slipping seamlessly between fantasy and reality, it is an ambitious, powerful and, at times, deeply unsettling book.