What we're reading: EW's books staff picks their recent favorites

White borrows from staples of Southern Gothic and queer literature to affirm a voice thats wholly his own.

His imagery is stark and dreamy, paragraphs flowing like paintings-in-motion.

In each story, death hovers, pain lingers, and life finds a way.

Credit: Blue Rider Press; Riverhead Books; Hachette; Scribner

Lose yourself in one when youve got a half-hour to spare.

Rarely has reading about terrible people being terrible felt so satisfying.

Seriously though, as a disclaimer: This is a pretty diabolical novel.

Riverhead Books

(No pun intended… not quite what they seem.

She, erm, knows things.

Each of the three principal characters is justawful, but thats entirely the fun of it.

Blue Rider Press

It was this impending cinematic experience that made me pick up the tome in the first place.

I consider myself something of a middling Wolitzer-phile.

That, Im pained to admit, was a grave mistake.

Hachette

They owned the world, remember, and everything in it.

I didnt own the world; no one had offered it to me.

Who was he, this phantom, unthreatened husband who was still attractive and strong himself?

Scribner

Elena Seibert