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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Scarlett Thomas' novel, set among wealthy girls at a British boarding school, is an audacious examination of disordered eating and social competition that turns dark when one of the girls drowns.
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Crissy Van Meter's debut novel is so assured, it's hard to believe it's a debut. It's the story of a young woman dealing with her mother and her difficult family history on the eve of her wedding.
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It's easy to make fun of disgruntled teenagers, but in his funny new Nietzsche and the Burbs, author Lars Iyer depicts them accurately and with real sensitivity, never mocking or condescending.
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Via popular music, Andrew Grant Jackson paints a vivid portrait of a year that was the last gasp of an age of possibility, when idealism gave way to economic recession and cynical disillusionment.
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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.