In this wide-ranging review, Brad Wetherell looks at Tom Franklin’s newest novel Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter and considers the way Franklin subverts genre expectations, as well as how e-readers like the Kindle have the potential to change readers’ expectations.

A good place to die? Mary François Rockcastle’s second novel In Caddis Wood unfolds as call and response between a husband facing terminal illness, and his wife of more than thirty years. What does it look like to draw strength from a shared past, even as the future dwindles?

Our latest Journal of the Week, A Public Space, strives to be “a literary forum for the stories behind the news, a fragment of an overheard conversation, a peek at the novel the person next to you on the subway is reading, the life you invent for the man in front of you at the supermarket checkout line. Ideas and stories about the things that confront us, amuse us, confound us, intrigue us.”

The key to the adult is often found in the child. Susan Henderson’s debut novel, Up From the Blue, perfectly balances the two crises of Tillie Harris: the year in childhood when her mother went mad and the present alarm of her premature labor.

Ever wish your problems would disappear? Jessica Gregson’s history-laced debut (released this week in the U.S. by Soho Press) follows a village of Hungarian women who “make angels” of abusive husbands. But it doesn’t end there. Yank on your rain boots and follow her into a complicated rural wasteland for a bracing read.

Caroline Preston’s fourth novel, The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt, recreates the rush of standing in a dusty corner of a used bookstore, flipping through a shoebox of old photos, and finding something that seems to tell a secret story.

V. Jo Hsu considers Rahul Mehta’s debut story collection, which she says addresses issues connected to sexual, racial, and cultural identities in artful ways, and through evocative language.

In her sixth novel, State of Wonder, Ann Patchett delivers an adventure story that still rests comfortably on the shelf of Literary Fiction. Researcher Marina Singh leaves her Minnesota lab for the Amazon to investigate a coworker’s death and evaluate the research of a field team deep in the jungle.

Ethereal mashed potatoes, langoustines in Moët, cherries fit for a queen. N. M. Kelby’s novel, White Truffles in Winter is a sumptuous feast, the celebration of food and table only outdone by the seductive women who surround French chef Auguste Escoffier. Hungry? Read on.

Brooklyn-based Slice, our latest Journal of the Week, features work by new writers next to interviews by legendary authors–and proves you can be a successful literary magazine without kicking the competition.