Chicago Review of Books

Rowan Beaird’s sophomore novel, Tenderness, begins with an absolute banger of a first line: “Shay was no longer in the cult, but still, it made her wedding guests nervous that she was b...

Andrea Uptmor’s The New People takes the “uninvited guests” motif to new heights by posing the question: What happens when you move into a new home with the promise of a fresh start, only to find out the previous owners are secretly living in the attic? For newlywed Chi...

In the eight years that I’ve lived in Chicago, I’ve inhabited four different apartments (five if you count my freshman year dorm room). For a period of time, it felt like every year and a half I was packing my trinkets into bins, rolling suitcases of winter sweaters and summer dresses from one neighborhood to the next. First, I lived in a haunted second-floor apartment on Ros...

Dilo’s belly rumbles with hunger and her baby cousin Maysha won’t stop going to the bathroom behind the couch or wandering around with food, smearing her face. Her mother Mary, with all the biblical intonations of the name, keeps her gold bracelet underneath the bed in a suitcase next to all the passport and birth certificate documents. Her aunt Anji, who knows how to hustle,...

Critics in Conversation is a “podcast on the page” feature in which contributors discuss a book or issue currently making headlines in the literary world.

Caro Claire Burke’s debut novel