Heller McAlpin

Departure(s) explores several of Barnes' lifelong obsessions — mortality, memory, and time. It's slim but weighty, digressive yet incisive. Barnes, who just turned 80, says it will be his last.

America's literary highways may be plenty crowded with middle-aged runaways fleeing lives that increasingly feel like a bad fit. But Ben Markovits adds a moving tale to the collection.

The punk rock star has produced several books that braid thoughts on her newest endeavors with memories and photographs of her lost lovers and friends. Bread of Angels is her most autobiographical.

In this follow-up to her hit novel, Catherine Newman reprises her beloved Rocky, a sharp-witted, neurotically doting mother.

The Secret Life of a Cemetery is a paean to the renowned Parisian cemetery, Père Lachaise. There, 10,000 visitors a day seek the graves of some 4,500 notable figures.

Didion's book is an intimate chronicle of the author's struggle to help her daughter, even if it meant digging into her own long-unexamined neuroses.

In her latest work, Cusk probes questions about the connections between freedom, gender, domesticity, art, and suffering.

Jill Ciment wrote about a relationship she had with a teacher when she was very young – that turned into a marriage – in Half a Life. Now, eight years after his death at 93, she reconsiders their relationship in light of the #MToo movement.

Like her other books, French writer Valérie Perrin's third novel to be translated into English, centers on the life-changing magic of friendships across generations.

Set during a uniquely stressful summer for one Nantucket family, Gabriella Burnham's second novel highlights the strong bonds between a mom and her daughters.