There are so many reasons you should read Good People that a book review can’t do them justice. Patmeena Sabit’s unique narrative approach is critical to this exploration of a family tragedy aggravated by suspicions, xenophobia, and hearsay.

Instead of using a single narrator, the novel relies on family members, friends, acquaintances, witnesses, news reports, and public officials to tell the story of the Sharaf family. The father, who has immigrated to the US from Afghanistan, rises from a...

Everything seems wrong in Ginny Polk’s life, from her bitter relationship with her mother to her inappropriate romance with Roscoe Simms, warden of Greenmount State Penitentiary in 1950s Louisiana. Ginny even bears scars from her childhood, when she witnessed the electrocution of the man convicted of killing her father. It’s to Ginny’s credit that she attempts to beautify her ugly environment, by cooking special last meals for the condemned prisoners.

Even those meals sound like cruel and...

Thomas Schlesser must have known from the start that he needed a special framework for this novel. Stripped of its premise, Mona’s Eyes is an art history lesson, and a very good one.

Mona, a ten-year-old French girl, suffers a temporary vision loss that may recur at any time. Her grandfather, Henry Vuillemin, resolves to take her on weekly museum expeditions so that if she does go blind, she will have lasting memories of great artworks.

If you know as little about art as I do, you’ll find the...