Today’s book market is so glutted with self-published novels that readers often find it hard to separate the good from the mediocre and the terrible. Sunil Bhatia’s The Weeper belongs to the good category.

Reminiscent of the Book of Job, the novel concerns Gabriel Crossman, a father who has lost everything in a home invasion. With his wife and daughters dead and his house burned to the ground, he holes up in a cheap motel, nursing guilt and rage, until a stranger who seems to know all about...

The Lathe of Heaven is not a new novel, but its relevance is timeless. Published in 1971, it reflects the social upheavals of the 1960s. Ursula Le Guin’s classic is an allegory about power in the hands of people who are ill-equipped to wield it.

George Orr is a colorless, weak-willed man assigned to psychiatric treatment for using illegal drugs. He explains to Dr. William Haber that he needs the drugs to prevent him from having “effective” dreams. In one of them, a relative who’s been trying...

When considering a book purchase, I always check out Amazon’s sample pages to evaluate the writing. In this case, the phrase that hooked me was, “I stood in front of my wardrobe, which smelled like mothballs and old people.” As I continued reading, I realized I was in the presence of a great author.

Quicksilver is Emily Meyer’s debut novel. Self-published, it has only a handful of reviews, though it eclipses most of the junk posing as literature these days. Set in the mid-1980s, the story of...