Clay Walls, Kim Ronyoung (Permanent Press). “By...

Clay Walls, Kim Ronyoung (Permanent Press). “By interweaving the three themes of the Korean immigrant experience--Korean culture, American racism, and Korean nationalism--Kim has created an important novel about those who fled Japanese colonial rule in their homeland and settled in Los Angeles in the 1920s” (Eun Sik Yang).

Manhattan ‘45, Jan Morris (Oxford). “A delightful crawl through the Wonder City at the end of World War II. . . . Morris has imagination and wit, and an exuberant sense of what Manhattan must have been like” (Jerome Charyn).

That Night, Alice McDermott (Farrar, Straus & Giroux). The author’s perceptions of suburban life and “wonderful, individual portrait” of Sheryl, a transgressor and heartbreaking innocent, “have a rich detail of the quality of a Cheever or an Updike” (Richard Eder).