Book Review

Try this short quiz to see how many books you can identify based on an extremely brief plot summary.

Montreal is a city as appealing for its beauty as for its shadows. Here, the novelist Mona Awad recommends books that are “both dreamy and uncompromising.”

Michael Deagler’s first novel follows a young man who is piecing his life back together and trying very hard not to drink.

His anthology “Technicians of the Sacred” included a range of non-Western work and was beloved by, among others, rock stars like Jim Morrison and Nick Cave.

In Monica Wood’s rich new novel, “How to Read a Book,” death, prison and poetry become the catalyst for new beginnings.

Miranda July is experimenting again — on the page and in her life.

A maid resists her employers; citizens resist their country.

The novel “American Abductions” captures the effects of U.S. immigration policy with the expansive reach of art.

The filmmakers do more to align star and character than the novel did. But somehow that doesn’t make the movie indebted to the musician.

Juli Min’s “Shanghailanders” runs from 2040 to 2014, showing how a cast of unsettled characters arrived at their current predicament.