Also of interest...scientists in fiction

The Signature of All Things

by Elizabeth Gilbert (Viking, $29)

“The most interesting writers, just like scientists, learn by experimentation,” said Carolyn Kellogg in the Los Angeles Times. In this ambitious foray into historical fiction, the author of Eat, Pray, Love creates a “gorgeously detailed” 19th-century world and “a charming, flawed heroine.” But Philadelphia botanist Alma Whittaker has only a feeble inner life, and there’s hint of cultural imperialism in her midbook sojourn to Tahiti. That’s okay. At least this book doesn’t lack for creative passion.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Archangel

by Andrea Barrett (Norton, $25)

When you read Archangel, “you travel back to a time of possibility,” said Connie Ogle in The Miami Herald. Each of the protagonists in the book’s five stories finds inspiration in a major 19th- or 20th-century scientific breakthrough. But whether Andrea Barrett is introducing us to a boy sent to live with his tinkerer uncle or to an imperiled World War II–era geneticist, the National Book Award winner mixes the thrill of discovery with the “fears, hopes, and contradictions of the human heart.”

The Rosie Project

by Graeme Simsion (Simon & Schuster, $24)

“Squelch your inner cynic,” said Christina Ianzito in The Washington Post. This debut novel by an aspiring Australian screenwriter was being touted as an international sensation before it even arrived, yet “the hype is justified.” Graeme Simsion’s story about a professor with Asperger’s who decides to find himself a wife reads like a “genuinely funny” rom-com. Reading it, “you can’t help casting the film in your head.” For Rosie, the klutzy smoker who steals our hero’s heart, I see Jennifer Lawrence.

The People in the Trees

by Graeme Simsion (Simon & Schuster, $24)

“This is perhaps less a novel to love than to admire for its sheer audacity,” said Carmela Ciuraru in The New York Times. It’s based on the true story of a medical researcher who was convicted of raping a boy he’d adopted while studying the boy’s tribe in Papua New Guinea, and author Hanya Yanagihara makes her story’s predator deeply unlikable. Still, “it’s hard to turn away from Dr. Norton Perina” or this inventive book, which proves “almost defiant in its refusal to offer redemption.”