Books

When you come to the end of Abraham Verghese's new novel, "The Covenant of Water," you will feel as if you have lived among its Indian and Anglo-Indian characters for almost a century. It's that long.

Readers and critics are unlikely to reach unanimity on the identity of The Great American Novel, but they can agree on its defining aspects: a work of fiction set in a specific era that focuses on a topic central to the American experience.

Christmas Eve, 1959, Tambilla, Australia: Isabel and three of her children — Matilda, John and Evie — are found dead near a creekside swimming hole. A fourth, infant Thea, is missing.

"Blue Skies" by T.C. Boyle; Livewright (384 pages, $30) ——— In his latest novel, “Blue Skies,” T.C. Boyle comes up with a new variation on the literary principal of Chekhov’s gun: If a character in a Florida story acquires a pet Burmese python, sooner or later that python will eat something …

FICTION: A mesmerizing novel about a young woman wrestling with grief and madness during the Blitz. "The Midnight News" by Jo Baker; Alfred A. Knopf (336 pages, $29) ——— Jo Baker's 2017 novel "A Country Road, A Tree" revolved around Samuel Beckett's war years in occupied France, specifically…

The first Black boxing champion was a man named Jack Johnson and a few years before he died in 1946, he told a young reporter, “Just remember, whatever you write about me, that I was a man.” You will meet this man in all his ferocity, style, audacity and courage in a spectacular new book, a …