This historical fiction "tackles real life" with "a touch of surrealism," says Karen Hayes, managing owner of Parnassus Books in Nashville, Tenn. Mr. Saunders tells the story of President Lincoln grappling with the death of his son. Monitor reviewer Liesl Schillinger writes that Saunders "has devised a richly hybrid work that defies easy categorization."

"Lincoln in the Bardo" by George Saunders, Random House, 368 pp.