Jay's Picks

Murray invests his Irish prep school teen protagonists (and their flawed adult teachers) with a painfully awkward humanity and intelligence. A novel that packs in everything but the kitchen sink, is hilarious and tragic in equal measure, and is one of the most satisfying novels of the last few years.

A group of pranksters undertake a conspiracy to undermine the governor of an unnamed middle eastern country by putting up posters praising him in ridiculously over-the-top language. A satirical novel of ideas, full of comic characters who passively do battle against an oppressive society by subtly subverting it through mockery and indolence.

This near-future satirical dystopia describes a world where the economy's collapsed, social media has eaten everyone's brains, and reading is obsolete. Did I say it was the future? Heartfelt and hysterical.

One of Bolanos' earliest novels, this murder mystery is as taut and suspenseful as his later novels are sprawling and expansive. A good way to dip into Bolanos' universe. Intense and gripping.

A writer of startling originality and imagination, Steve Erickson has flown under the radar for most of the two decades he’s been publishing novels, but this might be the book that changes that. It’s the story of a “cineautistic” ex-seminary student named Vikar who wanders into the violent aftermath of the ’60s in L.A. Vikar becomes a film editor, and develops a unique metaphysics of the movies. Zeroville is at once a great surrealist novel and a documentary portrait of the chaos of the post studio era in Hollywood in the ’70s.