By Washington Post book critic Ron CharlesWith spring just around the corner, it's time for a new crop of fresh books: Eric Puchner's "Dream State" is one of those big family novels you just want to fall into.It starts, very charmingly, with the planning for a wedding at a summer house in Montana.
Cece is about to marry Charlie, but then Charlie's best friend shows up, and their plans veer off in ways nobody expects.With humor and heartbreak, this sweeping saga explores the way choices – big and small – shape lives and families for decades. READ AN EXCERPT: "Dream State" by Eric Puchner "Dream State" by Eric Puchner (Doubleday), in Hardcover, Large Print Trade Paperback, eBook and Audio formats, available via Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Bookshop.orgericpuchner.comFans of "Americanah," rejoice! Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's "Dream Count" (Knopf) marks her long-awaited return to fiction.It's an intricately woven novel that spans continents and classes.Following four Nigerian women in North America and Africa – a travel writer, a lawyer, a banker and a maid – Adichie explores love, ambition, family expectations, and the forces that shape women's choices.
With her signature wit and insight, she examines privilege and power, intimacy and betrayal, and the weight of history, delivering a story as thought-provoking as it is moving.READ AN EXCERPT: "Dream Count" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie"Dream Count" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Knopf), in Hardcover, Large Print Trade Paperback, eBook and Audio formats, available via Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Bookshop.orgchimamanda.comThe history of the Dust Bowl in Nebraska gets swept up in a magical new novel by Karen Russell, called "The Antidote" (Knopf).At the center of the story is a woman known as a prairie witch, who stores memories that people don't want to carry any more.
And with farms going bankrupt and a string of murders terrifying the town, there are lots of things these fol...