The Raptures is Jan Carson’s most autobiographical novel, dealing with a child raised in an evangelical Christian community in 1990s Northern Ireland – which mirrors her own background. In her book, a class of children from the same village fall prey to a mysterious and deadly epidemic. Only one...

“I really don't like the fact that sometimes I'm referred to as kind of a controversial novelist because I don't feel that I am,” says John Boyne, whose novel The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas has sold 11 million copies and mounting, and has been reimagined as a film, play, ballet and opera. The...