In Adam Johnson’s “The Wayfinder,” a highlight in a strong year of fiction, a young woman on a Polynesian island more than 500 years in the past ponders the significance of a whale that has beached on ...

“All great literature can be reduced to two stories: a man goes on a journey, and a stranger comes to town.” This axiom, most often attributed to Leo Tolstoy, speaks to the power of the stories we ...