An Affair to Remember — Except It Never Actually Happened
In “The Ten Year Affair,” the novelist Erin Somers splits her narrative into two parallel realities, one of which imagines a young mother’s infidelity.
October 18, 2025
Wittgenstein’s Philosophy Is Daunting. This Biography Makes Him Human.
A brisk new portrait by Anthony Gottlieb emphasizes the philosopher’s restless, ambivalent mind and Viennese family background.
October 18, 2025
In This Beguiling Novel, a ‘Big Kiss’ From a Modern Master
Claire-Louise Bennett, a leading purveyor of cerebral and largely plotless novels, returns with her third book.
October 18, 2025
William Gibson, Lisa Simpson and More on Their Favorite Pinch of Pynchon
With the famously private novelist enjoying a (private) moment in the sun, we reached out to die-hard fans who’ve tuned in to the zaniness all along.
October 18, 2025
Let’s Remember, Stephen King Isn’t Always Scary
It’s October, which means it’s time for the master of horror to shine. Yet he’s become equally famous for several works of non-horror.
October 17, 2025
She Worked at Vogue, but She Didn’t Write Another ‘Devil Wears Prada’
Caroline Palmer’s novel, “Workhorse,” emphasizes striving and grit in a debut set at a moment when glossy magazines were losing their cachet.
October 17, 2025
In These Harlem Death Portraits, a Glimpse of the Living
James Van Der Zee’s baroque, carefully composed funeral home photos illuminate century-old ideals of mourning and ritual in Black culture.
October 17, 2025
3 Picture Books That Capture the Essence of Friendship
Works by Jane Godwin, Joshua David Stein and Matthew Diffee find new lenses through which to explore an old subject, in lovely and surprising ways.
October 17, 2025
What’s So Great About ‘Slow Horses’? This Scene Says It All.
The British spy show owes its sarcasm and wit to Mick Herron’s novels. Our critic A.O. Scott breaks down a few sentences from Herron’s latest, “Clown Town.”
October 16, 2025
5 New Books We Love This Week
Reading recommendations from critics and editors at The New York Times.
October 16, 2025
From Epstein’s Chief Accuser, a Memoir Both Sad and Devastating
Virginia Roberts Giuffre’s posthumous “Nobody’s Girl” doesn’t break political news, but might break your heart.
October 16, 2025
Why Do We Love Spooky Season? It’s in Our Genes!
In “Morbidly Curious,” the behavioral scientist Coltan Scrivner takes a look at our addiction to the gory, the morbid and the grotesque.
October 16, 2025
A Poet Who Aims to Be Kind, but Not at the Cost of the Truth
The new and selected poems in Ada Limón’s “Startlement” reveal her to be garrulous, funny and heart-on-sleeve even when she’s being a little wicked.
October 16, 2025
A Horrific Tale of the Slave Trade, Destined to Become a Classic
In the powerful new history “The Zorg,” Siddharth Kara tells a shocking story of mass killing, human baseness and the seeds of conscience.
October 16, 2025
Thomas McGuane: ‘I’m Not Interested in Ingenuity’
“I look for the subjective pulse of the author,” says the novelist, hailing Hamsun while sensing “cynicism” in Nabokov. “A Wooded Shore” is his 18th book.
October 16, 2025
A Novel Intertwines the Many Dramas of Life in an Autocracy
Branching plots and dark humor animate “Eye of the Monkey,” set in an unnamed dystopian country.
October 15, 2025
Dispatches From the Front Lines of American Bigotry
In “Three or More Is a Riot,” the Columbia Journalism School dean Jelani Cobb collects his writings on race and culture for The New Yorker.
October 15, 2025
Great Historical Horror Novels
The author of “Vampires of El Norte” and “The Possession of Alba Díaz” recommends books that dial up the darkness by turning back the clock.
October 15, 2025
Do You Know Where in the World These Books Are Set?
Test your knowledge of European geography, history and travel with this short quiz about modern thrillers and crime novels. You may also discover a new book to read.
October 14, 2025
Is American Foreign Policy Really for Sale?
In “Devils’ Advocates,” the New York Times journalist Kenneth P. Vogel wades into the murky world of Washington lobbyists working for foreign interests.
October 14, 2025
An Epic Quest in the South Pacific, Drawn From History and Myth
Adam Johnson’s new novel focuses on two radically different island communities.
October 14, 2025
The Tale of a Guardian, a Thief and the Fine Line Between
Megha Majumdar’s new novel follows two disastrously entangled lives in a famine-ridden future.
October 14, 2025
The Great Crash Retold as Thrilling True Crime — and as a Warning
“1929,” by the New York Times journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin, is a tale of greed, corruption and incompetence to shock the conscience.
October 14, 2025
A Novelist, Naturalist (and C.I.A. Agent) Always on the Move
“True Nature,” a new biography, chronicles the many lives and pursuits of the writer Peter Matthiessen.
October 13, 2025
Tim Curry Isn’t Done Yet
A 2012 stroke has largely kept him from acting, but not from writing — and recording — a new memoir. “It was very peculiar not to be able to speak,” he says.
October 13, 2025
How World War II Transformed America and the Globe, for Better and Worse
In “The Wounded Generation” and “1942,” the historians David Nasaw and Peter Fritzsche show how civilians struggled with the long tail of the war.
October 13, 2025
An Oddly Bloodless Memoir From a Masterly Chef
Gabrielle Hamilton’s new memoir, “Next of Kin,” lacks the visceral shock and searing vision of her prior work.
October 13, 2025
John Searle, Philosopher Who Wrestled With A.I., Dies at 93
His blunt debating and imaginative theorizing about artificial intelligence and the human mind made him a leading scholar. But sexual-harassment allegations ended his career.
October 12, 2025
Susan Griffin, a Leading Voice of Ecofeminism, Is Dead at 82
With books like “Woman and Nature,” she pioneered a unique form of creative nonfiction, linking violence against women to the ravaging of the environment.
October 12, 2025
A Novel That’s Equal Parts ‘White Lotus’ and ‘Get Out’
In “The Unveiling,” a tortured film location scout is haunted by a traumatic past and a supernatural present.
October 12, 2025
The Last Gasp of Magazine Glamour, as Seen From the Bottom Rung
The devil, Prada-clad or not, stays on the periphery of Caroline Palmer’s “Workhorse,” a novel about an ambitious assistant at a Vogue-like publication.
October 11, 2025
When America First Swung Its Big Stick
In “Splendid Liberators,” Joe Jackson presents the U.S. wars in Cuba and the Philippines as part of a misguided project to spread freedom across the world.
October 11, 2025
The Pleasures of Reading Laszlo Krasznahorkai, Master of Doom
He won the Nobel Prize in Literature for books often called bleak and challenging. But they’re also comical and deeply human.
October 10, 2025
Brandon Taylor Discusses His New Novel
“Minor Black Figures” encompasses race, class, religion and art, but at its heart it’s really about “what happens when you encounter a priest at a bar one hazy summer night in New York.”
October 10, 2025
Was Columbus a Monster, a Saint or Just a Guy? A Biographer Digs In.
In “The Nine Lives of Christopher Columbus,” Matthew Restall explores the seemingly immortal reputation of one of history’s most projected-on figures.
October 10, 2025
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Cynic
In Brandon Taylor’s new novel, “Minor Black Figures,” an emerging painter explores what it means to create and experience art in an increasingly political world.
October 10, 2025
Laurie Halse Anderson’s Favorite Historical Fiction for Young Readers
The author of the Seeds of America trilogy recommends books that run the gamut from Native American history to the civil rights movement.
October 10, 2025
Ruth Weiss, Who Chronicled Apartheid After Fleeing the Nazis, Dies at 101
Her life and work were shaped by confronting injustice in South Africa and Germany. “Blacks under apartheid — Jews under the swastika. Was it all that different?” she asked.
October 9, 2025
6 New Books We Love This Week
Reading recommendations from critics and editors at The New York Times.
October 9, 2025
Laszlo Krasznahorkai Is Awarded Nobel Prize in Literature
The prize committee said the Hungarian writer’s work “reaffirms the power of art.”
October 9, 2025
The ’90s Gender Swap Novel You Need to Read Now
In Jacqueline Harpman’s novel “Orlanda,” the repressed half of a woman’s soul jumps into the body of a man. Chaos ensues.
October 9, 2025
Jeff Kinney Knows What It’s Like to Be a Party Pooper
Sharing the plot of the 20th “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” book had him cringing at the memory of ruining a birthday surprise. Also surprising: the O.J. Simpson book on his shelves.
October 9, 2025
Thrillers Guaranteed to Give You Goosebumps
Our columnist on notable new releases.
October 8, 2025
Let Us Help You Find Your Next Children’s Book
Whether you’re looking for a classic or the latest and greatest, start here.
October 8, 2025
Jonathan Lear, Philosopher Who Embraced Freud, Dies at 76
Defying scholarly norms, he took a hands-on approach to research. To study resilience, he visited the Crow Nation; to explore Freudian theory, he became a psychoanalyst.
October 8, 2025
Revisiting Her Hometown, a Journalist Finds Anger, Addiction and Despair
To write “Paper Girl,” Beth Macy returned to Urbana, Ohio, documenting the descent of a once flourishing town into entrenched poverty and acrimony.
October 8, 2025
Dark Academia: A Starter Pack
The genre — characterized by Gothic intrigue and a liberal arts aesthetic — grew out of Donna Tartt’s cult favorite campus novel, “The Secret History.” Here’s where to start.
October 8, 2025
Here Are the Finalists for the 2025 National Book Awards
Novels by Karen Russell and Bryan Washington are among those vying for the award in fiction, while books about Gaza, foster care and women in Russia are up for the nonfiction prize.
October 7, 2025
The ‘Thursday Murder Club’ Author on Killers, Cats and Kindness
The novelist Richard Osman talks about his best-selling series, which stars a team of crime-solving retirees.
October 7, 2025
In This Graphic History, an Unflinching Look at Black Activism
“Black Arms to Hold You Up,” the latest salvo from the award-winning cartoonist Ben Passmore, merges of-the-moment urgency with historical fact.
October 7, 2025
First They Drove Out the Comanches. Then They Changed the Country.
In “The Conservative Frontier,” Jeff Roche makes the case that the modern Republican Party was born in West Texas.
October 7, 2025
Jake Tapper Has a Second Book This Year. It’s About Terrorism.
In “Race Against Terror,” Tapper makes a courtroom drama out of the strange case of a jihadi fighter who turned himself in.
October 7, 2025
Katherine Dunn’s Stories, Newly Unearthed, Float and Sting
Her first and only collection of short fiction, gleaned from her archive, pulses with energy and struggling characters.
October 7, 2025
Oh, the Horror! Do You Know the Books That Inspired These Movies and TV Shows?
Feeling the Halloween spirit already? Try this quiz on scary novels and their screen adaptations.
October 6, 2025
Jilly Cooper, Widely Popular Romance Novelist, Is Dead at 88
A prolific British writer and keen observer, she sold millions of copies of her juicy, sometimes racy “Rutshire Chronicles” series.
October 6, 2025
Chris Kraus on Cancel Culture, Murder and Other American Pastimes
The author of “I Love Dick” returns with a novel that combines autobiography and true crime.
October 6, 2025
Was Gertrude Stein a Genius? A New Biography Makes the Case.
The modernist novelist, art collector and saloniste held a high opinion of herself. Francesca Wade probes Stein’s life and legacy, taking her at her word.
October 6, 2025
‘What a Time to Be Alive’? In Fact It Is, Two New Novels Say.
In an unusual act of literary synergy, two vibrant coming-of-age tales with the same title have arrived one week apart.
October 6, 2025
‘I Am Lucky’: In a New Memoir, a Former Israeli Captive Looks Ahead
Freed after 14 months, Eli Sharabi learned that his family didn’t survive the Oct. 7 attacks. “Hostage” is testimony to his suffering and his hope.
October 6, 2025
A Propulsive Tale of Two Mothers Entangled in a Kidnapping
A cheeky narrator recounts a parent’s worst nightmare in Brenda Lozano’s new novel.
October 6, 2025
For This Writer, the Personal and Political Are Inseparable
The celebrated German novelist Jenny Erpenbeck considers the relics of an earlier age in a newly translated essay collection.
October 5, 2025
Grieving a Father Who Found Dignity in the Dirt
In the autofictional “Death and the Gardener,” the Bulgarian writer Georgi Gospodinov remembers an ordinary man ennobled by a love of the land.
October 5, 2025
A Powerhouse Writer Found One Word to Change the Debate About Tech
Cory Doctorow’s new book looks to offer comfort, and solutions, to the inescapable feeling that digital platforms have gotten worse.
October 5, 2025
Jonathan Lethem’s Mastery of the Sort-of-Science-Fiction Story
His new collection draws from his ambitious practice of the form over nearly four decades.
October 4, 2025
A Lost World War I Classic Returns, as Relevant as Ever
A new reissue of Siegfried Kracauer’s 1928 novel “Ginster” offers a darkly humorous window into one German conscript’s inglorious journey.
October 4, 2025
The Comics Artist Who Sees Monsters in Museums, and in the Mirror
In her two-volume classic, “My Favorite Thing Is Monsters,” Emil Ferris explores a girl’s journey to understand the world, and herself.
October 3, 2025
The Thriller Writer Who Took on a Tech Giant
Andrea Bartz was disturbed to learn that her books had been used to train A.I. chatbots. So she sued, and helped win the largest copyright settlement in history.
October 3, 2025
How to Get Away With Crimes Against Humanity
Philippe Sands considers the case of the dictator Augusto Pinochet, who eluded efforts to bring him to account for state-sponsored terror in Chile.
October 3, 2025
Beyond Handbags and French Bad Boys: Reconsidering Jane Birkin
In a new biography, “It Girl,” the journalist Marisa Meltzer makes a case for the doe-eyed style icon as more than a muse.
October 3, 2025
What Was Best About the ‘Best American Poetry’?
After four decades, the annual book series is drawing to a close. Our columnist looks at what it all meant.
October 3, 2025
‘Because of Winn-Dixie’ Turns 25
As Kate DiCamillo’s beloved novel celebrates a big milestone, Holly Goldberg Sloan’s “Finding Lost” echoes its themes.
October 3, 2025
6 New Books We Love This Week
Reading recommendations from critics and editors at The New York Times.
October 2, 2025
Thomas Pynchon’s New Novel Isn’t His Best. It’s Still Good Fun.
“Shadow Ticket” follows a dancing private eye on the hunt for a missing cheese heiress. It gets even wackier from there.
October 2, 2025
Are We Headed for Apocalypse? This Book Says It’s a 1-in-3 Chance.
In “Goliath’s Curse,” Luke Kemp crunches the numbers to see exactly how far we are from the fate of once-great empires.
October 2, 2025
Annie Lennox Often Reads Books Back to Front
Why? Curiosity, “general impatience and all-around quirkiness.” Her first book (which proceeds chronologically) is a visual memoir of her life and musical career.
October 2, 2025
Florida Court Rejects Free Speech Argument in Book Removal Case
The lawsuit was an effort to keep ‘And Tango Makes Three,’ about two male penguins raising a chick, in a county’s school libraries.
October 1, 2025
‘Rampant’ Book Bans Are Being Taken for Granted, Free Speech Group Warns
A new report from PEN America tracks restrictions on school books across 45 states.
October 1, 2025
Bruce Lee Died Young, but He Changed the Look of Movies Forever
An exuberant new biography by Jeff Chang charts the action star’s life and legacy as a breakout Asian American celebrity who paved the way for others.
October 1, 2025
The Essential Thomas Pynchon
The celebrated author of “Gravity’s Rainbow” may have a cult following on campus and a reputation for formidable literary high jinks. But his novels are also just plain fun.
October 1, 2025
Not Your Average Demon: Unconventional Possession Novels
The horror author Rachel Harrison recommends books that offer emotional insight and social commentary beyond the scares.
October 1, 2025
52 Great Books for Toddlers
Here are some of our staff’s favorites, for ages 2 to 4.
October 1, 2025
Thomas Perry Dies at 78; Writer of Popular, Unconventional Thrillers
His many novels, including the prizewinning “The Butcher’s Boy” and the Jane Whitefield series, could have sympathetic villains and intriguing heroes.
September 30, 2025
The Man Who Served Everything
In “I’m Not Trying to Be Difficult,” the star restaurateur Drew Nieporent evokes a glittering age in Manhattan hospitality.
September 30, 2025
‘Twilight’ Is 20. These Books Will Remind You Why You Loved It So Much.
Whether you’re Team Edward, Team Jacob or just Team Fun Book, these novels offer a similar blend of romance, fantasy and horror.
September 30, 2025
These New Yorkers Hated Fascists Before It Was Cool
In “Gotham at War,” Mike Wallace shows how the American fight against the Nazis started years before World War II, in the Big Apple.
September 30, 2025
A Literary Love Triangle Like No Other
Lily King’s new novel, “Heart the Lover,” is a profoundly affecting story of romantic entanglement by a master of the genre.
September 30, 2025
Do You Recognize the Authors of These Lyrical, Literary Lines?
Is that passage from a poem or a popular song? Try this short quiz to see how many writers you can identify.
September 29, 2025
27 Books Coming in October
New novels by Thomas Pynchon and Brandon Taylor; memoirs by Susan Orlean, Malala Yousafzai and Tim Curry; the conclusion of an epic fantasy series by Philip Pullman; and more.
September 29, 2025
Getting Away With Murder
Our columnist on four notable new releases.
September 29, 2025
These Are the Wildest, Juiciest Poems You’ll Ever Read
Our critic A.O. Scott forages the world’s most poetic fruit.
September 28, 2025
Into the Dark Heart of a Novelist Who Was ‘Something of a Witch’
A crackling new biography captures the formidable personality and often eerie writings of the “Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” creator Muriel Spark.
September 28, 2025
For Lionel Richie, Writing a Memoir Was Easy Like Sunday Morning. Sort Of.
His songs have inspired fans for five decades. Now the indefatigable musician delivers the whole story in a 463-page memoir.
September 28, 2025
Rich, Immersive New Historical Fiction
Our columnist on four noteworthy novels.
September 27, 2025
Paul Kingsnorth Wants Us to Worship Nature, Culture and God, Not Technology
Based on his popular Substack, the iconoclastic author’s new book is a warning against the dangers of turning innovation into a secular faith.
September 27, 2025
A Lost Novella by Elmore Leonard With a Social-Justice Bent
“Picket Line,” which was inspired by Cesar Chavez and his union campaigns, has been published for the first time.
September 27, 2025
Robert B. Barnett, Washington Master of the Book World Megadeal, Dies at 79
An influential lawyer, he negotiated blockbuster contracts for A-list clients, including the Clintons, the Obamas and the Bushes, while often acting as a political adviser.
September 26, 2025
Book Club: Let’s Discuss ‘Pride and Prejudice’
Jane Austen’s classic, about the tortured romance of two people frazzled by miscommunications and assumptions, still feels fresh 250 years after Austen’s birth.
September 26, 2025
Book Club: Read ‘The Buffalo Hunter Hunter,’ by Stephen Graham Jones, with the Book Review
In October, the Book Review Book Club will read and discuss Stephen Graham Jones’s latest horror novel, about an Indigenous man who is turned into a vampire.
September 26, 2025
A Tween and Her Tiny-Doll Alter Ego Face Off
In the small-scale world of Laura Amy Schlitz’s novel “The Winter of the Dollhouse,” the emotional stakes are both intimate and enormous.
September 26, 2025
5 New Books We Love This Week
Reading recommendations from critics and editors at The New York Times.
September 25, 2025
Maxine Clair, Writer Who Came to Her Craft in Middle Age, Dies at 86
She published her first book of poems at 49 and her first work of prose, the acclaimed novel “Rattlebone,” six years later.
September 25, 2025
Ian McEwan Knows History Is an Imperfect Judge
The novelist, who wrote about World War II in “Atonement” and has turned repeatedly to his own times, imagines the 22nd century in his new book, “What We Can Know.”
September 25, 2025
Dark Romance Books Are Having a Moment. Here’s Where to Start.
The best-selling author Brynne Weaver recommends novels that dial up the emotional drama for high-stakes payoffs.
September 25, 2025
Rabih Alameddine Is Done With Dostoyevsky
Then: His favorite writer. Now: “So earnest, so didactic, so humorless.” His own new novel is “The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother).”
September 25, 2025
She’s Very Much at Home in the Space Between Life and the Afterlife
Raised Buddhist in Texas, Amie Barrodale came to embrace the teachings. Years of practice inform her odd, and oddly funny, debut novel, “Trip.”
September 24, 2025
In This Circus Tale, Telepathic Twins Aren’t Even the Freak Show
Dan Chaon’s latest novel, “One of Us,” dances around a great showman, a demented “uncle” and a cast of fascinating misfits.
September 24, 2025
When Your M.F.A. Cohort Is Out for Blood
In “We Love You, Bunny,” the novelist Mona Awad revisits the gleefully vicious campus satire of her 2019 hit, “Bunny.” We’re all ears.
September 24, 2025
Books by Kiran Desai, Susan Choi and Katie Kitamura Lead Booker Prize Shortlist
The nominees for the prestigious award also include novels by David Szalay, Benjamin Markovits and Andrew Miller.
September 23, 2025
Were They Abducted by Aliens, or Is Their Memory Just Spotty?
Ilana Masad’s new novel, “Beings,” weaves together three separate story lines to explore how we process and narrate our lives.
September 23, 2025
A Journalist on the Inside Upends Good vs. Evil Criminal Stereotypes
In his first book, John J. Lennon, who is serving a 28-year sentence, brings nuance and complexity to his own and other prisoners’ stories.
September 23, 2025
A Heroine to Root For in an Unforgettable Novel of Haiti
In Emmelie Prophète’s “Cécé,” a young woman is determined to survive the slums — first by doing sex work, then by posting her gruesome reality for the world to see.
September 23, 2025
Do You Recognize These Books From Their Plot Descriptions?
Some novels stick with you long after you’ve read them. See how many of these classics for young readers you can identify from a one-sentence synopsis.
September 22, 2025
Ian McEwan’s Latest Is the Best Novel He’s Written in Ages
“What We Can Know” follows a scholarly quest amid the ruins of civilization.
September 22, 2025
What Fuels Revolution, Social Embarrassment and Public Acclaim? It’s Common Knowledge.
In a new book, the Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker argues that an awareness that everyone knows what you know is a powerful driver of human social life.
September 22, 2025
A Love Story Balancing Historical Sweep With High Erotic Tension
Set around World War I, the romantic drama in H.S. Cross’s new novel, “Amanda,” comes with a contemporary kink (or two).
September 21, 2025
Woody Allen’s First Novel: Funny-ish, but Very Familiar
In “What’s With Baum?,” an anxious, jealous and thrice-married writer finds himself stranded in a culture that wants more “schmaltz,” less “wisdom.”
September 21, 2025
Psychedelics Blew His Mind. He Wants Other Philosophers to Open Theirs.
An intense exchange with Marilyn Monroe sounds silly. But in a new book, Justin Smith-Ruiu is dead serious about what we might learn from altered states.
September 21, 2025
She Modeled Her Whole Life on Godly Purity. Then She Woke Up.
In the new memoir “Awake,” the evangelical star Jen Hatmaker explores how the implosion of her 26-year marriage helped lead to a spiritual reckoning.
September 21, 2025
A Searing Memoir of Black Womanhood, Across Generations
In “The Waterbearers,” Sasha Bonét weaves her matrilineal history into a larger struggle for survival and self-knowledge.
September 20, 2025
Robert McNamara Loved Efficiency. Then Came the Vietnam War.
In “McNamara at War,” the brothers William and Philip Taubman probe the mind of a Harvard Business School technocrat who tried to overhaul the American military.
September 20, 2025
Mary Roach on the Timeless Appeal of Weird Science
The popular science author, whose latest is “Replaceable You: Adventures in Human Anatomy,” discusses her approach to the stranger corners of scientific inquiry.
September 19, 2025
Charley Rosen, Basketball Lifer With a Prolific Pen, Dies at 84
A college player and coach who became a best-selling author of books about the game, he was also a kindred spirit to the Hall of Fame coach Phil Jackson.
September 19, 2025
Jane Austen’s Birthday Party Is B.Y.O.B. (Bring Your Own Bonnet)
The Grand Regency Costumed Promenade in Bath, England, is the showiest and merriest of the celebrations of the writer’s 250th.
September 19, 2025
The Books Times Readers Are Most Excited About This Fall
Thrillers, literary fiction, history, science, memoirs and more: Here are the books you’ve saved most to your reading lists.
September 19, 2025
For Fox News Authors, the Path to the Best-Seller List Is Fox News
A debut novel is the latest in an unbroken string of hits written — and promoted — by the network’s stars. Is that a raw deal for other conservative imprints?
September 19, 2025
In the Spirit of Jane Austen, 4 Slow-Tease September Romances
Our critic finds some of the author’s sense and sensibility in this month’s best selections.
September 19, 2025
My Kid Loves Dav Pilkey Books. What Should They Read Next?
Twelve recommendations for fans of the Dog Man, Captain Underpants and Cat Kid Comic Club series.
September 19, 2025
What Happened in the 2024 Election? Kamala Harris Has Some Thoughts.
The new memoir by the former vice president defends her campaign and allows others to criticize Joe Biden and his team for her failure to win.
September 18, 2025
8 New Books We Love This Week
Reading recommendations from critics and editors at The New York Times.
September 18, 2025
In This Spanish Office, Work Is Hell. It’s Also Hilarious.
A young creative at a Madrid ad agency does her best to do the least in Beatriz Serrano’s darkly comic debut novel, “Discontent.”
September 18, 2025
Patricia Lockwood Craves an Easier Way to Eat While Reading
A hands-free “pulley system, or crumbs brought to me by little doves, or something,” would help. Her new novel is “Will There Ever Be Another You.”
September 18, 2025
The Books We Loved This Summer
At the start of the season, we made a literary bucket list. Here’s how we checked it off.
September 18, 2025
A Tart, Spicy Take on Our Ridiculous Foodie Culture
In “All Consuming,” the TV baking star turned food philosopher Ruby Tandoh munches on our decadent, crispy, sticky, turmeric-dusted, thirst-trap recipe economy.
September 17, 2025
This Generation Will Always Have Main Character Energy
In “What Happened to Millennials,” Charlie Wells celebrates his anxious, unhappy, successful, pop-culture-obsessed, middle-aged, cringey cohort.
September 17, 2025
Sports Romance: A Starter Pack
Sports and sex make for a knockout pairing in romance novels. Here’s where to start.
September 17, 2025
In ‘Dead Center,’ Joe Manchin Says He’s Been Right All Along
In a new memoir, the former Democratic senator from West Virginia defends his centrist politics, portraying himself as a high-minded public servant with unshakable convictions.
September 17, 2025
Four Women, Navigating Friendship and Ambition in a World on Fire
In her sweeping second novel, “The Wilderness,” Angela Flournoy inhabits a quartet of shifting perspectives with wit, tenderness and exquisite grace.
September 16, 2025
Affirmative Action Is Dead. What Should Universities Do Now?
The Yale law professor Justin Driver considers the legal arguments for and against the policy, as well as alternative ways to ensure diversity on campuses.
September 16, 2025
Triplets in Peril in a Might-Have-Been England
With echoes of “Never Let Me Go” and “The Goldfinch,” Catherine Chidgey’s devastating new novel watches young lives get twisted into unnatural shape.
September 16, 2025
Do You Know Where in the Country These Novels Are Set?
Try this short quiz on novels set around America’s 19th-century western frontier.
September 15, 2025
Arthur Sze Will Be the Next U.S. Poet Laureate
An observational poet who focuses on imagery from nature, he taught at the Institute of American Indian Arts for more than 20 years.
September 15, 2025
A Novel That Captures the Agony and Absurdity of Covid Brain Fog
In “Will There Ever Be Another You,” Patricia Lockwood recounts the pandemic’s devastating effects on her life.
September 15, 2025
What Abraham Lincoln Understood About the Founders
In “Born Equal,” Akhil Reed Amar paints a sprawling portrait of 19th-century America in thrall to its founding moment.
September 15, 2025
Kiran Desai’s Long-Awaited Return Is a Transcendent Triumph
Teeming with vivid characters across several continents, “The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny” traces a hesitant romance that challenges tradition and loss.
September 14, 2025
Joyce Carol Oates on a Mesmerizing New Story Collection
The Argentine writer Samanta Schweblin explores the ambiguities and ironies of domestic life in a new collection.
September 14, 2025
Jill Lepore Thinks the U.S. Constitution Might Break America
In “We the People,” the Harvard historian worries that the glacial amendment process is leading the country to crisis.
September 14, 2025
‘Exiles’ Is a Creepy Nightmare for Our A.I. Times
In Mason Coile’s new book, the first human settlers on Mars arrive only to find that their helper robots have gone off script.
September 13, 2025
What Happened to the High-Tech Space Race?
In “Rocket Dreams,” Christian Davenport revels in the struggle between the billionaire moguls Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos to leave the Earth behind.
September 13, 2025
Marilyn Diamond, Who Wrote a Blockbuster Diet Book, Dies at 81
“Fit for Life,” which she wrote with her husband, was a best seller in the 1980s promoting good health ahead of weight loss. But doctors were critical.
September 12, 2025
17 Nonfiction Books We’re Looking Forward to This Fall
The season brings histories by Jill Lepore, David McCullough and Joseph J. Ellis, memoirs by Margaret Atwood and Susan Orlean, and more.
September 12, 2025
A Poet Tours American History, With the Devil at His Side
In “Night Watch,” Kevin Young riffs on Dante’s “Inferno” and gives voice to silenced figures from the nation’s past.
September 12, 2025
The Playwright Who Sparked the English Renaissance? Hint: Not Shakespeare.
A new book by the Harvard scholar Stephen Greenblatt contends that the innovative dramatist Christopher Marlowe was the genius who inspired a cultural awakening.
September 12, 2025
So You Think Stephen King Has Scared You? Try Being His Son.
Fifty years after “Salem’s Lot,” Joe Hill (himself a celebrated horror novelist) looks at what made that vampire story so terrifying.
September 12, 2025
An Obsessed Cartoonist Gives the Outrageous Mitford Sisters a Makeover
Mimi Pond’s new graphic novel spins a cinematic romp out of the British aristocrats’ lives and loves: “You can’t make this stuff up.”
September 12, 2025
The Volcanic Eruption That Created a Monster
In Nicholas Day’s “A World Without Summer,” Mount Tambora provides a warning about climate change and the inspiration for “Frankenstein.”
September 12, 2025
5 New Books We Love This Week
Reading recommendations from critics and editors at The New York Times.
September 11, 2025
50 Great Board Books for Babies
Here are some of our staff’s favorites, for ages 0 to 2.
September 11, 2025
Stephanie Burt on Taylor Swift and Some Other Favorite Geniuses
She put aside a bunch of projects, including a book about Walt Whitman, to publish “Taylor’s Version: The Poetic and Musical Genius of Taylor Swift.”
September 11, 2025
Bob Dylan Might Be His Dad. But the Star of His Book Is His Mom.
In “Boy From the North Country,” a writer returns home to be with his dying mother and learns some shocking secrets.
September 10, 2025
The English Killed Their King. Was It Because of Fish?
In “The Blood in Winter,” Jonathan Healey explores the many causes of the English Civil War.
September 10, 2025
For These 35 Artists, Tiny Canvases Are No Limitation
“Fresh Sets,” by Tembe Denton-Hurst, surveys some of the coolest contemporary designs from around the world.
September 10, 2025
Blackmail, Sexual Betrayal and Murder in 3 New Thrillers
Our columnist on three notable recent novels.
September 10, 2025
What Reality Winner Says She Shares With Donald Trump
In her memoir, the whistle-blower explores the motives behind the leak that sent her to prison.
September 10, 2025
Great Fantasy Novels With Unlikely Heroes
Morally ambiguous killers, social outcasts, bumbling misfits and misunderstood monsters take center stage in these thrilling, and deeply human, books.
September 10, 2025
Dan Brown Returns With a Hyperactive Testament to the Power of Books
“The Secret of Secrets” follows Robert Langdon as he tries to rescue his lover, a neuroscientist who is targeted by a mysterious organization after a breakthrough.
September 9, 2025
Amy Coney Barrett’s Memoir Is as Careful and Disciplined as Its Author
In a studiously bland new book, “Listening to the Law,” the Supreme Court justice describes her legal philosophy and tries to sidestep the court’s recent controversies.
September 8, 2025
Page to Screen: Do You Know the Inspiration for These Adaptations?
Try this short quiz about cartoons and comic strips that found new life as moving pictures.
September 8, 2025
Elizabeth Gilbert’s New Memoir Is an Excruciating Missed Opportunity
In “All the Way to the River,” the best-selling writer dilutes a powerful story of love, addiction and loss with saccharine self-indulgence.
September 8, 2025
10 Icky Things Mary Roach Has (Unfortunately) Brought to My Attention
The popular science writer, whose new book is “Replaceable You,” has steadily offered an embarrassment of trivia while going deep on our insides, outsides and more.
September 8, 2025
Charlie Sheen Is Ready to Tell You Everything
In a new memoir and documentary, the actor known for “Two and a Half Men,” “Platoon” and a debauched life that nearly killed him puts it all out there.
September 7, 2025
3 Summer Books to Carry You Into Fall
MJ Franklin, an editor at The New York Times Book Review, recommends three great books that came out this summer.
September 7, 2025
Demystifying the Life of an Artist, the Sally Mann Way
Now 74 and “close to handing in my dinner pail,” the photographer recalls old slights, home remedies and balancing art and children in a new memoir.
September 7, 2025
Can One Novel Capture the Expanses of Human Thought?
The German writer Michael Lentz gives it a shot in “Schattenfroh,” stretching the limits of fiction in the process.
September 7, 2025
Robert Louis Stevenson Was Ahead of His Time, Except When He Wasn’t
Leo Damrosch traces the life of an imperialist turned anti-imperialist who wrote several exceptional books and one groundbreaking masterpiece.
September 7, 2025
Meet the Man Who Makes Jane Austen Come Alive on Screen
Andrew Davies has spent more than four decades spinning novels from “Pride and Prejudice” to “House of Cards” into small-screen gold.
September 6, 2025
A Kaleidoscopic Novel About the Long Shadow of Crime
In his new novel, John Boyne challenges readers to examine the often ignored shadow of abuse.
September 6, 2025
An Edgy Comedy About Sex, Duty and Food Service
In Lee Lai’s “Cannon,” a lonely, repressed line cook allows herself to be taken advantage of by several people in her life, until she can’t stand it any longer.
September 6, 2025
Answer 4 Questions. Leave With a Thriller You’ll Love.
Tell us a few things about what you like, and we’ll give you a spot-on book recommendation.
September 5, 2025
10 Novels We’re Looking Forward to This Fall
Watch for new books by Dan Brown, Thomas Pynchon, Mona Awad and more.
September 5, 2025
Elizabeth Gilbert Gets Dark
A new memoir finds the self-help icon locked in a destructive romantic relationship with her best friend, who relapsed while fighting terminal cancer.
September 5, 2025
Why Are We So Obsessed With Ghosts?
In “Ghosted,” Alice Vernon explores the human urge to pierce the veil — and the many mediums, charlatans and true believers who made it an enduring industry.
September 5, 2025
The Hero of ‘The Da Vinci Code’ Is Back. Here’s What You Need to Know.
“The Secret of Secrets,” the sixth installment in Dan Brown’s franchise about the symbologist Robert Langdon, brings the bookish hero back to a European capital to unravel a shocking conspiracy.
September 5, 2025
What ‘Hamlet’ Can Mean for Kids
Echoing backward to the sixth century and forward to “The Lion King,” the play shows young people that stories are resilient against time and chaos.
September 5, 2025
6 New Books We Love This Week
Reading recommendations from critics and editors at The New York Times.
September 4, 2025
Is That Bob Dylan in the Mirror?
In his autobiographical novel, Sam Sussman grows up wondering if his affinity for the great singer-songwriter goes beyond a striking resemblance.
September 4, 2025
Mick Herron: What I’m Reading (and Why ‘Wind in the Willows’ Scares Me)
The author of the Slough House novels — the latest one is “Clown Town” — has an eclectic stack on his nightstand.
September 4, 2025
The Scandalous Life of America’s First Female Presidential Candidate
Born dirt poor, Victoria Woodhull rose to heights of wealth and fame in the Gilded Age, reinventing herself along the way. A sprightly new biography recounts her unlikely story.
September 4, 2025
27 Novels Coming This Fall
Check out books by Thomas Pynchon, Kiran Desai and Joe Hill, and revisit familiar worlds with Dan Brown, Mick Herron and Bolu Babalola.
September 4, 2025
21 Nonfiction Books Coming This Fall
Memoirs by Margaret Atwood, Elizabeth Gilbert and Lionel Richie; history from Jill Lepore and David Nasaw; and plenty more.
September 4, 2025
She Won the Booker Prize. Then She Disappeared for 20 Years.
Kiran Desai has returned with her most ambitious novel yet: “The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny,” a sprawling romance that was all-consuming to complete.
September 4, 2025
Rosalyn Drexler, Artistic Whirlwind Who Defied Categories, Dies at 98
She wrote plays, novels and an Emmy-winning Lily Tomlin special. She was a painter, a sculptor and a nightclub singer. Oh, and she also wrestled professionally.
September 3, 2025
Patrick Hemingway, Ernest’s Devoted Second Son, Is Dead at 97
Inspired by his parents’ travels, he spent much of his life in Africa and helped complete his father’s safari memoir. He also published a volume of father-son letters. He was Ernest Hemingway’s last surviving child.
September 3, 2025
100 Years Ago, Fictional Londoners Looked Up. They Saw Our Present Day.
Our critic A.O. Scott takes apart a scene from “Mrs. Dalloway,” Virginia Woolf’s 1925 masterpiece, and shows why the book is a must-read now.
September 3, 2025
Should Convicted Criminals Get to Live in Luxury?
“Sympathy Tower Tokyo,” which was a best seller in Japan, is a social novel for the age of A.I.
September 3, 2025
What Did Clarence Thomas, the Black Panthers and the World See in Malcolm X?
The journalist Mark Whitaker tracks the afterlife and influence of one of the 20th century’s most famous agitators.
September 3, 2025
Think You’re at the Top of the Food Chain? Think Again.
In “The Arrogant Ape,” the primatologist Christine Webb takes a hard look at our human superiority complex, and is not impressed.
September 3, 2025
Can You Name These Novels From Their First Lines?
Try this short quiz to see how many opening lines from classic 20th-century books you recognize.
September 2, 2025
She Raged. She Terrified. And She Shaped Arundhati Roy.
The prizewinning novelist’s unsparing memoir, “Mother Mary Comes to Me,” captures the eventful life and times of her mother, a driven educator and imperfect inspiration.
September 2, 2025
Being Dead Has Its Perks
Amie Barrodale’s dazzlingly weird novel, “Trip,” is about a mother and son adrift — in the afterlife and in the South Atlantic, respectively.
September 2, 2025
A “Nanna’s” Sports Memoir May Be the Most Relevant of All
In the enchanting memoir “The Season” Helen Garner writes about her grandson’s Australian Rules football team — and so much more.
September 2, 2025
A Midcentury Melodrama of Love and War, Told With Old-School Flair
The ambitious but intimate sweep of Patrick Ryan’s new novel, “Buckeye,” recalls classic storytelling of another era.
September 2, 2025
A Foremost Scholar of Slavery Wonders if America Can Ever Atone
In the essay collection “Our Fragile Freedoms,” Eric Foner wades again and again into the biggest debates surrounding human bondage in America.
September 2, 2025
Birds Who Help Humans, and Other Tales of Inter-Species Cooperation
In “The Call of the Honeyguide,” Rob Dunn explores how the natural and human worlds have helped each other through history — and can again.
September 1, 2025
Zdena Salivarova, Who Kept Banned Czech Literature Alive, Dies at 91
In exile in Canada, she and her husband, the novelist Josef Skvorecky, published books that had been outlawed by the Soviet-backed Communist regime.
August 31, 2025
A Tale of Demonic Possession in the Vein of ‘The Exorcist’
“This Is My Body,” by Lindsay King-Miller, is just one of the month’s notable horror releases.
August 31, 2025
She Has 7 Selves, and They All Have a Story
In a new novel, Helen Oyeyemi details a week inside a woman’s fragmented consciousness.
August 30, 2025
An Environmental Villain, Reconsidered
The award-winning science writer Peter Brannen makes the case for an often vilified compound in “The Story of CO2 Is the Story of Everything.”
August 30, 2025
A New ‘Hansel and Gretel’ Unites Stephen King With Maurice Sendak
Mac Barnett and Jon Klassen follow the breadcrumbs.
August 29, 2025
Joan Mellen, Whose Bobby Knight Biography Sparked Debate, Dies at 83
Some sportswriters accused her of “deifying” Indiana’s irascible basketball coach. A professor of English, she also wrote about Marilyn Monroe and the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
August 28, 2025
5 New Books We Love This Week
Reading recommendations from critics and editors at The New York Times.
August 28, 2025
Joy Bivins Keeps Work- Related Books Away From Her ‘Rest Space’
But there is a place for the Bible, says the director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, which is celebrating its centennial.
August 28, 2025
Sublime New Historical Fiction
Our columnist on four notable novels.
August 27, 2025
I Can’t Look Away From This Poem About Looking
Our critic A.O. Scott gazes into a well with Robert Frost.
August 27, 2025
The Tangled Legacy of the Man Who Led Africa’s Liberation
In a new book, the journalist Howard W. French tells the story of decolonization and pan-Africanism through the life of Ghana’s visionary first leader, Kwame Nkrumah.
August 27, 2025
A Camp Where You Can Read All Day (No Kids Allowed)
These women met in an online book club. They traveled to a remote corner of Maine to read together. It was oddly moving.
August 27, 2025
A.I. Bots or Us: Who Will End Humanity First?
Three new books run the gamut from dismissive to alarmed about our automated future.
August 27, 2025
Simon & Schuster Leader to Step Down
Jonathan Karp, the chief executive since 2020, will oversee a new imprint that publishes six books a year.
August 26, 2025
A Life of Rage and Despair, Told in a Memoir Full of Beauty
The writer Michael Thomas recounts his struggles, successes and fraught family history in mesmerizing detail.
August 26, 2025
25 Books Coming in September
Novels by Richard Osman and Patricia Lockwood, memoirs by Elizabeth Gilbert and Arundhati Roy, the continued adventures of Robert Langdon and more.
August 26, 2025
She Writes to Keep Her Sister Alive
“A Truce That Is Not Peace,” the Canadian novelist Miriam Toews’s first nonfiction book since 2001, is a discursive reflection on her father’s and sister’s suicides, 10 years apart.
August 26, 2025
An Urban Artist Inherits an Orchard, and Decides to Reinvent Herself
Austyn Wohlers’s novel, “Hothouse Bloom,” sets a solitary woman’s reawakening in a setting steeped in biblical imagery.
August 26, 2025
Epstein Accuser’s Family Takes Issue With Plans to Publish Her Memoir
Relatives of Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who died earlier this year, contend that the book underplays the abuse she suffered at the hands of her husband.
August 26, 2025
How Much Do You Know About the Literary Gilded Age?
Test your knowledge of novels written during (or about) this memorable era of American history.
August 25, 2025
In This Novel, Chasing a Scoop Leads to Bad News in a War Zone
“Vulture,” by Phoebe Greenwood, follows a journalist’s downward spiral in Gaza.
August 25, 2025
7 Uncanny Thrillers That Dial Up the Paranoia
Tales of body-snatching aliens and apocalyptic super-flus by Ray Bradbury, Stephen King and more double as time capsules of American fear.
August 25, 2025
Starling Lawrence, Editor Who Uncovered Best Sellers, Dies at 82
He discovered and nurtured Michael Lewis, Sebastian Junger and many other authors. He had, Mr. Lewis said, “the storytelling equivalent of perfect pitch.”
August 24, 2025
When the Gilded Age Went Mad for Mars
Life on the red planet? “Bosh and nonsense,” said one astronomer. But according to “The Martians,” plenty of self-appointed experts argued otherwise.
August 24, 2025
In ‘Katabasis,’ R.F. Kuang Takes Readers to Hell
A graduate student must venture into the underworld to save the professor she accidentally killed in this bold new novel.
August 24, 2025
Spy Novels: A Starter Pack
Interested in espionage fiction, but don’t know where to start? Let our expert guide you.
August 23, 2025
‘Positive Obsession’ Is a Fresh Look at Octavia E. Butler
A new biography by Susana M. Morris reveals the struggles, passions and triumphs that shaped the science fiction icon and her books.
August 23, 2025
Book Club: Let’s Discuss ‘Wild Dark Shore’
Charlotte McConaghy’s novel about one isolated family, a mysterious stranger and the secrets they all hold is just the thing for late summer.
August 22, 2025
Greg Iles, Novelist Who Wrote About Race in Mississippi, Dies at 65
In his best-selling books, notably the “Natchez Burning” trilogy, he addressed what one reviewer called “the pervasive impact of past events.”
August 22, 2025
Book Club: Read ‘Pride and Prejudice,’ by Jane Austen, With the Book Review
In September, the Book Review Book Club will read and discuss Jane Austen’s classic, about the tortured romance of two people frazzled by miscommunications and assumptions.
August 22, 2025
Great Children’s Books About Siblings
My sister and I fought so bitterly over our copy of “Little Women” that our mother had to buy a second one. Obviously, we didn’t learn much from the story.
August 22, 2025
6 New Books We Love This Week
Reading recommendations from critics and editors at The New York Times.
August 21, 2025
David Adjmi Has a ‘Perverse Love’ for Ayn Rand
“Not her politics, but the relentlessness and archness of her characters,” says the prizewinning playwright behind “Stereophonic,” which is now up in London.
August 21, 2025
Great Haunted House Novels
The best-selling horror and fantasy author Silvia Moreno-Garcia recommends books about the terrors that lurk under the stairs.
August 21, 2025
If You Have Time for Just One Romance Novel, Make It This One
Our critic says Regina Black’s “August Lane” is the best book she’s read this year.
August 20, 2025
When the Bronx Burned, Tenants Died and Landlords Got Rich
“Born in Flames,” by the historian Bench Ansfield, recounts how the wave of urban arson in the 1970s devastated poor communities while enriching building owners.
August 20, 2025
The American University Is in Crisis. Not for the First Time.
Political challenges to elite colleges have long been a feature of life in the United States. A 1963 book helps show us why.
August 20, 2025
Seeking Simplicity? These Books Will Help You Banish Clutter
Clean home, clean mind. Or at least you can try, with the help of several tomes about doing more with less.
August 19, 2025
She Lived for the White Male Gaze. Until She Didn’t.
Kaila Yu’s “Fetishized” is a candid and intimate memoir of the exoticized Asian body.
August 19, 2025
A Tender New Biography Emphasizes James Baldwin’s Romantic Side
In “Baldwin: A Love Story,” Nicholas Boggs goes far beyond other scholars in tracing Baldwin’s relationships and their role in his work.
August 19, 2025
Vacation Vibes: Match These Novels to Their Settings
Try this short quiz on popular novels that take you places, even if you’re staying home this summer.
August 18, 2025
How I Plan to Get in Shape: Read (and Then Maybe Exercise)
Turning to books for workout inspiration is probably a terrible idea.
August 18, 2025
Thrillers With Twists You Won’t See Coming
Our columnist on three notable new novels.
August 18, 2025
What’s Wrong With White People? A Story Collection Counts the Ways.
Mark Doten’s new book examines a contemporary American culture that routinely defies satire.
August 18, 2025
A Memoir of Ukraine, Spiced With Dill, Strength and Heartache
The food writer Olia Hercules proves to be a great cook and a powerful family historian in “Strong Roots.”
August 17, 2025
A Novel That Offers the Pleasure of Seeing a Perfect Family Crumble
“Dominion,” by Addie E. Citchens, recounts the many sins of a prominent household in a Mississippi town.
August 17, 2025
How Life Without Hearing Helped One Writer See More Clearly
In a new memoir, the British poet Raymond Antrobus describes the ways deafness has profoundly shaped his world.
August 16, 2025
‘War Is Too Serious to Take Seriously All the Time,’ So He Wrote a Comic Novel
Elliot Ackerman, a Marine veteran and prolific author, switched gears with “Sheepdogs,” a caper story featuring down-on-their-luck ex-military buddies.
August 16, 2025
The Quixotic Crusade to Create an All-Black State in Oklahoma
“Black Moses,” by Caleb Gayle, recounts the story of Edward McCabe, who dreamed of establishing a haven for Black settlers on the Western frontier.
August 15, 2025
Two Children’s Literature Giants on World War II Rites of Passage
A memoir by the late Uri Shulevitz that reads like an adventure novel and a novel by Daniel Nayeri that feels utterly real.
August 15, 2025
8 New Books We Love This Week
Reading recommendations from critics and editors at The New York Times.
August 14, 2025
A Knotty Question: Does Rope Have Main Character Energy?
In “Rope,” Tim Queeney makes a case for the humble material as the tie that binds human history.
August 14, 2025
A Swedish Wedding Singer Makes a Literary Match
Along with his side gig, Jens Lekman has put out five albums. Now he’s collaborated with David Levithan on the novel “Songs for Other People’s Weddings.”
August 14, 2025
A Quirky Supporting Character Hijacked Louis Sachar’s New Novel
He was 40 years old, “so I decided to rewrite it and make it for adults.” He’s now the title character of “The Magician of Tiger Castle.”
August 14, 2025
These Science Fiction Novels Will Take You on an Epic Journey
The author of the Red Rising series recommends books cloaked in myth that use fantastic adventures to explore what it means to be human.
August 14, 2025
A Mysterious Box Arrives. Inside? The Dead Body of a Child Saint.
Josephine Rowe’s slim, atmospheric novel “Little World” connects disparate characters through the traveling corpse of a young girl.
August 13, 2025
500 Years of Author Portraits
A new book collects paintings and photos of some of the most familiar names in English literary history.
August 13, 2025
The Art of Murder
Our columnist on four notable new crime novels.
August 13, 2025
This Ritzy-Hotel Thriller Focuses Less on the Tourists Than on the Staff
Cleyvis Natera’s novel “The Grand Paloma Resort” combines fast-paced suspense, class distinctions and colonial history in a breathless seven-day trip to the Dominican Republic.
August 12, 2025
A Real Murder Case From the 1960s Fuels This Moody Novel
“The Gossip Columnist’s Daughter,” by Peter Orner, revives an unsolved mystery involving Chicagoland royalty.
August 12, 2025
A Reporter Revisits 1980s New York in All Its Tabloid Excess
Jonathan Mahler’s new book portrays the city’s rebirth as a glitzy capital of global finance — and a petri dish of ego, ambition and class division.
August 12, 2025
Dispatches From Afghanistan Show How the U.S. Lost Its Way — and the War
A new book by the veteran correspondent Jon Lee Anderson captures a long war’s noble goals and crippling missteps.
August 12, 2025
Do You Know These Books and Their Television Adaptations?
Try this short quiz on the memoirs and other nonfiction titles that have inspired popular streaming and network shows.
August 11, 2025
A Writer With a Divine Touch Captures Life in a Christian Commune
“Ruth,” by Kate Riley, is an absorbing novel about a woman torn between curiosity and purity.
August 11, 2025
War Is Hard Enough. It’s Harder When You Don’t Know Who Is in Charge.
In these books, soldiers and experts weigh in on the disorder they’ve found in some of the most consequential war rooms in the world.
August 11, 2025
Craving More of ‘The Gilded Age’? Read These Books Next.
If you’re reeling after the final episode of Season 3 or looking for more sumptuous drama, these books will get you through to the next season.
August 11, 2025
Sex, Sloth and Shoplifting: Notes From a ‘Sloppy’ Girl
In her second essay collection, “Sloppy,” the writer and social media personality Rax King embraces the mess of living imperfectly.
August 10, 2025
This Odd Couple Fought Tyranny, Until the French King Lost His Head
In “Friends Until the End,” James Grant explores the political passions and inspiring oratory of the British parliamentarians Edmund Burke and Charles Fox.
August 10, 2025
This Tale of Boyhood Is Brutal. It’s Also Unforgettable.
In C. Mallon’s novel, a teenager’s night out with friends dissolves into a collision of catastrophes.
August 10, 2025
A Steamy Campus Novel Rife With Infidelity
In Emily Adrian’s “Seduction Theory,” two married creative writing professors have parallel affairs, with very different outcomes.
August 9, 2025
This Reporter Can Tell Us What Nuclear Apocalypse Looks Like
Annie Jacobsen discusses her 2024 book “Nuclear War: A Scenario.”
August 8, 2025
She Was No Beauty, but This Gilded Age Hostess Knew How to Party
“Glitz, Glam, and a Damn Good Time” chronicles the champagne decadence and wicked wit of the New York society doyenne Mamie Fish.
August 8, 2025
The Virgins Are Pregnant. The Consequences Will Last a Century.
Tochi Eze’s novel, “This Kind of Trouble,” circles between the 1900s and the 2000s, and between Atlanta and Nigeria, in a sweeping story of colonialism and its aftershocks.
August 8, 2025
Art That Will Change Your Life (or Maybe End It)
The novel “We Live Here Now” tracks the uncanny experiences of people connected to a mysterious installation artist.
August 8, 2025
When Drug Rehabs Prey on the Patients They Claim to Serve
A new book by the journalist Shoshana Walter brings needed scrutiny to bear on America’s drug treatment system.
August 8, 2025
The Children’s Writer Who Drew Himself as a Bird
Edward Lear, author of “The Owl and the Pussy-cat” and “A Book of Nonsense,” felt such a kinship with parrots that he wished he could become one.
August 8, 2025
8 New Books We Love This Week
Reading recommendations from critics and editors at The New York Times.
August 7, 2025
Maybe It’s Time to Make Peace With Your Smartphone
The authors of two savvy new books offer hope that there’s more to being terminally online than sore thumbs and brain rot.
August 7, 2025
A Stunning Novel Follows Nazi Hunters Over Decades and Continents
“The Feeling of Iron,” by Giaime Alonge, follows two Holocaust survivors on a quest for revenge.
August 7, 2025
50 Years Ago, Bruce Springsteen Made a Masterpiece. It Wasn’t Easy.
With “Tonight in Jungleland,” Peter Ames Carlin looks deep inside the album that made Springsteen a rock star.
August 7, 2025
Jason Mott Doesn’t Get the Love for Cormac McCarthy’s Last Books
This “huge” fan of the writer (and of Nicolas Cage) says he “pretty much hated” “The Passenger” and “Stella Maris.” His own new novel is “People Like Us.”
August 7, 2025
He Always Fought for the Little Guy, and Not Just Because He’s 4-Foot-11
The former labor secretary Robert B. Reich sees “the central struggle of civilization as fighting bullies,” he says in a new memoir.
August 6, 2025
An Anonymous Chef’s Memoir Is Steamy, Spicy and Utterly Delectable
In the scrumptious “Tart,” the anonymous London haute-cuisine veteran Slutty Cheff tells all. Deliciously.
August 6, 2025
The Perp in This Murder Mystery Might Be History Itself
Shobha Rao’s new novel, “Indian Country,” is a crime story as well as a multilayered saga of white empire in India and America.
August 6, 2025
How a Dungeons & Dragons Joke Led to a Best-Selling Romance Novel
In 2018, the cast of a web series joked about an imaginary (and very saucy) book. Now, it’s a real best seller. Just embrace the tusks.
August 6, 2025
The Sun Is Slowly Disappearing in This Haunting Novel
An Yu portrays a community trying to maintain daily routines amid dire, irreversible circumstances.
August 6, 2025
A Life of Threadbare Bohemian Privilege, Revisited
Esther Freud returns to the autofictional world of her breakout novel, “Hideous Kinky,” published more than 30 years ago.
August 6, 2025
Allan Ahlberg, 87, Dies; Teamed With Wife on Acclaimed Children’s Books
Over five decades, he produced some 150 books, many of them illustrated by Janet Ahlberg, including classics like “Each Peach Pear Plum.”
August 5, 2025
Seeking a ‘Brown Man’s Paradise’ to Escape the Land of the Free
In “People Like Us,” Jason Mott tells a darkly comic tale of two Black writers haunted by gun violence.
August 5, 2025
‘God and Sex’: A Novel That Lives Up to Its Epic Title
Jon Raymond’s new book considers lofty questions as an affair and a climate disaster unfold.
August 5, 2025
A Plane Heist Goes Outrageously Awry in This Brisk Spy Thriller
Elliot Ackerman keeps a light tone in his new novel, “Sheepdogs,” though a more somber back story sometimes peeks through.
August 5, 2025
A Rich, Atmospheric Novel Thrumming With Menace
In “The Hounding,” by Xenobe Purvis, the atmosphere of paranoia and bloodthirsty groupthink in 18th-century England might feel uncomfortably familiar.
August 5, 2025
Can You Match These Quotes to Their Classic Picture Books?
Lines from popular storybooks can stay with you long after you’ve read them. See how many you recognize in this short quiz.
August 4, 2025
A Book About War-Torn Afghanistan That Reads Like a Novel
“The Afghans,” by the Norwegian journalist Asne Seierstad, tells the country’s turbulent recent history through the lives of three people.
August 4, 2025
Books for Kids Starting Preschool
These back-to-school reads will help children tackle first-day nerves, new teachers, letters, numbers and more.
August 4, 2025
How the George Floyd Protests Changed America, for Better and Worse
In “Summer of Our Discontent,” the journalist Thomas Chatterton Williams argues that Floyd’s murder in 2020 upended American racial politics — with lasting, often adverse effects.
August 3, 2025
There Was a Young Woman Who Lived in a Shoe
Emily Hunt Kivel’s novel, “Dwelling,” is a magical realist take on America’s housing crisis.
August 3, 2025
A Drama Teacher on the Run From a Lurid Past and a Risky Present
Alexis Soloski’s new thriller follows the evolution, and erosion, of a young performer ensnared in a cultlike theater troupe.
August 3, 2025
A ‘Pride and Prejudice’ for the Chronically Online
Through the perspective of an unflappable social-media content moderator, Elaine Castillo’s new novel exposes the often invisible dirty work of the digital era.
August 2, 2025
Life in Shambles? Grab Your Passport and Follow That Mutt.
In Lauren Grodstein’s latest novel, “A Dog in Georgia,” a New Yorker takes her identity crisis — along with her love for animals — abroad.
August 2, 2025
Two War Reporter Brothers, 60 Countries and Now a Pair of New Books
Jon Lee and Scott Anderson avoid being in the same conflict zone. But with new books publishing this month, they made a rare joint appearance in New Jersey.
August 2, 2025
It’s Still Summer. Let’s Talk Road Trip Books.
Our critics Dwight Garner, Alexandra Jacobs and Jennifer Szalai discuss some of their favorite books that take place on the road (and that aren’t “On the Road”).
August 1, 2025
Is the Iranian Revolution Key to U.S. Missteps in the Middle East?
In a new book, the journalist Scott Anderson argues that America’s failure to predict and understand the 1979 revolution has hamstrung foreign policy ever since.
August 1, 2025
My Love-Hate Relationship With Hans Christian Andersen
His fairy tales are part of our cultural fabric, but “The Little Match Girl” still haunts me.
August 1, 2025
7 New Books We Love This Week
Reading recommendations from critics and editors at The New York Times.
July 31, 2025
3 Book Critics Recommend Road Trip Novels
Dwight Garner, Alexandra Jacobs and Jennifer Szalai, book critics at The New York Times, recommend three road trip books.
July 31, 2025
Kamala Harris to Publish ‘107 Days,’ a Memoir About the 2024 Campaign
The former vice president has written a book about her run for the White House. It will come out next month.
July 31, 2025
Haunting, Powerful New Historical Fiction
Our columnist on 4 noteworthy new novels.
July 31, 2025
In These Books, There Be Monsters
The fantasy author Ayana Gray recommends gripping novels where the monsters are heroes, villains and everything in between.
July 31, 2025
Every Morning, Will Oldham Reads for the Length of Two LPs
The musician and actor has written a new foreword to “The Authentic Death of Hendry Jones,” the cult western novel made into a movie by Sam Peckinpah.
July 31, 2025
18 Great Road Trip Books That Aren’t ‘On the Road’
Come along for the ride as our three critics back-seat drive their way through America. (Rest stops provided.)
July 31, 2025
Two Titans of the Gilded Age, Entwined in Art and Life
In “Stan and Gus,” Henry Wiencek explores the creative highs and private peccadilloes of the architect Stanford White and the sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens.
July 30, 2025
John Fetterman to Publish an ‘Unapologetic’ Memoir This Fall
The Pennsylvania senator will recount political battles and physical and mental health challenges in “Unfettered.”
July 30, 2025
22 Books Coming in August
Novels by R.F. Kuang and Louis Sachar, a spicy culinary memoir, a new Octavia E. Butler biography and more.
July 30, 2025
At This School, Students Don’t Graduate. Their Teachers Eat Them.
Our columnist reviews “The Library at Hellebore,” a new novel from the horror mainstay Cassandra Khaw, and two other notably gory releases.
July 30, 2025
Cozy Mystery Novels: A Starter Pack
Lighthearted in tone, and free of violence and gore, these gentle, witty books are the perfect antidote for tough times. If you’ve never read any, here’s where to start.
July 30, 2025
Morton Mintz, Muckraking Crusader for Consumers, Dies at 103
As a longtime Washington Post reporter and an author of 10 books, he held corporate America accountable for safe pharmaceuticals and cars.
July 29, 2025
A Playful Story Collection Unbound From Realism or Form
Ed Park brings his wit and wisdom to 16 genre-bending tales.
July 29, 2025
The Book That Can Inspire Both a Pope and a Politician
What can a fifth-century text by St. Augustine tell us about the priorities of the two most powerful American Catholics?
July 29, 2025
A Novel About a Friendship So Fierce, It Feels Like Worship
Devotion is the overwhelming concern of this book about two friends making their way in the art scene in 1990s New York City.
July 29, 2025
Thomas Sayers Ellis, Poet of ‘Percussive Prosody,’ Dies at 61
A verbal gymnast on and off the page (as well as a musician and photographer), he was a founder of the Dark Room Collective, a community of writers, and fostered a boom in Black poetry.
July 28, 2025
Think Rhymed British Verse Is Old-Fashioned? Try Wendy Cope.
An English national treasure collects a career’s worth of poems in a new book.
July 28, 2025
Do You Know These Books That Predicted Current Technology?
Try this short quiz to test your knowledge of once-futuristic literary creations have become everyday reality now in 2025.
July 28, 2025
A Wealthy French Family and Generations of Heartache
“Misery of Love,” by the French virtuoso cartoonist Yvan Alagbé, is a subtle masterpiece of family psychodrama.
July 27, 2025
2 Novels for Double Lives
An unhappy housewife; an underground radical.
July 26, 2025
He Read (at Least) 3,599 Books in His Lifetime. Now Anyone Can See His List.
After Dan Pelzer died this month at 92, his children uploaded the handwritten reading list to what-dan-read.com, hoping to inspire readers everywhere.
July 26, 2025
A Harrowing Tale of War, Told in One Long, Urgent Sentence
Daniel Kraus’s “Angel Down” follows a World War I private who encounters a celestial being on the battlefield.
July 26, 2025
Robert W. Fuller, Who Championed Dignity Over ‘Rankism,’ Dies at 88
He identified as a “citizen diplomat” and preached mutual respect because, he explained, “everybody is a somebody.”
July 25, 2025
Book Club: Let’s Talk About ‘The Catch,’ by Yrsa Daley-Ward
The poet’s debut novel features estranged sisters and a missing mother who seemingly reappears decades later.
July 25, 2025
Book Club: Read ‘Wild Dark Shore,’ by Charlotte McConaghy, With the Book Review
In August, the Book Review Book Club will read and discuss “Wild Dark Shore,” Charlotte McConaghy’s novel about one isolated family, a mysterious stranger and the secrets they all hold.
July 25, 2025
Katherine Marsh’s Favorite Greek Mythology Books for Young Readers
The author of the Myth of Monsters series recommends works that tell, or retell, these strange and wonderful stories for virtually every age group.
July 25, 2025
Joe Biden’s Presidential Memoir Sells for $10 Million
The former president has said he’s been ‘working like hell’ on the book, which will focus on his term in office.
July 24, 2025
6 New Books We Love This Week
Reading recommendations from critics and editors at The New York Times.
July 24, 2025
Esi Edugyan Has a Long List of Canadian Writers to Recommend
An adaptation of her 19th-century-set novel “Washington Black” is streaming on Hulu. But she’s not totally comfortable with the historical fiction label.
July 24, 2025
I Want This Poem Read Aloud at My Funeral
Jane Kenyon’s “The Pond at Dusk” is a quiet, mischievous reckoning with nature and mortality. Our critic A.O. Scott plumbs its depths.
July 23, 2025
More Purring, More Buying? Why Bookstores Showcase Their Pets.
At shops across the country, some of the most popular sales associates have four legs, twitchy ears and whiskers.
July 23, 2025
This 19th-Century Novel Is a Playbook for Surviving Autocracy
Stendhal’s “The Charterhouse of Parma” lays out thousands of rules and stratagems for elites trying to stay in the good graces of a powerful and capricious ruler.
July 23, 2025
Haunted by the Ghost of Her 16-Year-Old Self, a Writer Returns to 1983
The Norwegian author Linn Ullmann’s new novel pieces together fragments of a trip she took to Paris at the request of a much older photographer.
July 23, 2025
Lemony Snicket’s Anti-Summer Summer Reading List
For kids who hide indoors with a pile of books until the autumnal chill arrives.
July 23, 2025
4 Romance Novels With Delicious Payoffs
Our critic on the best new books this month.
July 22, 2025
What Happened in This Doctor’s ‘Sleep Room’ Might Give You Nightmares
A new book investigates the alarming practices of an eminent British psychiatrist who believed in treating mental illness with high-risk physical interventions.
July 22, 2025
What Happens in Vegas … Is Grim, Hopeless and Lonely
John Gregory Dunne’s engrossing 1974 book chronicles a search for “salvation without commitment” in Sin City.
July 22, 2025
Do You Know the Places That Inspired These Authors?
Try this literary geography quiz about places around England that influenced some of the country’s most famous authors.
July 21, 2025
What Does Your Mailman Know About You? More Than Your Address.
Your burning questions about the postal service are answered in Stephen Starring Grant’s lively memoir.
July 21, 2025
He Cheated With Her Best Friend. This Is the Third Book About It.
Hannah Pittard goes back to the tale of her busted marriage in a comic novel about a claustrophobic literary milieu — and a talking cat.
July 20, 2025
A Year in the Life (and Mind) of a Precocious Teenager
“Pan,” by Michael Clune, details a year in the life of a suburban adolescent who can’t shake his panic attacks.
July 20, 2025
Party Drugs, Bikers, Hit Men: It’s Crime Fiction, Florida Style
The two teenagers in this hard-boiled novel go to work for a narcotics gang and end up in a far more sinister trade.
July 20, 2025
2 Books for Birthday Introspection
A novel of adolescent friendship; a brooding celebrity memoir.
July 19, 2025
Veronica Roth’s Favorite Dystopian Novels
The author of the Divergent series recommends books that explore human nature and disintegrating reality.
July 19, 2025
A Spy Thriller With an Unlikely Hero: A Disgraced Comedian
In Dan Fesperman’s new novel, the C.I.A. tries celebrity diplomacy to infiltrate a dictatorship.
July 19, 2025
The Best Books of the Year (So Far)
2025 is more than halfway gone. On this week’s podcast, Gilbert Cruz and Joumana Khatib discuss some of the books that have stayed with them most this year.
July 18, 2025
How Empathy Became a Threat
It was once considered a virtue. Why do some people now think it’s a bad thing?
July 18, 2025
The Passion of the Cartoonist
A new graphic biography of Caravaggio draws a provocative line from the old masters to the outsider artists of today.
July 18, 2025
The Meaning Hidden in Wordsworth’s Teacup and Mary Shelley’s Hair
Examining artifacts from the archive of British Romanticism, a scholar finds evidence of intimate, if often overlooked, connections to slavery.
July 18, 2025
My Teacher Is a Robot. Wait Till You Meet My Mom.
Two darkly amusing graphic novels for kids pit machine learning and rocket science against good old-fashioned humanity.
July 18, 2025
7 New Books We Love This Week
Reading recommendations from critics and editors at The New York Times.
July 17, 2025
The Essential Jane Austen
A peerless chronicler of class and romance, the “Pride and Prejudice” author was never prolific. But her work remains remarkably relevant, more than two centuries after her death.
July 17, 2025
An Instagram Poet With Hints of Interesting Darkness
David Gate has a popular following online, but his best poems suggest he’s not entirely comfortable as an influencer.
July 17, 2025
Join the Club: Lisa Murkowski Hasn’t Finished ‘Master of the Senate’
The Alaska lawmaker was given a copy when first appointed to the Senate in 2002 and it’s still on her bedside table. “Far From Home” is her new memoir.
July 17, 2025
Paulette Jiles, 82, Dies; Novelist Evoked the West in ‘News of the World’
A poet and memoirist as well, she drew a wide readership with her historical fiction, notably with a post-Civil War tale that was adapted for a movie starring Tom Hanks.
July 16, 2025
Martin Cruz Smith, Best-Selling Author of ‘Gorky Park,’ Dies at 82
He startled critics, readers and the book industry in 1981 with a novel set in the Soviet Union that had a flawed detective as its antihero.
July 16, 2025
Libraries Pay More for E-Books. Some States Want to Change That.
Proposed legislation would pressure publishers to adjust borrowing limits and find other ways to widen access.
July 16, 2025
She Left the City for Suburbia and Settled Down. Then the Haunting Began.
In Kerry Cullen’s uncanny debut, “House of Beth,” a queer 20-something finds that “straight” life comes with serious strings (and spirits) attached.
July 16, 2025
Slow-Burn Summer Thrillers
Our critic on the month’s best new novels.
July 16, 2025
Where to Be Female, Bohemian and Free in 1890s Paris?
In “The Club,” Jennifer Dasal investigates a refuge for (some) expat artists in the City of Light.
July 15, 2025
A Horror Star Returns With a Sweeping, Witchy Mystery
In Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s “The Bewitching,” a graduate student stumbles into a haunting conspiracy while researching a cult writer.
July 15, 2025
A Juicy Chronicle of the Fat Decades at Condé Nast
“Empire of the Elite,” by Michael M. Grynbaum, is a story of (mostly) insider-outsiders who helmed the glossiest American magazines in their heyday.
July 15, 2025
How the C.I.A. Lost Its Way After the Cold War
The journalist Tim Weiner investigates the mishaps that ensued when American intelligence scrambled to remake itself after the fall of communism.
July 15, 2025
Amelia Earhart’s Complicated Legacy and Horrible Husband
In “The Aviator and the Showman,” Laurie Gwen Shapiro tells the story of the doomed pilot’s marriage to “the publishing world’s P.T. Barnum.”
July 15, 2025
Fanny Howe, Poet of Unsettled Dreams, Is Dead at 84
Her heritage, as a scion of Boston Brahmins and the mother of biracial children, shaped a discursive verse style that veiled sharp edges and melancholy resolutions.
July 14, 2025
Do You Know These French Books Adapted for Stage and Screen?
France has produced many novels and stories that have gone on to become internationally popular musicals and movies. Try this short quiz to see how many you know.
July 14, 2025
Sex, Tech and Pharma Converge in This Assured Novel
“Bonding,” by Mariel Franklin, is a love story charged by the absurdities of a market-driven culture.
July 14, 2025
A Master of Surrealist Fiction and a Bard for Anxious Times
Dino Buzzati’s best works evoke the fabulism, paranoia and allegory of writers like Franz Kafka, Albert Camus and Italo Calvino.
July 14, 2025
Romantasy: A Starter Pack
The crossover genre blending the passion of romance with the high-stakes escapism of fantasy has dominated the literary landscape. Here’s where to start.
July 14, 2025
A Spicy Heist Story for the Student Loan Era
Kashana Cauley’s novel “The Payback” imagines a world where the Debt Police are real, and they’re into reiki.
July 13, 2025
2 Books for a Hot, Languid Summer
A classic coming-of-age novel; a cultural history of early America.
July 12, 2025
Martha’s Vineyard Isn’t Just an Elite Summer Destination
In “Nothing More of This Land,” the journalist Joseph Lee, a member of the Aquinnah Wampanoag Nation, explores the island’s Indigenous history.
July 12, 2025
Sophie Elmhirst on the True Story of a Shipwrecked Couple
In her new book, “A Marriage at Sea,” the British journalist revisits an amazing account of disaster and survival from the early 1970s.
July 11, 2025
Answer 4 Questions. Leave With Your Next Elin Hilderbrand Beach Read.
Whether you want a romance or family drama, she's written a book for you.
July 11, 2025
He Didn’t Find Love on ‘Love Island.’ He Founded a Book Club Instead.
Jeremiah Brown asked his 2 million TikTok followers what to do after being voted off the hit series. The answer has him, and his fans, reading “The Song of Achilles.”
July 11, 2025
A Best-Selling Horror Writer’s Biggest Fear? Being Recognized.
“Mexican Gothic” was a breakout book for Silvia Moreno-Garcia, who describes herself as “not a people person.” Her new novel is “The Bewitching.”
July 11, 2025
John Martin, Devoted Publisher of Literary Rebels, Dies at 94
Black Sparrow Press, a shoestring operation he ran out of his home, became one of the highest-profile small publishers in the U.S., championing writers like Charles Bukowski.
July 10, 2025
Jane Lazarre, 81, Dies; Wrote About Raising Black Sons as a White Mother
With books like “The Mother Knot” and “Beyond the Whiteness of Whiteness,” she challenged liberal orthodoxies about feminism and the Black experience in America.
July 10, 2025
6 New Books We Love This Week
Reading recommendations from critics and editors at The New York Times.
July 10, 2025
Two Writers Fell in Love, Married, Then Divorced. Who Gets the Story?
Hannah Pittard wrote a memoir about the breakup. When she learned that her ex planned a novel about it, she took it back up, this time as fiction (sort of).
July 10, 2025
Nancy Drew Inspired Lisa Scottoline’s Recent Splurge
“The Unraveling of Julia,” her 37th book, has taken the thriller writer into new territory: “I’m going Gothic, baby!”
July 10, 2025
Searching for Grandchildren Stolen During Argentina’s Dirty War
A harrowing new book tells the story of the women determined to learn the fates of the babies born to their pregnant daughters in captivity.
July 9, 2025
Let Us Help You Find Your Next Book: Science Fiction
Whether you’re looking for a classic or the latest and greatest, start here.
July 8, 2025
In ‘Bring the House Down,’ It’s the Critic’s Turn to Get Panned
Drawing on her own experience as an arts journalist, Charlotte Runcie comically skewers bad men, bad faith and (unforgivably) bad theater.
July 8, 2025
A Tale of Family, Wealth and Sex, With a Bombshell Reckoning
Sarah MacLean’s “These Summer Storms” is both an inheritance drama and a sizzling romance.
July 8, 2025
Could the Presidential Election Have Gone Any Other Way?
“2024,” a campaign book by three seasoned political journalists, immerses readers in the chaos and ironies of the race for the White House.
July 8, 2025
Stranded at Sea, Would Their Marriage Survive?
“A Marriage at Sea” tells the stranger-than-fiction story of one couple who traded their lives for the ocean — and almost lost them.
July 8, 2025
The Future Looks Dark, but Familiar, in Gary Shteyngart’s New Book
“Vera, or Faith” follows a 10-year-old girl navigating family drama and a dystopian America.
July 7, 2025
Can You Match These Snarky Lines to Their Books?
Literature is full of bold observations. See if you can match these five quotations to their sources.
July 7, 2025
Jeff VanderMeer’s Favorite Climate Fiction Novels
The author of the Southern Reach novels recommends immersive, entertaining books that grapple with the psychological reality of navigating environmental crisis.
July 7, 2025
The Novelist Who Tried to Make It Look Cool to Be Fascist
In a newly translated biography, Maurizio Serra pierces the self-mythologizing of the acclaimed writer Curzio Malaparte, who was a seductive mouthpiece for a violent ideology.
July 7, 2025
Oprah’s New Book Club Pick Is a Family Drama With a Shocking Twist
Bruce Holsinger tackles timely topics and the ties that bind in “Culpability.”
July 6, 2025
3 Dystopian Novels to Read This Summer
Jennifer Harlan, an editor at The New York Times Book Review, recommends three dystopian novels to read this summer.
July 6, 2025
A Brilliant Writer Whose Books Offer Traps, Not Escapes
The mysteries only deepen the further you get in Marlen Haushofer’s fiction, which takes on domestic repression in its many guises.
July 6, 2025
A House Designed for Murdering People
Our columnist reviews “Strange Houses” and other new horror fiction.
July 5, 2025
A Comic Novel That Tests the Limits of Black Upward Mobility
With humor and range, Rob Franklin’s novel, “Great Black Hope,” examines the complex relationship between wealth and race in America.
July 5, 2025
Making the Bill of Rights Relevant to Young Readers
“Rebels, Robbers and Radicals” brings the document alive through court cases of real people involved in real struggles.
July 4, 2025
9 New Books We Love This Week
Reading recommendations from critics and editors at The New York Times.
July 3, 2025
Cressida Cowell Loves to Peruse Recipes Before Bed
Childhood summers on an island without TV made her a fervent reader. The result: a new entry in the “How to Train Your Dragon” series and a live-action movie.
July 3, 2025
The Private Equity Wager: Heads We Win, Tails You Lose
Twelve million Americans work for companies owned by private equity firms. In a new book, the journalist Megan Greenwell traces the arrangement’s considerable human costs.
July 2, 2025
Clint Eastwood: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
A new biography looks at the decades-long career of an American original who captured the country’s complex moral universe onscreen.
July 2, 2025
Is the Supreme Court the Best Way to Get Justice?
In this moment of constitutional crisis, these books provide a clear picture of the highest court in the land.
July 2, 2025
In These Novels, Murder’s the Thing
Our columnist on July’s most notable books.
July 2, 2025
David R. Slavitt, Poet and Critic With a Side Gig in Pulp Fiction, Dies at 90
He wrote more than 130 books, mostly collections of poetry and translations of classics, as well as lowbrow novels under a pen name.
July 1, 2025
Winning the Cold War With le Carré and Cosmopolitan Magazine
In “The CIA Book Club,” Charlie English tells the story of America’s war of ideas in the Eastern Bloc.
July 1, 2025
Is the Life of an Influencer Actually Worth Coveting?
A childhood friendship in upper-class Beijing is tested by envy, ambition and relentless materialism.
July 1, 2025
Why the Word ‘Like’ Drives People Bananas
Megan C. Reynolds takes on the biggest linguistic battle of our age.
July 1, 2025
Seeking the Giant Panda, and Daddy’s Love
In “The Beast in the Clouds,” Nathalia Holt tells the story of Theodore Roosevelt’s eldest sons, and their doomed attempt to escape his shadow.
July 1, 2025
How Much Do You Know About Early American Literature?
Before the Independence Day fireworks this week, try this short quiz on America’s popular books published during the country’s formative years.
June 30, 2025
20 Books Coming in July
Twisty summer thrillers, magical romances, a true story of a marriage pushed to the brink and more.
June 30, 2025
Jane Stanton Hitchcock, 78, Dies; Crime Novelist Who Mocked High Society
A daughter of privilege, she mixed social satire with murder in a series of addictive mysteries.
June 29, 2025
How ‘All the Colors of Dark’ Brought Its Author Peace
Childhood trauma led Chris Whitaker to write the novel. Meeting readers over the last year spurred him to realize he should have dealt with it sooner.
June 29, 2025
Sizzling Summer Romance Novels
Our critic on the month’s best new books.
June 29, 2025
Richly Imagined New Historical Fiction
Our columnist on some stellar recent releases.
June 28, 2025
A Surrealist Classic Shows Us the Uncanny in Everyday Paris
André Breton’s 1928 novel “Nadja” pays homage to a great love and to a great city.
June 28, 2025
Book Club: Let’s Talk About ‘Mrs. Dalloway’
Virginia Woolf’s classic novel, celebrating its 100th anniversary, is the topic of this month’s discussion.
June 27, 2025
Book Club: Read ‘The Catch,’ by Yrsa Daley-Ward, with the Book Review
In July, the Book Review Book Club will read and discuss “The Catch,” a psychological thriller about twin sisters and their mother, whom they had presumed dead.
June 27, 2025
Jane Austen’s Boldest Novel Is Also Her Least Understood
“Mansfield Park” continues to complicate the writer’s legacy 250 years after her birth. Lauren Groff explains how the novel’s dark themes and complex ironies help keep Austen weird.
June 27, 2025
5 New Books We Recommend This Week
Suggested reading from critics and editors at The New York Times.
June 26, 2025
Susan Beth Pfeffer, 77, Dies; Wrote Complex Stories for Young Adults
Her 76 books included “Life as We Knew It,” a late-career best seller that told the story of a family in postapocalyptic Pennsylvania.
June 26, 2025
Want to Escape Reality? Try One of These Books.
The science fiction and fantasy author Martha Wells recommends her favorite novels that will transport you to other worlds.
June 26, 2025
The Indiana Jones of Physics Had a Jam-Packed Life
A new biography of Luis Alvarez captures the details but misses the drama in the career of a scientist whose work ranged from the Manhattan Project to the death of the dinosaurs.
June 25, 2025
The Books Times Readers Are Most Excited About This Summer
Thrillers, literary fiction, history, speculative true crime, memoirs and more: Here are the books you’ve saved most to your reading lists.
June 25, 2025
Ivy Pochoda, Crime Writer and Squash Champ, Adds Horror to Her Résumé
The award-winning mystery novelist’s new book, “Ecstasy,” is a supernatural feminist take on Euripides’ play “The Bacchae.”
June 25, 2025
V.E. Schwab’s Desert Island Book Is ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’
“No matter how many times I revisit it, I find new lines to appreciate,” says the fantasy writer, whose new book is “Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil.”
June 25, 2025
A Toddler With a Halo Stirs Up the Campus Unfaithful
Set among divinity school professors unsure of just what they believe, Robert P. Baird’s satirical novel, “The Nimbus,” strains for the heavenly.
June 24, 2025
Bob Dylan’s New Release: A Big Book of Black-and-White Drawings
Along with some 100 images of everyday objects and scenes, “Point Blank” will include vignettes by the writers Lucy Sante and Jackie Hamilton.
June 24, 2025
It’s Fun to Watch Hot People Do Psychotic Things in This Novel
“The Compound” takes place on the set of a deeply twisted reality TV show.
June 24, 2025
A High-Fashion Phoenix, Virgil Abloh Changed an Industry
In “Make It Ours,” Robin Givhan tells the story of the designer’s short, historic career.
June 24, 2025
A Philosopher Who Uses Poetry to Ask What Life Is All About
John Koethe spent decades as a philosophy professor. The poems in his latest collection, “Cemeteries and Galaxies,” are full of reflection and digression and probing.
June 24, 2025
Fill In the Blank: Which World Cities Are in These Book Titles?
Try this short literary geography quiz that takes you around the globe.
June 23, 2025
Goodbye to Berlin: New Novels Recall a City’s ‘Poor but Sexy’ Heyday
Several books published this year have examined a creative haven in Europe’s licentious, ultraliberal capital.
June 23, 2025
This Bighearted Novel Is an Ode to Teenage Mothers
In Leila Mottley’s new book a group of young outcast mothers band together to support one another.
June 23, 2025
Rod Nordland, 75, Dies; War Reporter Who Also Wrote of His Own Struggle
Motivated by the helplessness of his boyhood, he described the lives of vulnerable people in conflicts around the world and later his own terminal illness.
June 22, 2025
‘The Sisters’ Turns a Family Mystery Into a Transnational Tour de Force
Jonas Hassen Khemiri plays with time, belonging and his own insecurities in a big, impressive novel that revolves around a trio of magnetic Swedish women.
June 22, 2025
When the New York Avant-Garde Started a Revolution
In “Everything Is Now,” J. Hoberman recreates the theater, film and music scenes that helped fuel the cultural storm of the ’60s.
June 21, 2025
For Black Women, Life in America Has Always Been a Crossroads
Honorée Fanonne Jeffers’s first nonfiction book is equal parts memoir, history, polemic and poetry.
June 21, 2025
The Book Cover Trend You’re Seeing Everywhere
Take a genteel painting, maybe featuring a swooning woman. Add iridescent neon type for a shock to the system. And thank (or blame) Ottessa Moshfegh for getting there early.
June 21, 2025
TikTok’s Owner Wanted to Publish Books. Not Anymore.
8th Note Press informed writers and agents that it is abruptly shutting down and returning publication rights to authors.
June 20, 2025
Four Recent Poetry Collections Worth Reading
And A.O. Scott on the joys inherent in giving poems a close read.
June 20, 2025
On the Silk Road, Traces of Once Bustling Intercontinental Trade
A new book of photographs captures the landscapes, buildings and faces along the route that once conveyed untold wealth between Europe and China.
June 20, 2025
He Laughed Along With Larry David and Borat. Until He Didn’t.
In his candid memoir “Comedy Samurai,” the writer-director Larry Charles explains his comfort with failure and analyzes why creative collaborations end.
June 20, 2025
Eight Enchanting Novels About Witches
The fantasy author Charlie Jane Anders recommends some of her favorite, most magical books.
June 20, 2025
A Multigenerational Historical Novel. And Only 200 Pages.
Amy Bloom’s “I’ll Be Right Here” zigzags between Paris and Poughkeepsie as it shares the saga of Algerian siblings and their chosen family.
June 20, 2025
These Watery Works Offer Sharks, Thrills and Magic
Visit the aquatic hereafter in a fantasy, then track down threats on Martha’s Vineyard in a taut contemporary suspense novel.
June 20, 2025
8 New Books We Recommend This Week
Suggested reading from critics and editors at The New York Times.
June 19, 2025
The Cult Classic That Expanded What African Literature Could Be
With folk traditions and sui generis prose, Amos Tutuola enthralled readers with his magic realist novel “The Palm-Wine Drinkard.”
June 19, 2025
The Best Fake Dating Romance Novels
Feigned love leads to real connections in these funny, joyful and deeply romantic books.
June 19, 2025
Stephen Fry Knows He’s Become a Middle-Aged Cliché
“I try to fight this lamentable tendency,” he says, but now reads more nonfiction than fiction. “Odyssey” is the fourth in his series on Greek mythology.
June 19, 2025
He Locked Away Wartime Memories Until His Granddaughter Opened the Pages
Heather Clark’s debut novel, “The Scrapbook,” considers young love as buffeted by historical ruptures.
June 18, 2025
The Design Genius Who Gave American Women Pockets
In her exceptional biography, Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson puts the American fashion icon Claire McCardell back in the pantheon.
June 18, 2025
A Public Scuffle Over a 150-Pound Mutt Upends a Liberal’s Neat World
In Karim Dimechkie’s “The Uproar,” the best-laid plans meet worst-case scenarios again and again.
June 18, 2025
A Swedish Novelist Hits New York, With ‘Permission to Be More Wild’
Call it autofiction, supernatural or a comedy of dislocation: In “The Sisters,” Jonas Hassen Khemiri takes his biggest swing yet.
June 17, 2025
In ‘Not My Type,’ E. Jean Carroll Gets the Last Gab About the Trump Trials
Her lawyers urged that she keep her testimony short. With legal victories in hand, she’s sharing her life story, and what it was like on the stand.
June 17, 2025
You Know the Novelist. Now Meet Toni Morrison the Editor.
In her new book, “Toni at Random,” Dana A. Williams highlights the groundbreaking writer’s time working in publishing.
June 17, 2025
A Prep School Predator Haunts Joyce Carol Oates’s New Novel
“Fox” details the devastation wrought by a manipulative English teacher who sexually abuses his students.
June 17, 2025
They Were Enemies in War. Now Their Grandkids Are in Love.
In Heather Clark’s novel, “The Scrapbook,” an American girl meets a German boy and falls head over heels — and headfirst into a history of fascism.
June 17, 2025
The Memory of a Teenage Golden Child Ripples Across Generations
Michelle Huneven’s novel “Bug Hollow” begins with a tragedy in 1970s California. The ramifications are felt across three countries and five decades.
June 16, 2025
Do You Know the Novels That Inspired These Big Movies?
Many influential action movies have been based on books. Find out how many you know in this short quiz.
June 16, 2025
Her Job Was Real. So Why Did Her Work Feel So Fake?
Leigh Claire La Berge’s memoir looks back at her stint as a consultant for a Fortune 500 company at the turn of the millennium: “Is this how companies are put together?”
June 16, 2025
This Epic Gay Novel of Life on the Road Is Back in Print
Joe Westmoreland captures the pleasures and pains of American wanderlust in his forgotten classic “Tramps Like Us.”
June 16, 2025
A Laugh-Out-Loud Funny Novel About the Civil War
Dennard Dayle’s satirical new book, “How to Dodge a Cannonball,” follows a white flag-bearer pretending to be a Black soldier.
June 16, 2025
Norma Swenson, an Author of ‘Our Bodies, Ourselves,’ Dies at 93
She was a proponent of natural childbirth when she joined the group that produced a candid guide to women’s health. It became a cultural touchstone and a global best seller.
June 15, 2025
A Relationship Breaks in Two. So Does the Book That Explains Why.
Catherine Lacey’s “The Möbius Book” is both an elliptical novella and a seething memoir. Decoding the connections is at once frustrating and exhilarating.
June 15, 2025
Molly Recommends 2 Very Male New Novels
A Hungarian in London; a road trip in Canada.
June 14, 2025
She’s a Snail Hunter, a Mail-Order Bride and a Kidnapper
That is, until war breaks out. “Endling,” by Maria Reva, is an ambitious whirlwind of a novel, set in Ukraine on the brink of disaster.
June 14, 2025
Trying to Sell a Conservative Book? Go on a Podcast.
Many of the most popular shows welcome right-wing arguments and freewheeling conversation. Publishers of other political stripes are noticing, too.
June 14, 2025
In Two New Books, the Chef Definitely Recommends Something Gay
John Birdsall’s “What Is Queer Food?” and Erik Piepenburg’s “Dining Out” both seek to define the place of cuisine in queer culture, history and expression.
June 14, 2025
In a New Book, E. Jean Carroll Chronicles Her Legal Battles With Trump
“Not My Type: One Woman vs. a President” includes reflections on being asked to testify about her sex life, as well as the thrill of winning two lawsuits.
June 13, 2025
50 Years After ‘Jaws’ Terrified Filmgoers, a Reporter Looks Back
The culture critic Brian Raftery, who wrote about “Jaws” for the Book Review last year, discusses the movie’s anniversary with Gilbert Cruz.
June 13, 2025
Be Careful What You Wish For
Two children’s novels take a gimlet-eyed look at the price of gifts with “no strings attached.”
June 13, 2025
Slow and Steady, This Poem Will Win Your Heart
A.O. Scott ponders the specific gravity and unlikely grace of Kay Ryan’s “Turtle.” And we have a game to help you memorize it.
June 13, 2025
7 New Books We Recommend This Week
Suggested reading from critics and editors at The New York Times.
June 12, 2025
Lapham’s Quarterly Will Begin Its Revival with Website and Podcast
Now attached to Bard College, the literary journal is about to publish new commentary and a popular historical feature. Next year: the print magazine.
June 12, 2025
Going Deep Into the World of D.I.Y. Submarine Builders
In “Submersed,” Matthew Gavin Frank takes on the undersea universe of amateur submarine enthusiasts — and one obsession turned deadly.
June 12, 2025
Wally Lamb’s Guilty Pleasure Is a History of Mad Magazine
His go-to classic is by Joseph Campbell, and he admires “Brothers and Keepers” and “The New Jim Crow” on incarceration. “The River Is Waiting” is his new novel.
June 12, 2025
The Best Romance Novels of the Year So Far
Looking for a swoony, feel-good read? Our romance columnist will be updating this list all year.
June 12, 2025
The Joy of Reading One Poem in Many Different Translations
Poetry and translation are both about picking the just-right word. But reading multiple translations makes an implicit case for celebrating abundance and variety.
June 11, 2025
The Book Nearly Died With Him in the Amazon. But the Story Endured.
Killed in the rainforest he hoped to help save, the journalist Dom Phillips left behind an unfinished manuscript. Those who knew him carried it forward.
June 11, 2025
Barbara Holdridge, Whose Record Label Foretold Audiobooks, Dies at 95
Beginning with a reading by Dylan Thomas, she and a friend found unlikely commercial success in the 1950s with recordings of famous writers reciting their work.
June 10, 2025
Answer 4 Questions. Leave With a Summer Read You’ll Love.
Tell us a few things about what you like, and we'll give you a spot-on recommendation.
June 10, 2025
He Was in the Pack Swarming Britney Spears. Now He’s Ready to Tell All.
In a scrappy new memoir, Jeff Weiss blurs fact and fancy as he recounts his stint as a bit player in the celebrity-industrial complex.
June 10, 2025
A Thrilling Lesbian Vampire Novel You’ll Want to Sink Your Teeth Into
In V.E. Schwab’s “Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil,” three women turned into vampires are thrown into a centuries-long drama of love, power and hunger.
June 10, 2025
A Maestro of Crime Fiction Returns With a High-Octane Thriller
In S.A. Cosby’s new book, “King of Ashes,” an investment banker returns home to protect his family from a local gang.
June 10, 2025
Frederick Forsyth, Master of the Geopolitical Thriller, Dies at 86
He wrote best-sellers like “The Day of the Jackal” and “The Dogs of War,” often using material from his earlier life as a reporter and spy.
June 9, 2025
Can You Match These Literary Quotes to Their Sources?
Try this short quiz to see how many memorable lines from great books have stuck with you over the years.
June 9, 2025
How a Gay Neocon Writer Survived New York in the ’80s and ’90s
Thomas Mallon’s diaries take us back to the AIDS crisis, the heyday of magazines and an exhilarating city in “The Very Heart of It.”
June 9, 2025
Mafalda, Argentina’s Very Opinionated Cartoon Heroine, Is Coming to America
A collection of Quino’s translated works will provide new audiences a taste of the satirical comic compared to “Charlie Brown with socialism.”
June 9, 2025
Our Favorite Books for Every Type of Dad
Looking for a Father’s Day gift? Try one of these recent releases.
June 9, 2025
How a Hate Crime in a Southern City Foretold the Rise of the Far Right
In “Charlottesville: An American Story,” Deborah Baker retraces the events leading up to the violent Unite the Right rally in 2017 and its political aftermath.
June 8, 2025
For Abby Jimenez, Being a No. 1 Best Seller Is the Icing on the Cake
She’s the author of “Say You’ll Remember Me” and six other romance novels. She owns three bakeries. She’s also really tired.
June 8, 2025
Serial Killers of the Pacific Northwest: Did Toxins Make Them Do It?
“Murderland,” by the Pulitzer Prize winner Caroline Fraser, considers possible links between the region’s industrial pollution and its most infamous murderers.
June 8, 2025