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
Revenge, Murder and Zombies in 3 New Horror Novels
Our columnist reviews recent releases.
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
Jasmine Guillory’s Favorite 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
John Hancock Was More Than Just a Pretty Signature
A new biography by Willard Sterne Randall shows how 18th-century Boston’s most popular businessman put his mark on the American Revolution.
June 7, 2025
A Major Writer Remembers the ‘Nonreading Family’ That Shaped Him
In a new memoir, Geoff Dyer reflects how seemingly trivial moments and objects of childhood end up playing an outsize role in our lives.
June 7, 2025
A Witty Caper Starring Gun-Toting Christians in Rural Washington
In Jess Walter’s new novel, “So Far Gone,” a retired environmentalist turned recluse comes out of isolation to find his grandchildren.
June 7, 2025
These Fantasy Novels Breathe New Life Into Old Myths
Drawing on folklore traditions from around the world, these thrilling and entertaining books put fresh spins on classic tales.
June 7, 2025
Paul Durcan, Irish Poet of Tortured and Tender Souls, Is Dead at 80
He survived electroshock treatments and the threat of lobotomy to become one of Ireland’s most popular poets. The Irish Times called him a “literary phenomenon.”
June 6, 2025
S.A. Cosby on the Appeal of Small-Town Crime Stories
In “King of Ashes,” the novelist again returns to rural Virginia as a setting, with a hero who has to face the family he once fled.
June 6, 2025
A Chronicle of the Rich Getting Richer, Crasser and More Obscene
In “The Haves and Have-Yachts,” the New Yorker writer Evan Osnos presents an urbane set of profiles in excess.
June 6, 2025
Worried the World Is Falling Apart? That’s OK. It’s Happened Before.
In “The Once and Future World Order,” by Amitav Acharya, and “The Golden Road,” by William Dalrymple, our best hope might be that history repeats itself.
June 6, 2025
Crime Fiction Filled With Dark Passages and Dark Hearts
Our columnist on the month’s most notable releases.
June 6, 2025
Mine! Mine! Mine! Children’s Books About Greed
In the novel “Peachaloo in Bloom,” the selfishness belongs to one man. In the picture book “The Wanting Monster,” it belongs to us all.
June 6, 2025
Philippe Labro Dies at 88; Restless Chronicler of the French Condition
As an author (often blurring the boundaries between fiction and nonfiction), a film director, a lyricist and a host of TV and radio shows, he sought to capture his epoch.
June 5, 2025
10 New Books We Recommend This Week
Suggested reading from critics and editors at The New York Times.
June 5, 2025
Susan Choi: ‘I Feel I’ve Read Nothing but Great Books Recently’
The list includes “Heartwood,” “Other Worlds,” “The Wall” and “The Fact Checker.” Her own new novel is “Flashlight.”
June 5, 2025
A Biotech Start-Up Promises Immortality. Is It All a Fraud?
In Austin Taylor’s novel “Notes on Infinity,” the speed of success prevents undergraduate founders from reflecting on, let alone fixing, an original sin.
June 5, 2025
‘The Cole Porter of Literature’: Writers and Artists Remember Edmund White
In these reflections, colleagues, friends and admirers recall his risk-taking, his generosity and his insatiable taste for gossip.
June 5, 2025
Edmund White, Pioneer of Gay Literature, Is Dead at 85
He mined his own varied catalog of sexual experiences in more than 30 books of fiction and explicitly candid memoirs.
June 4, 2025
Britain’s Premier Nature Writer Cries Us a River
“Is a River Alive?,” the new book by Robert Macfarlane, is gorgeously written but also windy and sentimental.
June 4, 2025
He Went to Fight Megafires, and Ended Up Respecting Them
In “When It All Burns,” Jordan Thomas brings an anthropologist’s eye to the life-or-death struggle with fire.
June 4, 2025
A History of Gay Marriage and Migration, Told Through One Relationship
In “Deep House,” Jeremy Atherton Lin uses the story of his own life as a catalyst for a kaleidoscopic survey of legal flash points regarding gay rights and immigration.
June 4, 2025
The Best Thrillers of the Year (So Far)
Our columnist on the twisty, suspense-laden books that will keep you on the edge of your seat.
June 4, 2025
Pierre Nora, 93, Who Probed Role of Memory in the Writing of History, Dies
A renowned French scholar and publishing figure, he looked at what societies choose to honor — and forget — in telling their stories.
June 3, 2025
A Palestinian American Memoir of Motherhood, War and Exile
In “I’ll Tell You When I’m Home,” the Palestinian American writer Hala Alyan draws on her life experiences and her family’s multiple displacements across generations.
June 3, 2025
A Fantasy Novel Inspired By Real History, When U.S. Hotels Housed Nazis
“The Listeners” follows a resort manager forced to shelter Axis diplomats, who threaten to disturb the magical springs that make the property a success.
June 3, 2025
The Risky, Reality-Bending Thriller You Need This Summer
In “The Catch,” struggling twin sisters are forced to rethink their lives after the reappearance of their mother, presumed dead for decades.
June 3, 2025
The Man Who Turned Right-Wing Politics Into Entertainment
An expansive new biography of William F. Buckley Jr. traces the eventful life of the conservative activist who intuitively grasped the media’s centrality to politics.
June 3, 2025
Alice Notley, Poet Celebrated for ‘Restless Reinvention,’ Dies at 79
Once called “our present-day Homer” for her sprawling, experimental epics, she was honored with prizes and was a finalist for the Pulitzer in 1999.
June 2, 2025
Holmes Rolston III, Pioneer of Environmental Ethics, Dies at 92
He began his career as a pastor. But he was forced out of his congregation in 1965, which led to a new life pondering the value of nature.
June 2, 2025
Before They Were Famous: Do You Know the Early Jobs of These Authors?
Try this quiz on how five authors made a living before their literary careers took off.
June 2, 2025
Alasdair MacIntyre, Philosopher Who Saw a ‘New Dark Ages,’ Dies at 96
A Marxist-turned-Catholic who denounced individualism, he provoked and inspired fellow thinkers and gained a degree of popularity unusual for a moral philosopher.
June 2, 2025
A Novel Highlights a Dark Korean History and a Shattered Family’s
“Flashlight,” by Susan Choi, spans several decades and nations to tell a story of exile in its multiple forms.
June 2, 2025
Charles Sumner Was More Than Just a Guy Who Got Caned on the Senate Floor
A new biography of the Republican legislator details his legal mind and his personal struggles.
June 2, 2025
Novels Inspired by Opinion Polls? They’re Here, and They’re Weird
For “People’s Choice Literature,” Tom Comitta wrote two books based on the likes and dislikes of American readers.
June 2, 2025
What Is Wrong With Men? Let Michael Douglas Explain.
In a sharp new book, Jessa Crispin uses the actor’s career to explore, and complicate, the “crisis of masculinity.”
June 1, 2025
Thrillers That Capture the Dark Side of Small-Town Life
Our columnist on the month’s best new releases.
June 1, 2025
A Soaring History of Mother Emanuel, the Church That Endured a Massacre
Kevin Sack chronicles the Charleston, S.C., congregation that was the target of a brutal 2015 hate crime, and the church’s central role in the larger saga of the South.
June 1, 2025
These Queer Fantasy Novels Make TJ Klune Feel Seen
The author of “The House in the Cerulean Sea” recommends captivating books that cast L.G.B.T.Q. people as the heroes, the villains and everything in between.
June 1, 2025
Lynn Freed, South African Writer With a Wry Style, Dies at 79
In seven novels, dozens of essays and a collection of short stories, she explored her Jewish upbringing during apartheid and the ways women negotiate sexual desire.
May 31, 2025
2 Books About Hotel Life
The Ritz Carlton; a decidedly unwhimsical Turkish inn.
May 31, 2025
The Apocalypse Is Here, and It’s One Big Cult
In “Culture Creep,” Alice Bolin considers the connections between corporate thought control, femininity, pop culture and the computer age.
May 31, 2025
Which Came First, Mean Girls or ‘Mean Girls’?
Bruce Handy’s history of teen movies ranges from Andy Hardy and James Dean to “Beach Blanket Bingo,” John Hughes, John Singleton and Katniss Everdeen.
May 31, 2025
A Memoir of Divorce and Xenophobia, Narrated by a Clam
Anelise Chen’s genre-bending book “Clam Down” sees an insightful metaphor in a text message typo.
May 31, 2025
Her Famous Mother Was Always Inaccessible. Then She Developed Dementia.
In the memoir “How to Lose Your Mother,” Molly Jong-Fast recalls a tumultuous upbringing as the only child of the feminist writer Erica Jong.
May 31, 2025
Even the Cowboys Are Bigger in Texas
In “The Gunfighters,” the journalist Bryan Burrough offers a lively look at the legends and myths of the Wild West.
May 31, 2025
Book Club: Let’s Talk About ‘The Safekeep’
Yael van der Wouden’s novel, shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize, is the topic of this month’s discussion.
May 30, 2025
Book Club: Read ‘Mrs. Dalloway,’ by Virginia Woolf, with the Book Review
In June, the Book Review Book Club will read and discuss “Mrs. Dalloway,” Virginia Woolf’s classic novel about one day in the life of an London woman in 1923.
May 30, 2025
Smart, Splendid New Historical Fiction
Our columnist on the month’s best new releases.
May 30, 2025
Creepy Noises, Cold Rooms and Looming Ravens
Our columnist on this month’s horror novels.
May 30, 2025
A Memoir of Family Dysfunction Awash in Liquor and Leafy Greens
In “The Spinach King,” John Seabrook recounts how his grandfather turned a family farm into an industrial behemoth, and exposes the greed and malfeasance behind the prosperous facade.
May 30, 2025
The New York Times’s Summer Reading Bucket List
Read along with the Book Review this summer: Can you check off five items before fall arrives?
May 30, 2025
Summer Reading Challenges Aren’t Just for Kids
Riding a wave of growing enthusiasm for reading, many bookstores and libraries have expanded their programming to let grown-ups in on the literary fun.
May 30, 2025
Two New Picture Books About the Transformative Power of Language
A boy unearths a treasure trove of adjectives, and a strange word discovered by a scholar becomes an overnight sensation.
May 30, 2025
New Romance Novels Brimming With Unhinged Wish Fulfillment
Our columnist on the month’s best new releases.
May 29, 2025
10 New Books We Recommend This Week
Suggested reading from critics and editors at The New York Times.
May 29, 2025
Taylor Jenkins Reid Wants to Turn You On to Her Favorite Regency Romances
“Plenty of people have heard of Sophie Irwin but many, many more people should,” says the author of “Daisy Jones & the Six” and, now, “Atmosphere.”
May 29, 2025
Everything You Need to Know About Taylor Jenkins Reid
The best-selling author of “The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo” and “Daisy Jones and the Six” takes to the skies for her latest novel.
May 29, 2025
Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Writer Who Condemned Colonists and Elites, Dies at 87
Mr. Ngugi composed the first modern novel in the Gikuyu language on prison toilet paper while being held by Kenyan authorities. He spent many prolific years in exile.
May 29, 2025
A Splendid New Biography of Gauguin Separates the Man From the Myth
In “Wild Thing,” Sue Prideaux draws on recently discovered source material, delivering an enthralling account of an artist whose life was as inventive as his art.
May 28, 2025
24 Books Coming in June
Fiction by Taylor Jenkins Reid and V.E. Schwab; a memoir of a year without sex; new thrillers from James Patterson and S.A. Cosby; and more.
May 28, 2025
In the Wake of Domestic Violence, a Mother Learns to Breathe Again
In “Deep Breath,” by the Hungarian novelist Rita Halász, a woman flees her abusive husband in order to slowly regain her sanity, and her self.
May 28, 2025
Do You Know Where in the World These Books Are Set?
Canada has a rich literary culture and many of its recent novelists have achieved international acclaim. See if you can match these five books to locations set within the country.
May 27, 2025
Vietnam Made Him a Writer. His Anger Still Burns on the Page.
A new biography of Tim O’Brien examines his formative time at war and the esteemed literary career that followed.
May 27, 2025
A New Stephen King Novel Asks, Does the World Have Heroes Anymore?
“Never Flinch” is a tale of stalkers and serial killers, with a strong dose of social critique.
May 27, 2025
Magic, Conspiracy and a Down-on-His-Luck Detective
In “Harmattan Season,” the search for a missing woman uncovers a scheme that could change the fate of an occupied city in West Africa.
May 27, 2025
Dispatches From the Psych Ward Fuel This Ebullient Novel
Edward St. Aubyn returns with a wide-ranging narrative anchored by a schizophrenic patient.
May 26, 2025
Kidnapped by Corsican Rebels, a Rich Girl Joins the Revolution
In Darrow Farr’s novel, “The Bombshell,” a spoiled French teenager comes to realize her social-justice-minded captors have a point.
May 26, 2025
Want More of ‘The Last of Us’? Read These Books Next.
If HBO’s zombie drama has you craving more postapocalyptic action, these books have got you covered.
May 26, 2025
One Steamy Month Charged With Forbidden Longing
In “The South,” a Malaysian man recalls the life-changing period he spent on his family’s dilapidated farm when he was a teenager.
May 26, 2025
How Sex and Religion Collided in 1980s Culture
Madonna, Scorsese, Warhol and “Piss Christ” play roles in Paul Elie’s maybe-too-comprehensive look at how divisive expressions of faith came to the fore.
May 25, 2025
1 Writing Class, 35 Years, 113 Deals, 95 Books
For three decades at Columbia Journalism School, Sam Freedman has encouraged students to try long-form narratives. His brand of tough love has paid dividends.
May 25, 2025
Stories for When Real Life Feels Like a Dream (or Nightmare)
In a new collection, Etgar Keret offers tales of humanity in the strangest of circumstances.
May 25, 2025
The Essential Terry Pratchett
The prolific fantasy author, best known for his Discworld series, infused his writing with empathy and humor. Here’s where to start.
May 25, 2025
Susan Brownmiller, Who Reshaped Views About Rape, Dies at 90
Her book “Against Our Will” argued that rape was a crime of power and violence, not passion; it led to laws that made it easier to prosecute rapists.
May 25, 2025
2 Novels of America at Particular, Peculiar Moments
Florida in the early 1960s; California in the mid-1980s.
May 24, 2025
Separated as Toddlers, Raised on Opposite Sides of the World
In her entrancing, disturbing “Daughters of the Bamboo Grove,” Barbara Demick traces the wildly divergent paths of twins born in China under the one-child rule.
May 24, 2025
Conversations With Emotionally Stunted Friends
Abandoned by both her mother and a really bad ex, the 25-year-old narrator of “Gingko Season” avoids her own traumas by focusing on grand historical ones.
May 24, 2025
A Rom-Com Heroine Wonders, What Is the Price of Love?
In the novel “Consider Yourself Kissed,” a wife and mother faces many of the same hurdles in 2016 that women did decades ago.
May 24, 2025
‘We Must Start Dreaming Again’: An Angolan Writer Sees Magic in Everyday Life
In his latest novel, “The Living and the Rest,” José Eduardo Agualusa takes readers to a literary festival in Africa where novelists’ characters come to life.
May 24, 2025
Leslie Epstein, Writer Who Mastered Both Doing and Teaching, Dies at 87
His Holocaust novel “King of the Jews” was widely praised. He also wrote about his show-business family and taught writing at Boston University.
May 24, 2025
Alison Bechdel Is Finally at Peace Mixing Fiction and Memoir
The lauded cartoonist talks about the process behind her autobiographical new graphic novel, “Spent.”
May 23, 2025
Why Silicon Valley’s Most Powerful People Are So Obsessed With Hobbits
Tech power players and the global far-right are learning all the wrong lessons from “The Lord of the Rings.”
May 23, 2025
Sex, Money and Death in Connecticut? We Ate It Up.
In “Murder in the Dollhouse,” Rich Cohen tells the story of Jennifer Dulos — and our queasy fascination.
May 23, 2025
The Summer’s Best Beach Reads
You don’t need to be on the sand to enjoy these novels. You just need a certain willingness to be swiftly transported.
May 23, 2025
The Beauty of Imperfect Children’s Book Art
In the work of artists I admire, all the training and discipline come out in an act of letting go: a splotch of ink, a wayward wash of color.
May 23, 2025
9 New Books We Recommend This Week
Suggested reading from critics and editors at The New York Times.
May 22, 2025
4 Summer Books We’re Looking Forward To
Gilbert Cruz, the editor of The New York Times Book Review, previews four books we’re anticipating this summer.
May 22, 2025
The Best Crime Novels of the Year (So Far)
Looking for some fictional murder and mayhem? Our columnist is keeping track of the best crime novels of 2025.
May 22, 2025
Christopher Moore Gives Out ‘Cannery Row’ to Convert Steinbeck Haters
“My favorite novel of all time” is an antidote to “Of Mice and Men,” he promises. His new book, “Anima Rising,” is a playful visit to 1911 Vienna.
May 22, 2025
31 Novels Coming This Summer
Taylor Jenkins Reid heads to space, Megan Abbott climbs a pyramid (scheme) and Gary Shteyngart channels a 10-year-old. Plus queer vampires, a professor in hell and an actress’s revenge.
May 22, 2025
21 Nonfiction Books Coming This Summer
How did streetwear become high fashion? Why are there so many serial killers in the Pacific Northwest? Prize-winning writers tackle these questions, while memoirists consider celibacy, spycraft and Erica Jong.
May 22, 2025
Murder, Lust and Obscene Wealth in a City on Edge
In Chris Pavone’s new novel, “The Doorman,” the real world closes in on residents of a luxury apartment building.
May 21, 2025
Axed and Answered: Deep Cuts From a History of Gruesome Crimes
In “Whack Job,” Rachel McCarthy James finds a connection between self-reliance and brutality. And for the record, she has questions about Lizzie Borden.
May 21, 2025
How a Manga Megastar Makes Such Terrifying Work
Junji Ito’s art may feel eerily familiar, even if you’ve never read his books. His latest, “The Liminal Zone,” scares readers in all new ways.
May 21, 2025
In Her Follow-Up to ‘American Dirt,’ Jeanine Cummins Turns to Puerto Rico
In the novel “Speak to Me of Home,” three generations of women in one family grapple with their identities.
May 21, 2025
The Best Small-Town Romance Novels
The romance author Ashley Poston recommends books bursting with quaint charm, sizzling banter and plenty of heart.
May 21, 2025
In a First, a Story Collection Wins the International Booker Prize
Banu Mushtaq’s “Heart Lamp,” translated by Deepa Bhasthi, had received little notice in Britain or the United States before Tuesday. Now, it’s won the major award for translated fiction.
May 20, 2025
They Moved to Honduras to Do Good. That Meant Getting Their Hands Dirty.
In “Bear Witness,” Ross Halperin tells the story of two men who went from idealists to pragmatists.
May 20, 2025
These Boomer Radicals in Vermont Just Want to Be ‘Good Progressives’
Alison Bechdel’s graphic novel, “Spent,” is a domestic comedy about ethical consumption under capitalism.
May 20, 2025
A Father and Daughter Caught in the No Man’s Land of Migration
Madeleine Thien’s time-warping historical novel “The Book of Records” collapses centuries and geographies in an ambitious family saga.
May 20, 2025
A Brilliantly Offbeat Novel of Art and Women’s Wrestling in 1970s New York
First published in 1972, Rosalyn Drexler’s “To Smithereens” throws two vivid subcultures — and two unlikely lovers — into the ring.
May 20, 2025
14 Million Books Later, Jim Butcher Thinks His Wizard Detective Needs a Hug
Now in its 25th year, The Dresden Files and its author have survived the darkness, fictional and otherwise.
May 19, 2025
Do You Know These Novels and Their Screen Adaptations?
So many books have inspired British costume dramas and this quiz gives you a chance to show how many you recognize.
May 19, 2025
4 Audiobooks To Listen To Now
Lauren Christensen, an editor at the New York Times Book Review, recommends four of her favorite audiobooks.
May 19, 2025
Dave Barry Is 77 and Still a Clown, Here to Amuse You
The beloved humor columnist looks back on a long career of wit and wisdom in a new memoir.
May 19, 2025
Hey ChatGPT, Which One of These Is the Real Sam Altman?
Two journalists explore the artificial intelligence company OpenAI and present complementary portraits of its notorious co-founder.
May 19, 2025
3 Nerve-Shredding New Thrillers
Our critic on the month’s best releases.
May 19, 2025
An Undocumented Life, With Recipes
In the searing “Dirty Kitchen,” Jill Damatac tells the story of a fight for survival and culture in America.
May 18, 2025
Writing Into the Abyss After the Death of Two Sons
In “Things in Nature Merely Grow,” the novelist Yiyun Li endures the aftermath of unthinkable loss.
May 18, 2025
2 Books to Bring Key West to Life
A poet’s letters; a collection of reminiscences.
May 17, 2025
A Heroine of the French Resistance Gets Her Own Portrait
In “The Art Spy,” Michelle Young shines new light on the heroic French curator Rose Valland.
May 17, 2025
A Noirish Tale of an Irish Town on Edge, Told in 21 Voices
Donal Ryan’s new novel focuses on a small community trying to leave behind years of economic woes.
May 17, 2025
What Ron Chernow Loves About Mark Twain
The Pulitzer-winning presidential biographer discusses his new book about the life of a literary founding father.
May 16, 2025
‘I Don’t Ever Want to Be Free From the Pain of Missing My Children’
Only by writing could the acclaimed novelist Yiyun Li grapple with the suicides of her two sons. But her new book is no ordinary grief memoir.
May 16, 2025
Now We Know. Does Barry Diller Have More to Say?
Beyond disclosures about his sexuality and marriage, the media mogul’s memoir mostly serves up goodies for fans of Hollywood name-dropping and infighting.
May 16, 2025
Ibram X. Kendi Introduces Malcolm X to a New Generation
The National Book Award-winning author shows young readers a humane political philosophy that many adults still fail to appreciate.
May 16, 2025
Apple Used China to Make a Profit. What China Got in Return Is Scarier.
In “Apple in China,” Patrick McGee argues that by training an army of manufacturers in a “ruthless authoritarian state,” the company has created an existential vulnerability for the entire world.
May 15, 2025
6 New Books We Recommend This Week
Suggested reading from critics and editors at The New York Times.
May 15, 2025
He’s Made a Home at the World’s Most Popular Cemetery
In a new book, Benoît Gallot explains what it takes to run Père-Lachaise, where he lives with his wife, children and, he insists, no ghosts.
May 15, 2025
Ed Helms Read ‘Moby-Dick’ on His Phone. On the New York Subway.
With one hand, while standing. It’s the kind of accomplishment that would never make it into his new book, “Snafu: The Definitive Guide to History’s Greatest Screwups.”
May 15, 2025
Nahid Rachlin, Novelist Who Explored the Iranian Psyche, Dies at 85
One of the first Iranian novelists to write in English, she examined the clash between East and West. Her debut novel, “Foreigner,” provided insight into pre-revolutionary Iran.
May 14, 2025
The ‘American Dirt’ Backlash Nearly Stopped Jeanine Cummins From Writing
Five years later, she has a new novel, “Speak to Me of Home,” which draws directly from her family’s history in Puerto Rico and the Midwest.
May 14, 2025
250 Years of Capitalism: Soulless, Exploitative and All but Unstoppable
A new book by the New Yorker staff writer John Cassidy plumbs more than two centuries’ worth of grievances about our global financial order.
May 14, 2025
Restaurant Critic Confidential
Besha Rodell’s memoir, “Hunger Like a Thirst,” is also a fascinating capsule history of restaurant criticism.
May 14, 2025
A Damning Portrait of an Enfeebled Biden Protected by His Inner Circle
“Original Sin,” by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, depicts an aging president whose family and aides enabled his quixotic campaign for a second term.
May 13, 2025
A New Biography of Mark Twain Doesn’t Have Much of What Made Him Great
Ron Chernow traces the life of a profound, unpredictable and irascibly witty writer.
May 13, 2025
Putin’s Shadow Armies Have Set Their Sights Beyond Ukraine
As President Trump pushes to end the Russian invasion, two books look at the paramilitary Wagner Group and consider the shape of global conflict today.
May 13, 2025
In This Queer Sports Novel, Basketball Is Both Desire and Destruction
In “A Sharp Endless Need,” two female high school athletes get lost in a vortex of passion while grappling with deeper wounds.
May 13, 2025
These 4 People Had Never Met. Now They’re on a Road Trip to Find Dad.
In Kevin Wilson’s novel “Run for the Hills,” half siblings drive cross-country searching for the father who abandoned them.
May 13, 2025
Can You Match These Famous Quotes to Their Novels?
Certain lines in classic novels stand out. See how many you remember in this short quiz.
May 12, 2025
Dark Money, White Power and Colorful Weirdos in Carl Hiaasen’s Latest
“Fever Beach” is a wacky blend of Floridian farce and the perverse politics of our time.
May 12, 2025
Odd Couple Roommates, Bonded by Pills and Precarity
A college dropout becomes caretaker to a Lithuanian widow in Ocean Vuong’s florid new novel, which seeks to find the dignity in dead-end jobs.
May 11, 2025
Is the Trillion-Dollar Wellness Industry a Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing?
Amy Larocca’s book “How to Be Well” dives deep into the global obsession with so-called health, and the companies that have profited from creating it.
May 11, 2025
Did Andy Warhol Exploit His Superstars? A New Book Says Yes.
Laurence Leamer, the author of “Capote’s Women” and “Hitchcock’s Blondes,” takes the measure of another powerful man and his female muses.
May 10, 2025
In This Novel, Most Abortions Are Illegal. A Clinic Worker Fights Back.
In Hilary Plum’s novel “State Champ,” a mediocre receptionist goes on a hunger strike — only to question the purpose of protest.
May 10, 2025
New Crime Novels With Unexpected Twists
Our columnist on the month’s best releases.
May 10, 2025
A Jewish Promised Land in … Texas? Rachel Cockerell Had to Know More.
Discovering the ways her great-grandfather’s rich life intersected with the hidden history of Zionism led to an unusually crafted new book, “Melting Point.”
May 9, 2025
The Summer Books We’re Looking Forward To
It’s not too early to think about the season’s most anticipated titles.
May 9, 2025
How to Raise Super-Achievers? Hint: It’s Not the Cereal.
In “The Family Dynamic,” Susan Dominus examines what makes some families “exceptional.”
May 9, 2025
Pick Up This Book and Be Spirited Away
“The Village Beyond the Mist” may or may not have inspired the Studio Ghibli masterpiece, but it’s transporting nonetheless.
May 9, 2025
When Childhood Trauma Gives Way to Adult Ambivalence
“Sleep,” the debut novel by Honor Jones, moves back and forth in time between a 35-year-old mother’s present and her disturbing, unresolved past.
May 9, 2025
8 New Books We Recommend This Week
Suggested reading from critics and editors at The New York Times.
May 8, 2025
These Romance Novels Have Big, Dark Secrets
The best-selling romance author Carley Fortune recommends books whose high stakes and buried traumas make their love stories all the more satisfying.
May 8, 2025
José Andrés Picked a Bad Time to Give His Daughter ‘Charlotte’s Web’
“Good choice, Daddy. Very nice,” she said sarcastically, given what he was making for dinner. The chef and humanitarian’s new book is “Change the Recipe.”
May 8, 2025
‘Taking Her Voice’: Hilaria Baldwin Revisits Her Accent Controversy
In a memoir that tries to wrest control of her story, Ms. Baldwin says she was “canceled” via online sleuths who looked for inconsistencies in her Spanish accent.
May 7, 2025
Our Favorite Books for Every Type of Mom
Need a last-minute Mother’s Day gift? Try one of these recent releases.
May 7, 2025
For Women Migrants in the Arabian Peninsula, Work Often Means Violence
Mo Ogrodnik’s novel, “Gulf,” follows characters from different countries and classes confronting the region’s forced stratification into oppressor and oppressed.
May 7, 2025
The Story of Globalization, as Told Through One Big Barge
A new book by the historian Ian Kumekawa tracks the varied career of a gigantic boat in an era of profound economic change.
May 7, 2025
The Best Books of the Year (So Far)
The nonfiction and novels we can’t stop thinking about.
May 7, 2025
Raising a Kid in 2025? There’s an App for That.
As seen through the gimlet eye of the New York Times cultural critic Amanda Hess, millennial parenting is anything but natural.
May 7, 2025
‘James’ Won the Pulitzer, but Not Without Complications
In an unusual but not unprecedented move, the prize board chose a fourth option after it couldn’t agree on the three less-heralded finalists.
May 6, 2025
Was No. 10 Rillington Place the Deadliest Address in London?
In “The Peepshow,” Kate Summerscale tells the stranger-than-fiction story of a sensational murder case that rocked 1950s London.
May 6, 2025
Wildfires, and an Unlikely Romance, Light Up a Lost Paradise
In Franziska Gänsler’s novel, “Eternal Summer,” a tenuous bond forms between strangers stranded in a hotel as the world burns.
May 6, 2025
Two Ambitious Sisters Are Each Other’s Biggest Supporters — and Saboteurs
In “The Original Daughter,” the debut novel by Jemimah Wei, a Singaporean family craters under the weight of ambition, jealousy and things left unsaid.
May 6, 2025
Regrets Aren’t the Only Thing Haunting This Grieving Family
In “The Manor of Dreams,” two sets of women navigate both a contested inheritance and paranormal activity after a devastating death.
May 6, 2025
How to Make Art Under the Nazis (Without Losing Your Soul)
A new novel considers the perplexing life and times of G.W. Pabst, the Austrian filmmaker who worked in the shadow of the Reich.
May 6, 2025
Pulitzer Prizes 2025: A Guide to the Winning Books and Finalists
“James,” by Percival Everett won the fiction prize, and Jason Roberts received the biography prize for “Every Living Thing.”
May 5, 2025
Modern American Poetry: A Starter Pack
Our poetry editor recommends collections that revel in nature, family life, hard work and language.
May 5, 2025
How Well Do You Know the Life and Works of Mark Twain?
Test your memory of this prolific American author and his era.
May 5, 2025
MrBeast’s Latest Challenge: Writing a Novel With James Patterson
Jimmy Donaldson, known to his social media fans as MrBeast, is teaming up with the mega-best-selling thriller author.
May 5, 2025
In Multilevel Marketing, Sleight of Hand Is Simply the Rule of Doing Business
Bridget Read’s “Little Bosses Everywhere” exposes the deceptions of direct-selling companies that make their profit not off customers but off their own sales force.
May 5, 2025
They Were Identical ‘Twinnies’ Who Charmed Orwell, Camus and More
In “The Dazzling Paget Sisters,” Ariane Bankes unearths the writings of her high-society mother and aunt, getting glimpses at the 20th-century figures with whom they cavorted.
May 4, 2025
José Cuervo: The Man, the Legend, the Equine Tequila Shots
In a new history, Ted Genoways explores the dramatic life of an enigmatic figure who revolutionized his country’s spirits industry.
May 4, 2025
You’ve Attended the Tale of Sweeney Todd. Now Hear Mrs. Lovett’s Story.
A new novel, “The Butcher’s Daughter,” imagines the haunting past of Mrs. Lovett, the infamous baker who assisted the serial killer Sweeney Todd.
May 4, 2025
2 Books to Read Instead of Meditating
A gentle and clever comic novel; a poetic and tender essay on addiction.
May 3, 2025
Survivors of War and Disaster, Seeking Refuge in Math
In “The Deserters,” Mathias Énard weaves the story of a lone soldier with that of a brilliant scholar.
May 3, 2025
An Ojibwe Writer Refuses to Let Her Mother’s Trauma Be in Vain
In “Medicine River,” Mary Annette Pember recounts what happened to her mother, and many like her, who were abused in Indian boarding schools.
May 3, 2025
An Archive of Black Resistance, in Dispatches From Bookstores
Katie Mitchell’s photo book “Prose to the People” visits stores around the United States, from the 19th century to today.
May 2, 2025
A Boy Moves Mountains of Grief as He Climbs All 46 Adirondack High Peaks
Through an arduous summer of hiking, 13-year-old Finn Connelly finds common ground with his late firefighter father in Kate Messner’s new verse novel.
May 2, 2025
The Poetry Challenge Day 5: We’ve learned a poem this week. Now it’s yours.
We’ve reached the last stanza of our adventure in verse. Now it’s time to show off what you’ve learned. As a bonus: our critic on why memorizing a poem is as much about what you forget.
May 2, 2025
7 New Books We Recommend This Week
Suggested reading from critics and editors at The New York Times.
May 1, 2025
Geena Davis Can’t Count How Many Times She’s Reread Zola
Among her other favorites: “Backlash” and a Charles Laughton biography. The Oscar-winning actress just wrote — and illustrated — her first children’s book.
May 1, 2025
The Dirty Little Secret Hiding in Your Garbage Can
In “Waste Wars,” Alexander Clapp shows us in depressing detail just what our Big Junk industry is doing to the rest of the world.
May 1, 2025
The Poetry Challenge Day 4: This poem is about staying up all night. Use it to greet the day.
One day remains to memorize this week’s poem. (You probably already know more than you realize!) Let’s stay merry.
May 1, 2025
Andrew Gross, Best-Selling Writer of Thrillers, Is Dead at 72
A successful New York apparel executive, he switched gears in midlife and became a novelist, writing numerous best sellers, including five with James Patterson.
April 30, 2025
Just Because You Can Prove It Doesn’t Make It True
In a new book, the mathematical epidemiologist Adam Kucharski explains how certainty, even in math, can be an illusion.
April 30, 2025
How Pop Culture Betrayed Millennial Women
In “Girl on Girl,” Sophie Gilbert makes a searing case that trends from the 1990s and 2000s, online and off, damaged young women in deep, dark ways.
April 30, 2025
In a Nazi-Era Filmmaker’s Compromises, a Novelist Finds Reasons to Fear
Daniel Kehlmann wrote “The Director” only to realize how loudly the moral quandaries faced by G.W. Pabst would resonate today.
April 30, 2025
24 Books Coming in May
Novels by Stephen King and Ocean Vuong, Ron Chernow’s latest blockbuster biography, a new graphic novel by Alison Bechdel and more.
April 30, 2025
Swoony Romance Novels That Will Upend Your World
Our columnist on the month’s best new releases.
April 30, 2025
Lush, Luminous New Historical Fiction
Our critic on the month’s best releases.
April 30, 2025
The Poetry Challenge Day 3: This is a New York poem. Once you learn it, you can take it anywhere.
You can take a poem with you anywhere, but knowing its origins can help make it yours. Practice by playing our poetry emoji game.
April 30, 2025
The Unsentimental, Acerbic and Deeply Compassionate Fiction of Jane Gardam
The British author, best known for her “Old Filth” trilogy, never paid much attention to literary fashion, and her 22 novels range widely in genre, tone and style.
April 29, 2025
Jane Gardam, Witty Novelist of a Waning British Empire, Dies at 96
“The Queen of the Tambourine,” “Old Filth” and other fiction vividly captured both working-class and aristocratic Britain in the last years of the colonial era.
April 29, 2025
A Graphic Novelist Digs Up His Childhood, One Ginseng Root at a Time
Craig Thompson’s new book revisits his upbringing on a farm in rural Wisconsin, and the farmers — both American-born and not — who made up his community.
April 29, 2025
Healing the Scars Left by America’s Indian Boarding Schools
In “Medicine River,” Mary Annette Pember examines a national shame — and the trauma it wrought in her own family.
April 29, 2025
Rick Atkinson Makes the American Revolution Come Brilliantly Alive
The second installment of the Pulitzer Prize winner’s trilogy about the war animates an entire world — from battlefields and commanders to sounds and smells.
April 29, 2025
Immigration Has Always Been Complex. Just Ask the People Who Built U.S. Railroads.
In “Strangers in the Land,” Michael Luo tells the story of the Chinese workers lured to the United States and expelled when 19th-century politicians turned against them.
April 29, 2025
The Poetry Challenge Day 2: How rhythm and rhyme make a poem memorable.
Today, we help you pay attention to the sound and feel of this week’s poem. Play our game to see how much you’ve already learned.
April 29, 2025
Peter Lovesey, a Master of British Whodunits, Is Dead at 88
He wrote a series of witty police procedurals set in Victorian England and then turned to the present, introducing a cantankerous and technology-averse detective.
April 28, 2025
Fill in the Blank: Which U.S. Cities Are in These Book Titles?
Try this short literary geography quiz.
April 28, 2025
The Brash, Working-Class Londoner Who Redefined New York’s Restaurants
Keith McNally tracks his staggering successes — and failures — in his new memoir, “I Regret Almost Everything.”
April 28, 2025
The Poetry Challenge Day 1: Learn a poem with us this week. Keep it for a lifetime.
Starting today, we’ll have a week of games, videos and essays to help you along the way. First up: readings by Ina Garten, Ethan Hawke and Ada Limón.
April 28, 2025
A Hollywood Memoir Spiked With Drama and Melancholy
In “The Golden Hour,” Matthew Specktor ponders, among others, the father who succeeded in a punishing business now in its waning glory.
April 27, 2025
In TikToks and a Memoir, a Nun Makes the Unexpected Case for Convent Life
Though she long felt a calling, Sister Monica Clare tried Hollywood first. Her book, and a visit, confirm the warmth — and fragility — of her new community.
April 27, 2025
2 Books for Cluttered Minds
A spare elegy; a weird journey.
April 26, 2025
3 New Horror Novels About the Haunting Power of Family
Our columnist reviews this month’s releases.
April 26, 2025
At 13, Charlotte Brontë Already Knew How Good a Writer She Would Be
An anthology of her teenage poetry, published for the first time, shows ambition, even if the verse isn’t perfect.
April 25, 2025
Book Club: Let’s Talk About Adam Ross’s ‘Playworld’
This off-kilter coming-of-age novel about one boy growing up in New York in the 1980s is detailed, digressive and capable of tracking the most minute shifts in emotional weather.
April 25, 2025
Book Club: Read ‘The Safekeep,’ by Yael van der Wouden, With the Book Review
In May, the Book Review Book Club will read and discuss “The Safekeep,” Yael van der Wouden’s novel about a woman wrapped up in a historical drama and a forbidden romance.
April 25, 2025
I’ve Read ‘Strega Nona’ 100 Times. Now I Feel Sorry for Her Sidekick.
As Tomie dePaola’s classic approaches a milestone birthday, Big Anthony is long overdue for a bit of sympathy.
April 25, 2025
Sign Up for the Book Review’s First-Ever Challenge
(It’s about poetry. And you’ll love it.)
April 24, 2025
7 New Books We Recommend This Week
Suggested reading from critics and editors at The New York Times.
April 24, 2025
A Dark Fairy Tale of a Young Princess and Her Horrible Husband
In her sprightly new biography, “The Rebel Romanov,” Helen Rappaport introduces us to the enigmatic Julie of Saxe-Coburg.
April 24, 2025
3 Books About Tech, Politics and Big Business
Experts tell the stories of entrepreneurs and executives who have inched closer and closer to their governments.
April 24, 2025
Rick Atkinson Doesn’t Want to Stand on a Soapbox
Being a storyteller is just fine with the journalist turned historian. “The Fate of the Day,” the second volume in his American Revolution trilogy, is out this month.
April 24, 2025
Go to Mars, Never Die and Other Big Tech Pipe Dreams
In “More Everything Forever,” the science journalist Adam Becker subjects Silicon Valley’s “ideology of technological salvation” to critical scrutiny.
April 23, 2025
Poems That Lean Into Calm and Joy Amid Life’s Chaos
In four new collections, a frank look at disability, a celebration of domestic life (and dogs), a gathering of hushed moments and a clutch of myth-inflected reveries.
April 23, 2025
Being Married to Timothy Leary Was Tough. It Helped to Be High.
Susannah Cahalan traces the life of Rosemary Woodruff Leary, who made her husband’s coffee, tripped with him and helped break him out of jail.
April 23, 2025
At a Murder Mystery Party, the (Pretend) Killer Ends Up (Actually) Dead
Louise Hegarty’s novel, “Fair Play,” nods to classic 1920s detective fiction, with a twist.
April 22, 2025
The Marriage, and Ménage à Trois, That Changed Art History
“Gabriële” considers a writer and pivotal figure of the 20th-century avant-garde who nurtured the talents of others.
April 22, 2025
An Engrossing Biography Resurrects an Evangelist Shrouded in Scandal
In “Sister, Sinner,” Claire Hoffman tells the stranger-than-fiction story of Aimee Semple McPherson, whose mysterious life made headlines in the 1920s.
April 22, 2025
Herbert J. Gans, 97, Dies; Upended Myths of Urban and Suburban Life
A leading sociologist, he explored American society up close — living in a Levittown at one point — to gain insight into issues of race, class, the media and even the Yankees.
April 21, 2025
Do You Know These Books That Became Disaster Movies?
Many blockbuster films were inspired by literature and this short quiz tests your knowledge about five of them.
April 21, 2025
Stories That Show How Modern Liberals Have Lost Their Way
In a new collection, Lydia Millet casts a satirical eye on left-wing culture and its array of character types.
April 21, 2025
Peeking Into Joan Didion’s Years of Psychological Thinking
Drawn from her previously unpublished reflections on sessions with a therapist, “Notes to John” is at once slightly sordid and utterly fascinating.
April 21, 2025
A Cartoonist Who Tapped His Own Psyche and Found America’s Unruly Id
R. Crumb’s underground comics were instrumental in shaping the counterculture of the 1960s and beyond, Dan Nadel shows in an exemplary new biography.
April 20, 2025
Why R. Crumb Worked With a Biographer: ‘I Guess I Felt Sorry For You’
Dan Nadel’s “Crumb: A Cartoonist’s Life” takes on the good, the bad, the ugly and the weird. Over punk rock vegetarian food, subject and writer compared notes.
April 20, 2025
The Best Forced Proximity Romance Novels
The romance author Beth O’Leary recommends books that show off the trope at its best — playful, knowing, original and deliciously satisfying.
April 20, 2025
2 Memoirs by Rock ’n’ Roll Muses Who Were So Much More
Marianne Faithfull was a star in her own right; Peggy Caserta was a hippie tastemaker. Their memoirs are riveting.
April 19, 2025
Four ‘Eminent Jews’ Walk Into a Book
In his paean to another age, David Denby studies four icons who defined American culture in the second half of the 20th century.
April 19, 2025
Journaling Her Way Through Cancer for the Third Time
Suleika Jaouad’s new book provides a master class in personal writing. Here’s why it’s a worthwhile habit — for everyone, not just English majors.
April 19, 2025
Hauntings Include: Dead Parents, Bad Sex and a Weird Painting of Cher
The stories in Marie-Helene Bertino’s new collection, “Exit Zero,” frolic in the nether zone between fantasy and reality.
April 19, 2025
What It Was Like to Edit the ‘Wolf Hall’ Books
The final novel in Hilary Mantel’s great trilogy has been adapted for TV. Her editor joins us this week to discuss working with Mantel on the books.
April 18, 2025
There’s No People Like Show People
In a new book, the Broadway photographer Jenny Anderson captures the craft and camaraderie of making theater.
April 18, 2025
Swimming to a Mythical Island Called California
Pam Muñoz Ryan’s “El Niño” combines magical realism, climate fiction and coming-of-age sports tales.
April 18, 2025
Everything You Need to Know About Emily Henry
Her best-selling romances have made her a new standard-bearer of the genre.
April 18, 2025
8 New Books We Recommend This Week
Suggested reading from critics and editors at The New York Times.
April 17, 2025
Would Joan Didion Have Wanted the World to See Her Notes on Therapy?
Readers can decide when “Notes to John,” which shows the writer grappling with guilt and vulnerability, is published next week.
April 17, 2025
In 1917, 3 Portuguese Children Saw the Virgin. The Rest Is Top-Secret.
In his personal, engaging new book, “Sorrowful Mysteries,” the novelist and journalist Stephen Harrigan explores the enduring power of the Virgin of Fatima.
April 17, 2025
The Russian Spies Who Lived Among Us — in New Jersey
In his new book, “The Illegals,” Shaun Walker studies the Russian agents who worked deep undercover as Americans for decades.
April 17, 2025
Meghan Daum Has a Plan for Replacing Books Destroyed in the L.A. Fires
She is one of many authors who lost their homes in January. “Surely,” she says, “readers would love nothing more than to send their favorite books to their favorite writers.”
April 17, 2025
Tim Mohr, Berlin D.J. Turned Award-Winning Translator, Dies at 55
An American who had lived abroad, he sought out books by up-and-coming German writers, while ghostwriting memoirs for rock stars like Paul Stanley.
April 16, 2025
Inside a New York City Museum: Flirting, Fund-Raising and Fraud
Heather McGowan’s novel “Friends of the Museum” takes place over a single, chaotic day in the lead-up to a Met-inspired costume gala.
April 16, 2025
A Bold New History Highlights Latin America’s Humanist Ideals
A new book by the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Greg Grandin offers a fresh account of the region as an incubator of internationalism and commitment to the common good.
April 16, 2025
An Audacious Novelist, Ahead of Her Time, Is Now Getting Her Due
Nettie Jones made a splash in 1984 with her shockingly erotic novel “Fish Tales,” then fell into obscurity. A new edition has put her back in the spotlight.
April 16, 2025
He’s in Love With His Best Friend, but Does His Friend Love Him Back?
In Sean Hewitt’s novel, “Open, Heaven,” two isolated boys develop an intense, undefined relationship.
April 16, 2025
This Global Warming Book Is a Token From Another World
“What’s Left,” by Malcolm Harris, arrives at a particularly difficult time to consider anything beyond our immediate turmoil.
April 15, 2025
The Centuries-Long Struggle to Make English Words Behave
Two new books examine efforts to standardize English orthography and the pronouns at the heart of our culture wars, finding that spelling and usage have never conformed to any rules.
April 15, 2025
A Novel That Takes On Life’s Greatest Mystery: Our Parents
In “The Imagined Life,” a writer searches his home state and his buried memories for answers about his long-lost father.
April 15, 2025
A Personal Ad Saved His Father From the Nazis. That Was Just the Start.
In “I Seek a Kind Person,” Julian Borger tells the riveting story of seven children who escaped wartime Austria thanks to a British newspaper.
April 15, 2025
Can You Uncover the Hidden Titles of a Dozen Recent Best Sellers?
Test your knowledge of the best-selling books (so far) in 2025 and build a reading list along the way.
April 14, 2025
A Memoir of What A.I. Giveth, and What It Taketh Away
“Searches,” by Vauhini Vara, is both a memoir and a critical study of our digital selves.
April 14, 2025
2,000 Years Later, Christians Are Still Worrying About Sex
In “Lower Than the Angels,” the historian Diarmaid MacCulloch traces two millenniums of libidinal frustration.
April 14, 2025
It’s a Mystery. No, It’s a Campus Novel. No, It’s Autofiction.
“The Proof of My Innocence” starts as a political whodunit but soon expands into a collage of literary genres.
April 14, 2025
An Absurd Dystopia Asks, What Happens to Families When Sex Is Taboo?
Sayaka Murata’s novel “Vanishing World” envisions an alternate universe where artificial insemination is the global norm, and sex takes a back seat.
April 14, 2025
Farewell to the Last Writer of the Latin American Boom
The Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa was the world’s savviest and most accomplished political novelist.
April 14, 2025
Mario Vargas Llosa, Nobel-Winning Peruvian Novelist, Dies at 89
Mr. Vargas Llosa, who ran for Peru’s presidency in 1990 and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2010, transformed episodes from his personal life into books that reverberated far beyond the borders of his native country.
April 14, 2025
He Can Get the Details Right, Except in His Own Messy Life
Austin Kelley gently lampoons high-minded magazines and the fragile men who work at them in his debut novel, “The Fact Checker.”
April 13, 2025
The Long Struggle of Jewish Americans Over Their Country’s Crises
In the midst of ongoing war and protest, politicians and journalists explore the complexities of Jewish American responses to global and national conflicts.
April 13, 2025
Murder, Medicis and Old Masters in a Historical Whodunit
Laurent Binet’s novel “Perspective(s)” begins with an artist lying dead in a Florentine chapel.
April 12, 2025
‘The Great Gatsby’ Is 100, and as Fresh as Ever
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s masterpiece has left an enduring mark on American culture.
April 11, 2025
Grace Lin’s Long-Awaited New Fantasy Novel Stars Her First Animal Protagonist
A mythical lion cub stuck in the modern world must harness the power of stories to save his family and return home.
April 11, 2025
A Graphic Memoir With the Volume Turned All the Way Up
In “Precious Rubbish,” Kayla E. turns to midcentury children’s comics to help tell her shattering story.
April 11, 2025
He Won a Nobel. These Poems Show Him Finding His Voice.
“Poet in the New World” introduces readers to the often overlooked early work of the Polish master Czeslaw Milosz.
April 11, 2025
8 New Books We Recommend This Week
Suggested reading from critics and editors at The New York Times.
April 10, 2025
Fantasy Novels for People Who Think They Don’t Like Fantasy
Interested in dipping your toe into the genre? The author Leigh Bardugo recommends books that can get you started.
April 10, 2025
All Politics Is Local. In This Novel, It’s Incestuous.
Jon Hickey’s book imagines a cutthroat campaign for control of a Native American reservation.
April 10, 2025
The Forgotten Story of 6 Immigrants Saved From the Titanic
In “The Six,” Steven Schwankert tells an amazing story of survival, slander and mystery.
April 10, 2025
A Tale of Bloodshed and Lost Love in China’s Turbulent Past
“City of Fiction,” a novel by Yu Hua, follows a man on a search for his missing wife amid bandits and warlords.
April 10, 2025
Graydon Carter Thinks ‘Hollywood Wives’ Waylaid His Magazine Career
He bounced back big time with editorships at Spy and Vanity Fair, a glamorous life he details in a new memoir.
April 10, 2025
Vietnamese Americans Are Swept Into Detention Camps in this Comic (Yes) Novel
Four half siblings balance the mundane (internships) and the terrifying (internment) in Kevin Nguyen’s “Mỹ Documents.”
April 10, 2025
A New Thomas Pynchon Novel Is Coming This Fall
Featuring a Depression-era private eye, “Shadow Ticket” will be the 87-year-old writer’s first book since 2013.
April 9, 2025
Faced With Death, He Did the Only Thing He Could: Take Notes
Peter Godwin, who has seen death up close a few times over the course of his life, examines grief and belonging in a new memoir, “Exit Wounds.”
April 9, 2025
The Far Right’s Love-Hate Relationship With Globalization
A new book by the historian Quinn Slobodian examines right-wing figures who have positioned themselves as populist critics of neoliberalism while weaponizing some of its founders’ ideas.
April 9, 2025
Want to Be a Better Friend? Read These Books.
In an era of loneliness, friends are more important than ever. How do we find, and keep, these connections?
April 9, 2025
Criminally Good New Murder Mysteries
Our columnist on the month’s best releases.
April 9, 2025
International Booker Prize Shortlist: 6 Books to Talk About
The nominees for the translated fiction award “don’t shut down debate, they generate it,” said the author Max Porter, who leads the judging panel.
April 8, 2025
The Critic Who Turned the Hate Read Into High Art
“Authority,” a new collection of reviews and essays by the Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Andrea Long Chu, showcases her smarts, humor and contempt.
April 8, 2025
When a High School Fight Tears a Community Apart
In “Our Beautiful Boys,” Sameer Pandya uses an altercation at a teen party to stage an urgent conversation about race, gender, parenthood and more.
April 8, 2025
Who Was Jesus? The World May Never Know.
In her new book, “Miracles and Wonder,” Elaine Pagels tries to find the man behind the faith.
April 8, 2025
Buffy Slayed. Their Marriage Didn’t Survive.
In a fizzy joint memoir, Jenny Owen Youngs and Kristin Russo capture what it was like to create a popular podcast for fellow superfans — and how they kept it going even after breaking up.
April 8, 2025
Jennifer Weiner Goes Behind the Music in a Tale of Estranged Sisters
In this affectionate if sometimes off-key novel, a would-be rock star confronts the family drama behind her mother’s brief, blazing career.
April 8, 2025
How Much Do You Know About the History of Books?
Try this short quiz on the material side of reading.
April 7, 2025
Could This Be the Funniest Book Ever Written?
J.P. Donleavy clocks the absurdities of human conduct in his satirical advice guide, “The Unexpurgated Code.”
April 7, 2025
Craving More of ‘The White Lotus’? Read These Books Next
From scathing satires of wealth to murder mysteries set at luxe resorts, these novels are sure to scratch that Mike White itch.
April 7, 2025
Why Did Democrats Let Biden Keep Running in 2024?
Chris Whipple offers an insiders’ account of a disastrous political campaign.
April 7, 2025
Is He a Stranger, Her Son, Her Lover or All Three?
Katie Kitamura’s thrilling new novel, “Audition,” examines the performances we put on for others — and exposes the shams that underpin them.
April 7, 2025
Edward Countryman, Student of the American Revolution, Dies at 80
He wrote influential books exploring the dramatic changes wrought by independence, bringing in overlooked perspectives — what he called “a collision of histories.”
April 6, 2025
Dear Armchair Mountaineers: A Cherished Literary Classic Awaits
Nan Shepherd’s meditative book on the great outdoors is an inspiring guide to stepping away from comforts and routine.
April 6, 2025
Can These Endlessly Complicated Siblings Reunite After Their Mother’s Death?
In Lynn Steger Strong’s new novel, “The Float Test,” one semi-estranged family is forced to come back together amid a crisis.
April 6, 2025
Wordplay, Weirdness and a Guest Appearance by Clint Eastwood
“Thrilled to Death” collects many of Lynne Tillman’s spiky short stories, where dreams tell the truth and glamour mingles with the mundane.
April 6, 2025
2 Books to Keep You Pleasantly Diverted
A collection of autobiographical sketches; a complicated Japanese mystery.
April 5, 2025
How Video Games Ushered In the A.I. Revolution
In “The Thinking Machine,” the journalist Stephen Witt tries to figure out what the Nvidia C.E.O. Jensen Huang sees in the future of artificial intelligence.
April 5, 2025
A Stunning, Hallucinatory Retelling of Greek Myth
In “Tongues,” Anders Nilsen takes the story of Prometheus and sets it in the modern world.
April 5, 2025
Thrillers Suffused With a Dark Sense of Dread
Our critic on the month’s best releases.
April 5, 2025
Frustrated With Dating? These Novels Are for You.
“Liquid: A Love Story” and “Paradise Logic” follow young women searching for love, while commenting on the state of modern romance.
April 5, 2025
Jean Van Leeuwen, 87, Dies; Wrote ‘Oliver Pig’ Series of Children’s Books
She wrote for many ages, from picture books to young adult fiction. Her children led her to create a series of books about two pigs named Oliver and Amanda.
April 4, 2025
Colum McCann on the Surprising Drama of Undersea Cables
The Irish writer’s new novel, “Twist,” is a shipboard adventure about the ragtag crews who repair ruptured information cables deep in the ocean.
April 4, 2025
Sam Keen, Philosopher of the Men’s Movement, Is Dead at 93
“Only men understand the secret fears that go with the territory of masculinity,” he wrote. His message resonated: His book “Fire in the Belly” was a best seller.
April 4, 2025
A Subversive Family Memoir Tinged With Tragedy and Mustard Gas
In “Children of Radium,” Joe Dunthorne explores the absurdity of family histories and his own clan’s complicated past.
April 4, 2025
Childhood Memories of Connecting Through Cartooning
Mine came flooding back as I read Raina Telgemeier and Scott McCloud’s “The Cartoonists Club” and Jerry Craft and Kwame Alexander’s “J vs. K.”
April 4, 2025
30 Years Ago, This Book Saw the Coming Backlash Against Elites
Christopher Lasch’s “The Revolt of the Elites” anticipated the resentments of ordinary Americans that have led inexorably to Trumpism.
April 4, 2025
Beatlemania: A Penetrating New Book Celebrates Lennon and McCartney
T Bone Burnett reviews Ian Leslie’s “John & Paul,” which explores the partnership of “two extraordinarily gifted young men.”
April 3, 2025
7 New Books We Recommend This Week
Suggested reading from critics and editors at The New York Times.
April 3, 2025
A Pandemic Puppy Inspired Reginald Dwayne Betts’s New Book
It’s called “Doggerel” for a reason: “These are poems that speak to everyone, that pun and riff and make fun of themselves a bit as they reveal something about the world.”
April 3, 2025
Let Us Help You Find Your Next Book: Fantasy
Whether you're looking for a classic or the latest and greatest, start here.
April 2, 2025
The Alienated, Irresistible Man in a Novel Stripped to the Bones
In his new book, David Szalay offers unvarnished scenes from a lonely, rags-to-riches life.
April 2, 2025
Why Are We So Fascinated by Cults?
Two new books use divergent styles to look at mind control, brainwashing and the outer limits of influence.
April 2, 2025
After a Terminal Cancer Diagnosis, a Lawyer Seeks Revenge
In Ariel Courage’s novel, “Bad Nature,” a powerful career woman sets out on a road trip intending to kill her father.
April 1, 2025
In These Poems Life Is a Party, Complete With Designer Drugs
Alex Dimitrov’s fifth collection, “Ecstasy,” offers a rollicking paean to pleasure.
April 1, 2025
A Victim of Childhood Rape Close-Reads Her Past
In “Sad Tiger,” the French author Neige Sinno analyzes her memories of being abused as a child, alongside literature about incest and pedophilia.
April 1, 2025
Mum and Dad Won’t Toss the Rubbish. There’s a Llama in the Kitchen. Help!
In “The Usual Desire to Kill,” Camilla Barnes finds the humor in a daughter’s aggravating visits to her aging parents at their run-down home in rural France.
April 1, 2025
In Espionage and War, Secure Communication Is Key. Just Ask These Spies.
As Americans scrutinize the accidental leak of a high-level U.S. group chat, several books detail other mishaps in the annals of global conflict.
March 31, 2025
She Wrote Last Summer’s Hit Thriller. Naturally, TV Was Next.
Suddenly Liz Moore blazed, comet-like, onto small screens and best-seller lists. But her writing career has been a slow burn.
March 31, 2025
Do You Know Where These Jazz Age Novels Are Set?
Even though it’s been more than a century since some of these novels roared onto the literary scene, they all remain classics of the era. Try this short quiz to see how many you remember.
March 31, 2025
This Is Your Brain on Politics
A new book by the neuroscientist Leor Zmigrod explores the connections between brain biology and political beliefs.
March 31, 2025
20 Books Coming in April
A posthumous Joan Didion book, Emily Henry’s latest romance novel, Tina Knowles’s memoir and more.
March 31, 2025
When Cutting Ties Is the Best Thing a Child Can Do
In “The Power of Parting,” Eamon Dolan makes a persuasive case for eliminating contact with family members whose abusive behavior can’t be redeemed.
March 30, 2025
A Slow-Burn Thriller Set on the Appalachian Trail
In “Heartwood,” when an experienced hiker named Valerie vanishes, other women must crack the case.
March 30, 2025
Wife, Tigress, Influencer, Accountant, Nurse, Muse, Mystery
In Michèle Gerber Klein’s new biography, “Surreal,” Gala Dalí gets her due.
March 30, 2025
The Essential Tanith Lee
The eclectic, prolific author wrote more than 90 novels — primarily fantasy and science fiction, but also horror, erotica, mysteries and historical fiction. If you’ve never read her work, here’s where to start.
March 30, 2025
Molly Young on Space and Music
A Booker-winning novel; a rocking essay collection.
March 29, 2025
The Story of Crypto’s Rise: Tangled, Confusing and Frustrating
In “The Mysterious Mr. Nakamoto,” Benjamin Wallace is hot on the trail of the person — or people — behind a financial revolution.
March 29, 2025
How Anarchists Helped Build Up Free Speech
As two recent books show, free speech protections were forged a century ago by people who fought for the rights of activists.
March 29, 2025
A Novel That Offers a Chilling Peek Into U.S. Intelligence
“The Snares,” by Rav Grewal-Kök, examines the perils and moral quandaries of clandestine service.
March 29, 2025
3 Horror Novels That Put an Extra-Terrifying Spin on Death
Our columnist reviews this month’s releases.
March 29, 2025
Book Club: Let’s Talk About Han Kang’s ‘We Do Not Part’
This Korean novel by the 2024 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature turns a pet-sitting mission into a haunting reflection on grief and memory.
March 28, 2025
The ‘Stuff’ of a New York Legend, From Skateboards to $12,000 Sweaters
A new book collects the Paper Magazine co-founder Kim Hastreiter’s most treasured belongings, and friends.
March 28, 2025
Book Club: Read ‘Playworld,’ by Adam Ross, With the Book Review
In April, the Book Review Book Club will read and discuss “Playworld,” Adam Ross’s off-kilter coming-of-age novel about one boy growing up in New York in the 1980s.
March 28, 2025
Historical Fantasy Novels Offer a Magical Escape Into the Past
The author of “The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi” recommends fantastical tales grounded in real history.
March 28, 2025
Thrilling, Lush New Historical Fiction
Our critic on the month’s best releases.
March 28, 2025
The American Picture Book’s Unsung Parent: Japan
Missing for decades from the Anglophile version of its origin story was another great visual narrative tradition, of the East.
March 28, 2025
It’s Gatsby’s World, We Just Live in It
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel turns 100 this year. What does its hero tell us about how we see ourselves?
March 27, 2025
8 New Books We Recommend This Week
Suggested reading from critics and editors at The New York Times.
March 27, 2025
The Truth About F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Drunken Brawl in Rome
Biographers took an account of a scuffle in “Tender Is the Night” as a record of a real-life event. But uncovered documents suggest Fitzgerald may have behaved worse than he wrote.
March 27, 2025