Creation Lake, by Rachel Kushner
An American agent infiltrates a commune of French environmentalists in Kushner’s philosophical rendition of the spy novel. The anarchists should be no match for the agent’s clever tactics, but her loyalties and opinions prove to be vulnerable after she meets the group’s mysterious leader.
Lovely One, by Ketanji Brown Jackson
“My march to this shining moment has sometimes been a steep and emotionally grueling climb,” writes Jackson, the first Black woman named to the Supreme Court, in a memoir that nevertheless emphasizes the “blessings” that sustained her: dedicated parents, encouraging teachers, cheerleading roommates, loving daughters and her college boyfriend — now husband — whose “partnership, which made this possible, is everything.”
Colored Television, by Danzy Senna
The eternal conflict between making art and selling out gets a fresh take in Senna’s new novel, which follows a struggling fiction writer into the thrilling yet treacherous TV industry, where she lands a deal to make a biracial comedy with a hotshot producer.
Nexus, by Yuval Noah Harari
In “Nexus,” the best-selling author of “Sapiens” takes on our species’ means of communication. Harari looks to philosophy, science, political theory and psychology to present a cleareyed primer on the flow of information from the dawn of human history to the present — and, perhaps more crucially, into the future. In a time when communication seems both more accessible and more elusive than ever, what we can learn, and how can we improve? For homo sapiens, the stakes have never been higher.
The Women Behind the Door, by Roddy Doyle
Paula Spencer has been an embattled character in Doyle’s fiction for nearly 30 years. In his latest novel, she is finally at ease, having left behind her addictions and, at 66, pulled together a manageable working life. But when her eldest daughter shows up at her door with a family crisis, Paula must take her in and contend with the demons of their past.
Reagan, by Max Boot
The actor Ronald Reagan started his political career as a New Deal Democrat who fought for social justice. He ended it as the Republican president of the United States. In this biography, Boot — a notable historian who fell out of love with conservatism as another American president, Donald J. Trump, took over the movement — tells Reagan’s story, tugging at the enigma of his life and searching for the seeds of Trumpism in the works and days of the 40th president.
Stolen Pride, by Arlie Russell Hochschild
In 2016, commentators looked to Hochschild’s “Strangers in Their Own Land,” about Tea Party conservatives in Louisiana, for insight into the forces that sent Trump to White House. Now, the author and renowned sociologist is back with a follow-up. In the first months of Trump’s presidency, white supremacists descended on an Appalachian coal mining town for a march. Talking to participants, wary residents and government officials, Hochschild reveals a swirl of anxieties and resentments that have burst onto the national stage.
Rejection, by Tony Tulathimutte
This collection of interconnected stories takes on the vagaries of romantic connections and misses — with an emphasis on the latter. In one, a young woman’s infatuation with her friend grows into full-blown obsession; in another, a narrator finally lands a lover after coming out, but things go awry when he tries to communicate his sexual wants.
Scaffolding, by Lauren Elkin
On leave from seeing patients after a miscarriage, Anna, a psychoanalyst, is living alone in Paris while her lawyer husband works in London. She spends her days seeing her therapist, remodeling her kitchen, wandering the city and talking to her new neighbor, a 24-year-old feminist activist. The first novel by the author of the nonfiction books “Flâneuse” and “Art Monsters” draws sinewy lines of connection between Paris in 2019, in 1972 and during World War II — and between Anna and her various lovers, psychoanalytic influences and ghosts.
We Solve Murders, by Richard Osman
With the members of the Thursday Murder Club in retirement (for now), Osman launches a new team of crime-busters: a high-flying private security expert and her father, a former investigator who thinks homicide is a thing of his past — until a Jackie Collins-like romance writer needs their help.
Lucky Loser, by Ross Buettner and Susanne Craig
In 2018, the New York Times reporters Buettner and Craig, two of three journalists who won a Pulitzer Prize for their reporting on Trump’s finances, revealed that the 45th president was not a self-made billionaire, as he often claimed, and that his business empire was plagued by shady tax schemes. They expand on their investigation in this new book, which also serves as a biography of the standard-bearer of the Republican Party.
One Day I’ll Grow Up and Be a Beautiful Woman, by Abi Maxwell
Raising her only child in the poor, rural New Hampshire town where she grew up, Maxwell splices the heart-wrenching story of her daughter’s gender transition — and the family’s ensuing struggle against public opposition and hate — with scenes from her own lakeside youth, involving absent parents and a gay brother who still bears the scars of childhood bullying.
Intermezzo, by Sally Rooney
Two brothers cope with grief and complicated relationships in Rooney’s new novel. One is a lawyer who is dating a college student but can’t seem to let go of his ex-girlfriend. His brother is a 20-something competitive chess player who falls for an older woman. The death of their father only widens the rift between them.
A Reason to See You Again, by Jami Attenberg
Attenberg’s latest novel brings readers deep into the dramas of one fractured family, the Cohens. When Rudy, the patriarch, dies, the family unravels; the novel follows his wife and two daughters over the course of the next 40 years as they try to carve their own paths, working to figure out what it means to live life on your own terms and if you can ever really escape family.
The Empusium, by Olga Tokarczuk; translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones
Tokarczuk follows in the footsteps of her fellow Nobel laureate Thomas Mann with her new novel, set at a sanitarium in the Polish mountains. A young man with tuberculosis arrives there in 1913, and finds a lively group of patients and residents with much to debate about the era’s social issues. From them he learns of the region’s folk legends and perennial acts of violence, which come uncomfortably close.
The Gates of Gaza, by Amir Tibon
The Israeli Haaretz correspondent Amir Tibon and his wife, Miri, moved to a kibbutz on the border with the Gaza Strip soon after the Israel-Gaza war in 2014. They bought a house and had children. Last year, in the midst of the Oct. 7 attacks, Tibon and his family found themselves sheltering in a safe room, waiting for rescue but anticipating the worst. In his new book, he weaves the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into a detailed account of that harrowing day and reflects on the ongoing carnage of the current war.
Defectors, by Paola Ramos
This deep investigation into the political beliefs of Latino Americans by a veteran journalist puts to rest the myth of a monolithic Democratic Latino voting bloc. Ramos’s reporting on Latino Trump supporters, Proud Boy members, border vigilantes, Christian nationalists and even self-described white supremacists reveals a diverse community with a sizable, and increasingly influential, population of ultraconservatives.
Playground, by Richard Powers
A pair of brilliant but estranged high school friends are among those gathered on a Polynesian island, trying to decide whether sending floating cities out to sea is an environmental solution or a fool’s errand. Judges for the Booker Prize, who’ve already placed this book on their longlist, called it a “capacious and engaging novel, distilling subjects as diverse as oceanography, climate change, the legacies of colonialism and the arc of a lifelong friendship into an exhilaratingly entangled narrative.”
Final Cut, by Charles Burns
Burns’s first stand-alone graphic novel in 19 years is at once an off-kilter teen romance and a portrait of the artist as an obsessive movie fan, culminating in plans to film a tribute to “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” at a cabin in the woods.
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