Every week, critics and editors at The New York Times Book Review pick the most interesting and notable new releases, from literary fiction and serious nonfiction to thrillers, romance novels, mysteries and everything in between.
You can save the books you’re most excited to read on a personal reading list, and find even more recommendations from our book experts.
family saga
Bug Hollow
by Michelle Huneven
The death of Ellis Samuelson, a teenage “golden boy,” ripples across generations of his family, from his prickly schoolteacher mother and supportive engineer father to his sisters, his pregnant girlfriend and their daughter. “Entering the lives of the Samuelson family in 1970s Altadena, Calif., feels like getting into a warm bath,” wrote our reviewer, Helen Schulman, citing Huneven’s “lovely, lucid prose” and “superb gift for description.” Read our review.
Memoir
Not My Type: One Woman vs. a President
by E. Jean Carroll
This memoir, a sequel of sorts to “What Do We Need Men For?” (2019), is a charming, slightly ditsy, full-gallop account through Carroll’s life and her experiences going to court against Donald J. Trump. Our critic Alexandra Jacobs called it “a trial scrapbook that is also a memoir of love and friendship, a photo party, a movie set and — though sprinkled with social media posts — a mash note to Ye Olde New Journalism.” Read our review.
History
What Is Queer Food? How We Served a Revolution
by John Birdsall
In this ambitious work of social history, Birdsall unspools the story of how queer culture has informed what we eat. From the restaurant world to the AIDS crisis, the recipes of Alice B. Toklas and the preferences of Truman Capote, Birdsall presents a soup-to-nuts-to-brunch-to-all-night-diner portrait of the inextricable link between queerness and food that’s as much cultural criticism as delicious celebration. Read our review.
Literary Fiction
Fox
by Joyce Carol Oates
Oates’s new novel — we’ve given up trying to count them — centers on Francis Fox, a predatory middle-school teacher who charms parents and colleagues but grooms and abuses his female students. When Francis disappears and human remains are found near his car, a detective must piece together the story of his sordid past. Read our review.
Biography
Claire McCardell: The Designer Who Set Women Free
by Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson
The designer Claire McCardell is often credited as the inventor of American sportswear — practical separates, wrap dresses, pocketed skirts and zippers women could do up themselves. In the hands of Dickinson, this is more than just the biography of a fashion revolutionary: It is a story of the fight for women’s identity and, incidentally, the birth of an American industry. Read our review.
Satire
How to Dodge a Cannonball
by Dennard Dayle
This bold, original, laugh-out-loud funny Civil War satire follows a hapless teenage flag-bearer just trying to stay alive. “Here is an author capturing, with clarity, our current moment by flashing us back to the past,” our reviewer, Mat Johnson, wrote. “Dayle’s deft portrayal of American anti-Blackness, class exploitation and cultural uncertainty feels both accurate to the novel’s 19th-century setting and, soberingly, very contemporary.” Read our review.
Wildly Experimental
The Möbius Book
by Catherine Lacey
Start from the front cover of Lacey’s latest and you’re reading a novella about two women chatting about a third friend over drinks while a puddle of blood pools nearby. Flip it over and you’re reading a memoir in which Lacey takes stock of a relationship gone south. Is there a connection? Leave it to the author of “Biography of X” to put you to work. Read our review.
Biography
Toni at Random: The Iconic Writer’s Legendary Editorship
by Dana A. Williams
Not many people know that the Nobel-winning novelist Toni Morrison was also an editor who spent nearly 20 years at Random House, where she dedicated herself to publishing books by Black authors. This biography relates, in splendidly researched detail, how she shepherded manuscripts by the likes of Angela Davis, Lucille Clifton, Toni Cade Bambara and Gayl Jones, but it also “provides a granular view of the daily work of 20th-century book publishing,” as our reviewer, Martha Southgate, noted. Read our review.
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