Fiction | Nonfiction
Each January, the editors and critics at the Book Review begin sifting through thousands of new books.
By February, we’re meeting regularly to debate and discuss the standouts. All of us are passionate readers, but our tastes don’t necessarily overlap, so the conversations are lively! By September, we’re winnowing down our big list of contenders to arrive at 100 Notables. A hundred may seem like a lot of books, but not to us — we all have favorites that didn’t make the final cut.
As you browse, you can save the books you’ve read or want to read. By the time you reach the end, you’ll have a personalized reading list to share.
Fiction
World War I horror
ANGEL DOWN, by Daniel Kraus. In France, during World War I, five American soldiers are sent on a mission into No Man’s Land to investigate the source of a mysterious shriek. But rather than finding a wounded comrade, they discover a literal fallen angel. The book bristles with visceral brutality and surprising tenderness, all captured in one breathless sentence.
For fans of “The Winter Soldier,” by Daniel Mason; and “Regeneration,” by Pat Barker
Romance
AUGUST LANE, by Regina Black. The story of August and Luke, high school sweethearts and country music collaborators picking up the pieces after a decade of heartbreak, is unapologetically dark yet passionate. “This is not the aw-shucks kind of country,” our romance columnist Olivia Waite wrote. “It’s the murder ballads, the rolling thunder, the long black road.”
For fans of “Seven Days in June,” by Tia Williams; “Sounds Like Love,” by Ashley Poston; and “Anywhere With You,” by Ellie Palmer
Horror
BAT EATER AND OTHER NAMES FOR CORA ZENG, by Kylie Lee Baker. It’s the early days of the Covid pandemic in New York City, and Cora, shellshocked by her sister’s death, has taken work cleaning up gruesome crime scenes. Soon, strange patterns emerge at home and on the job, and the novel becomes an ingenious mash-up of surreal folklore horror, sly buddy comedy and painfully timely social commentary.
For fans of “Bliss Montage,” by Ling Ma
Historical Fiction
BUCKEYE, by Patrick Ryan. The old-fashioned sweep of Ryan’s doorstop novel, about two complicated families in small-town Ohio that intersect across the mid-20th century, feels intrinsically American in the way of a Thornton Wilder play or an Andrew Wyeth painting.
For fans of “Plainsong,” by Kent Haruf; and “We Were the Mulvaneys,” by Joyce Carol Oates
HISTORICAL Horror
THE BUFFALO HUNTER HUNTER, by Stephen Graham Jones. Jones’s past fiction has mashed up horror genres with pointed explorations of Native American experience, and his new novel follows suit — via a Blackfeet man who becomes a vampire.
For fans of “Fools Crow,” by James Welch; and “The Hunger,” by Alma Katsu
Fantasy
BURY OUR BONES IN THE MIDNIGHT SOIL, by V.E. Schwab. Schwab, best known for “The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue,” returns with a time-sweeping, character-juggling, lesbian vampire mystery that moves between 1532 Spain, 1827 London and 2019 Boston. “It goes down as easy as that happy-hour cocktail that, surprisingly, knocks you flat,” our reviewer wrote.
For fans of “Interview With the Vampire,” by Anne Rice; “The Familiar,” by Leigh Bardugo; and “Hungerstone,” by Kat Dunn
literary fiction
THE COLONY, by Annika Norlin. In a bucolic forest in Sweden, a small band of misfits forms a mysterious commune that may be a utopia or may be a nightmare, depending on your perspective. The story, seamlessly translated by Alice E. Olsson, raises open-ended questions about the boundaries between the individual and the greater good.
For fans of “Birnam Wood,” by Eleanor Catton; “Arcadia,” by Lauren Groff; and “The Fell,” by Sarah Moss
thriller
DEATH TAKES ME, by Cristina Rivera Garza. This novel, translated by Robin Myers and Sarah Booker, is a detective story with some of the standard fare of the mystery: bodies, clues, suspects. But it adds a feminist twist and a winking overlay of literary analysis to the gruesome killing spree at its center.
For fans of “The Trees,” by Percival Everett; “The Savage Detectives,” by Roberto Bolaño; and “Hurricane Season,” by Fernanda Melchor
Literary Fiction
THE DIRECTOR, by Daniel Kehlmann. Movie stars and Nazis are irresistible ingredients in any book. Kehlmann’s smartly entertaining new novel about the great Austrian filmmaker G.W. Pabst offers both, detailing their intimate, often symbiotic ties. “The Director” is a marvelous performance — not only supple, horrifying and mordantly droll, but fluidly translated by Ross Benjamin and absolutely convincing.
For fans of “Mercury Pictures Presents,” by Anthony Marra; and “A Gentleman in Moscow,” by Amor Towles
Thriller
THE DOORMAN, by Chris Pavone. While a mystery hums beneath the New York narrative — we know from the early pages that somebody won’t make it out alive — “The Doorman” is better read as a state-of-the-city novel, a kaleidoscopic portrait of the city at a singularly strange moment.
For fans of “City on Fire,” by Garth Risk Hallberg; “Age of Vice,” by Deepti Kapoor; and “Harlem Shuffle,” by Colson Whitehead
LITERARY FICTION
THE FEELING OF IRON, by Giaime Alonge. This stunning novel follows two Holocaust survivors on a quest for revenge over decades and continents. “In its scope and beauty, ‘The Feeling of Iron’ recalls great 19th-century novels,” our reviewer wrote. “Clarissa Botsford’s translation is precise and eloquent, never splashy. Every line is a jewel.”
For fans of “Vengeance,” by George Jonas; “The Lock-Up,” by John Banville; and “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy,” by John le Carré
Literary fiction
FLESH, by David Szalay. A lonely young man, Istvan, grows up in a Hungarian housing project and gets swept along on a journey to the upper echelons of British society. Szalay lets us feel Istvan’s longing for meaning, for experience, for belonging, as he moves from humble beginnings to heady heights and back again.
For fans of “Munich Airport,” by Greg Baxter; and “American Psycho,” by Bret Easton Ellis
Romance
A GENTLEMAN’S GENTLEMAN, by TJ Alexander. In order to keep his large fortune, the nobleman Christopher Winterthrope must find himself a wife. The complication? He is trans, something he has kept secret from London society. This is a tender confection of a book, full of witty blundering and rich emotional payoffs.
For fans of “A Shore Thing,” by Joanna Lowell; “A Marvellous Light,” by Freya Marske; and “The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue,” by Mackenzi Lee
Thriller
THE GOOD LIAR, by Denise Mina. Mina threads questions of class, privilege and establishment conspiracy into a riveting tale that travels down many unexpected paths. It opens as the distinguished forensic scientist Claudia O’Sheil delivers a speech about an infamous double murder she helped solve. She was “going to tell the truth,” Mina writes. “It would ruin her life but she had to do it.”
For fans of “Mrs. March,” by Virginia Feito; and “I Eat Men Like Air,” by Alice Berman
Literary fiction
A GUARDIAN AND A THIEF, by Megha Majumdar. Set in near-future Kolkata, Majumdar’s new novel follows Boomba, a thief desperate to help his family, and Ma, who is set to join her husband in the United States on a “climate visa” until she discovers her travel documents have been stolen. Majumdar creates a deeply compassionate portrait of desperation, fear and the combined selflessness and selfishness of parenthood.
For fans of “Theft,” by Abdulrazak Gurnah; “Land of Milk and Honey,” by C Pam Zhang; and “The White Tiger,” by Aravind Adiga
Literary fiction
HEART THE LOVER, by Lily King. The reverberations of a college love triangle ripple through King’s new novel, which features a sharply observant aspiring female writer and the pair of male best friends she meets in her 17th-century lit class who nickname her Jordan — after “The Great Gatsby”’s Jordan Baker — and vie for her affection while struggling to preserve their loyalty to each other.
For fans of “The Sense of an Ending,” by Julian Barnes; “The Marriage Plot,” by Jeffrey Eugenides; and “The Transit of Venus,” by Shirley Hazzard
appalachian trail thriller
HEARTWOOD, by Amity Gaige. When an experienced hiker named Valerie goes missing on the Appalachian Trail, two other women — a veteran game warden and a lonely but lively former scientist stuck in a retirement community — must crack the case. “Heartwood” absorbs the reader in the subculture and shorthand of the trail, exploring the thorny tangles of motherhood and daughterhood.
For fans of “Wild,” by Cheryl Strayed; “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek,” by Annie Dillard; and “The Vaster Wilds,” by Lauren Groff
LEGAL THRILLER
HOLLOW SPACES, by Victor Suthammanont. Thirty years after John Lo, the lone Asian American partner at his Manhattan firm, was acquitted of his girlfriend’s murder, his children — a litigator and a war correspondent — decide to investigate the crime once and for all. Sarah Weinman, our crime fiction columnist, wrote that Suthammanont unspools the tale with “gorgeous precision.”
For fans of “The Substitution Order,” by Martin Clark; and “The Lincoln Lawyer,” by Michael Connelly
Historical Fiction
THE HOUNDING, by Xenobe Purvis. In 1700s England, the town of Little Nettlebed is scandalized by a rumor that the five Mansfield sisters, already considered odd and aloof, are transforming into a pack of dogs at night. Purvis’s debut is a wildly inventive riff on the Gothic form, with enough suspense and mounting dread to rival Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery.”
For fans of “The Virgin Suicides,” by Jeffrey Eugenides; and “Lapvona,” by Ottessa Moshfegh
CIVIL WAR 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. “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,” our reviewer wrote.
For fans of “James,” by Percival Everett; “CivilWarLand in Bad Decline,” by George Saunders; and “Friday Black,” by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
Historical fiction
ISOLA, by Allegra Goodman. Based on an actual historical incident, Goodman’s novel traces the fate of a 16th-century French noblewoman, Marguerite de la Rocque de Roberval, who loved the wrong man and was consequently marooned with him on an unforgiving island in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Marguerite recounts her travails in an even, cordial tone, imposing order on a life she did not design.
For fans of “The Mercies,” by Kiran Millwood Hargrave; and “The Essex Serpent,” by Sarah Perry
FANTASY
KATABASIS, by R.F. Kuang. In this weird, bold novel, which shines with devastatingly real characters and absorbing world building, two rival graduate students at Cambridge form an unsteady alliance to rescue their esteemed Magick professor Jacob Grimes, who happens to be in hell. For one of them, Alice, the journey through the underworld serves as a perfect reflection of her journey through school: It’s destroying her, but with so much already given up, how can she possibly stop?
For fans of “Ninth House,” by Leigh Bardugo; “A Deadly Education,” by Naomi Novik; and “The Secret History,” by Donna Tartt
psychological thriller
KILLING STELLA, by Marlen Haushofer. In this short, searing novel, first published in Austria in 1958, and now translated into English by Shaun Whiteside, a woman nervously recounts how a teenager named Stella came to live with her family and wound up meeting a tragic end. There is plenty of blame to go around, it turns out, and this would-be whodunit quickly shifts into a brilliant study of domestic strain, complicity and guilt.
For fans of “Good Morning, Midnight,” by Jean Rhys; and “I Am the Brother of XX,” by Fleur Jaeggy
Horror/fantasy
KING SORROW, by Joe Hill. In this glorious, wild ride of a novel — Hill’s first in almost a decade — a college student named Arthur has been blackmailed by two drug dealers into stealing valuable books from the library where he works. He and his friends jokingly decide to summon a dragon who not only turns out to be real, but who also promises to devour Arthur’s tormentors. But this dragon is not a tool: It demands a sacrifice every year, or else.
For fans of “Floating Dragon,” by Peter Straub; and “It,” by Stephen King
Literary fiction
THE LONELINESS OF SONIA AND SUNNY, by Kiran Desai. In this rich, bustling, old-fashioned epic, a young couple pushed toward marriage by their Indian families embark on what Desai has called “an endlessly unresolved romance,” navigating competing forces of tradition and modernity, love and duty, East and West.
For fans of “Pachinko,” by Min Jin Lee; “The Covenant of Water,” by Abraham Verghese; and “The Namesake,” by Jhumpa Lahiri
coming-of-age story
LONELY CROWDS, by Stephanie Wambugu. Ruth is 9 when she meets Maria, the only other Black girl at their Catholic school, and is instantly mesmerized by her new friend. The novel traces the intense bond between two young women as they come of age, first amid the confines of their New England upbringing and then as artists in 1990s New York City.
For fans of “My Brilliant Friend,” by Elena Ferrante; “Cat’s Eye,” by Margaret Atwood; and “Sula,” by Toni Morrison
MARRIAGE DRAMA
MAGGIE; OR, A MAN AND A WOMAN WALK INTO A BAR, by Katie Yee. Yee’s delightful and quirky novel takes place during a pause — between divorce and marriage, sickness and health, the unknown and the status quo. The titular visit to a bar turns out not to be a setup for a joke, but a husband’s admission to his wife that he’s leaving her. Then our narrator — the soon-to-be-ex-wife — learns that she has cancer. She navigates both upheavals with dry humor, even finding it in her heart to write a most unexpected “Guide to My Husband: A User’s Manual.”
For fans of “Fleishman Is in Trouble,” by Taffy Brodesser-Akner; “Loved One,” by Aisha Muharrar; and “Joan Is Okay,” by Weike Wang
Poetry
NIGHT WATCH, by Kevin Young. This exacting new collection by the prolific poet and essayist takes as one of its central themes the ability of artists to recast history, making an implicit case that the poet’s job is to strip away layers of distortion to reveal and elevate narratives that have been hidden, ignored or erased. “Night Watch” continues one of the most vital currents in contemporary poetry, transforming history’s silences into lyric through the poet’s eloquent invitation: “O wounded soul,/speak.”
For fans of “Best Barbarian,” by Roger Reeves; “Voyage of the Sable Venus,” by Robin Coste Lewis; and “Olio,” by Tyehimba Jess
Literary fiction
ON THE CALCULATION OF VOLUME: Book III, by Solvej Balle. This third volume of seven, translated by Sophia Hersi Smith and Jennifer Russell, is a meditation on time that takes place on an endless Nov. 18, giving the time-loop narrative new and stunning proportions.
For fans of “Ongoingness,” by Sarah Manguso; and “No One Is Talking About This,” by Patricia Lockwood
literary fiction
PERFECTION, by Vincenzo Latronico. Anna and Tom, the “creative professionals” at the center of Latronico’s trenchant novel, move to a flat in Berlin’s hippest neighborhood sometime during Angela Merkel’s second term, when the city became the de facto capital of Europe. As a portrait of the cool kids who flocked to Berlin in that period, the book — beautifully translated by Sophie Hughes — amounts to a biting and incisive satire of the expat scene.
For fans of “Prague,” by Arthur Phillips; and “Fake Accounts,” by Lauren Oyler
Coming-of-age novel
PLAYWORLD, by Adam Ross. Ross’s semi-autobiographical second novel, set in New York City in the early 1980s, follows the travails of a successful child actor caught in the throes of a complicated relationship with a married woman. The novel is detailed, digressive, densely populated and capable of tracking the most minute shifts in emotional weather.
For fans of “Reboot,” by Justin Taylor; and “The Love Song of Jonny Valentine,” by Teddy Wayne
Historical fiction
THE RAREST FRUIT, by Gaëlle Bélem. The island of Réunion, a French territory off the east coast of Africa, is known for its vanilla. Less well known is the extraordinary story of Edmond Albius, an enslaved boy who, in 1841, figured out how to hand-pollinate vanilla orchids, allowing the wider world to experience the flavor. Bélem’s gorgeous novel, translated by Hildegarde Serle, tells his story.
For fans of “Telex From Cuba,” by Rachel Kushner; and “The Signature of All Things,” by Elizabeth Gilbert
Historical Fiction
THE REMEMBERED SOLDIER, by Anjet Daanje. In this provocatively labyrinthine novel, translated by David McKay, a Dutch soldier — an amnesiac veteran of World War I — is living in an asylum when he is released to a strange woman claiming to be his wife. Our historical fiction columnist Alida Becker, wrote, “As interludes of unexpected contentment yield to frightening blackouts, his mental lapses become increasingly frequent, haunted by glimpses of other people and places.”
For fans of “The English Patient,” by Michael Ondaatje; and “A Month in the Country,” by J.L. Carr
LITERARY FICTION
SHADOW TICKET, by Thomas Pynchon. Pynchon’s first novel in a dozen years grabs you by the collar the way a mob enforcer might to refresh your memory. Remember his genre parodies, his outrageous names, his ornate zingers, his lollygagging but frequently hilarious descriptions? It’s all here in this supercharged noir — a Chandleresque, Depression-era yarn involving a missing heiress and a disaster-prone private eye.
For fans of “The Savage Detectives,” by Roberto Bolaño; and “The Big Sleep,” by Raymond Chandler
ROMANTASY
SILVER ELITE, by Dani Francis. This dystopian twist on the romantasy novel follows Wren, a resistance fighter with secret psychic powers who is forced to join an elite military unit, where she is trained to hunt down people with abilities like hers. This series opener has all the heat and tension of Rebecca Yarros’s Empyrean series, but with “Hunger Games” vibes instead of dragons.
For fans of “Fourth Wing,” by Rebecca Yarros; “A Forbidden Alchemy,” by Stacey McEwan; and “Legend,” by Marie Lu
Literary fiction
THE SISTERS, by Jonas Hassen Khemiri. This big, impressive novel revolves around a trio of magnetic Swedish women — the Mikkola sisters, daughters of an eccentric Tunisian mother. As they crisscross the world from Stockholm to Tunis to New York, their lives are recounted by their childhood acquaintance Jonas, who bears a striking resemblance to the book’s author.
For fans of “Beautiful World, Where Are You,” by Sally Rooney; and “The Alternatives,” by Caoilinn Hughes
Literary fiction
THE SLIP, by Lucas Schaefer. After arriving in Austin in the summer of 1998, the troubled teenage boy at the center of Schaefer’s impressive debut connects with a swaggering Haitian boxer, falls for a Russian phone sex operator (or so he thinks) and then vanishes forever. A decade later, new clues emerge in the mystery of his disappearance, involving colorful characters and a wild plot that twists and swings like a welterweight.
For fans of “The Nix,” by Nathan Hill
literary fiction
THE SOUTH, by Tash Aw. Set over the course of one languid summer, this sensual, psychologically rich novel follows the intertwining dramas of a Malaysian family grappling with expectations and personal secrets at their remote, run-down farm. At the center of the story is Jay, the family’s young, queer son, who finds himself developing a tense friendship/possible romance with the farm manager’s rebellious son.
For fans of “The Line of Beauty,” by Alan Hollinghurst; and “The God of Small Things,” by Arundhati Roy
poetry
STARTLEMENT, by Ada Limón. Limón just ended two terms as the United States poet laureate, on top of a heaping pile of other accolades she has earned throughout her career. This volume of new and selected poems shows why: With a voice that is charming and warmly personal, Limón offers work across a gratifying variety of forms and pays scrupulous attention to her readers. Her best poems are garrulous, funny and heart-on-sleeve even when being a little wicked.
For fans of “The Simple Truth,” by Philip Levine; “What the Living Do,” by Marie Howe; and “If You Have to Go,” by Katie Ford
Literary fiction
STONE YARD DEVOTIONAL, by Charlotte Wood. This somber, exquisite novel centers on a 60-something wildlife conservationist who leaves behind her husband and career to live in a convent near her rural Australian hometown. Despite a series of disrupting incidents — including a plague of mice — the narrator finds in this retreat the time and space to ruminate on forgiveness, regret and how to live and die, if not virtuously, then as harmlessly as possible.
For fans of “The Corner That Held Them,” by Sylvia Townsend Warner; and “Women Talking,” by Miriam Toews
DYSTOPIAN FANTASY
SUNRISE ON THE REAPING, by Suzanne Collins. Collins returns to the world of “The Hunger Games” with this brutal and heart-wrenching prequel about Haymitch Abernathy — the jaded but fiercely devoted mentor who coached the teenage revolutionary Katniss Everdeen in the original trilogy — and his experience at the 50th Games. In expanding Haymitch’s story, Collins paints a shrewd portrait of the machinery of propaganda and how authoritarianism takes root.
For fans of “Chain Gang All-Stars,” by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah; “Red Rising,” by Pierce Brown; and “The World Gives Way,” by Marissa Levien
INHERITANCE DRAMA
THESE SUMMER STORMS, by Sarah MacLean. Alice Storm has been estranged from her family for five years, but she reluctantly returns to their Rhode Island estate after the accidental death of her billionaire father. What begins as a funeral morphs into a “Westing Game”-esque series of challenges stipulated in her father’s will — and administered by his attractive, enigmatic aide — that dredge up old secrets in this swoony page turner.
For fans of “One Golden Summer,” by Carley Fortune; “Swept Away,” by Beth O’Leary; and “Commonwealth,” by Ann Patchett
long-lost classic
TO SMITHEREENS, by Rosalyn Drexler. Originally published in 1972, Drexler’s brilliantly offbeat novel depicts two seemingly unrelated subcultures in the New York City of that era — the art world and women’s wrestling — by way of a self-serious art writer and the young woman he encourages to take up professional wrestling. “To Smithereens” is at its heart about relationships, and the conflict and contact that is their lifeblood, or their ruin.
For fans of “Headshot,” by Rita Bullwinkel
LITERARY FICTION
THE TOKYO SUITE, by Giovana Madalosso. A nanny goes on the run with someone else’s daughter in this tense Brazilian novel, translated by Bruna Dantas Lobato, which explores the country’s contemporary class divisions via the twinned stories of a high-powered TV executive and the desperate caretaker of her child.
For fans of “Clean,” by Alia Trabucco Zerán; “Tell,” by Jonathan Buckley; and “Milk Fed,” by Melissa Broder
DAZZLINGLY weird fiction
TRIP, by Amie Barrodale. This transcendent and dazzlingly weird first novel is about a mother and son adrift — in the afterlife and in the South Atlantic, respectively. (She dies in Nepal at a conference about death; he’s 15 and autistic, and stranded on a sailboat as a hurricane bears down.) Their relationship forms the emotional core of the book, a steadying source of clarity amid the wilder details.
For fans of “Nightbitch,” by Rachel Yoder; and “All Fours,” by Miranda July
HISTORICAL thriller
VENETIAN VESPERS, by John Banville. Set in Venice in the winter of 1900, this is a British striver’s account of his ill-fated marriage to an American heiress, who vanishes from their rented palazzo. The novel bristles with dramatic fodder: family tensions, a vast fortune, a devastatingly lovely expat accompanied by her insistently charming brother. But what emerges from the dark shadows of the plot is an even darker psychological portrait of a man forced to grapple with his inner demons.
For fans of “Palace of the Drowned,” by Christine Mangan; and “Alibi,” by Joseph Kanon
historical horror
VICTORIAN PSYCHO, by Virginia Feito. Feito’s deliciously macabre novel, about a murderous 19th-century governess, announces its narrator’s grisly intentions from the start: “In three months everyone in this house will be dead,” she says a few pages in. Any attempt to justify the actions of a psychopath would be futile, but Feito does reveal that the young Winifred suffered willful neglect and harm — and that she has a specific score to settle.
For fans of “Affinity,” by Sarah Waters; “This House Is Haunted,” by John Boyne; and “The Delicate Dependency,” by Michael Talbot
Literary fiction
WE DO NOT PART, by Han Kang. In the Nobel laureate’s shimmering new novel, translated by E. Yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris, an ailing writer revisits a violent chapter in South Korean history: Between 1947 and 1954 on Jeju, a subtropical island off the coast, at least 30,000 people were killed in mostly government-perpetrated atrocities. “For those of us struggling to grapple with the overwhelming flow of news about current conflicts in other countries,” our reviewer wrote, “‘We Do Not Part’ is a chilling reminder of the terrible invisibility of people and events that are removed from us in space and time.”
For fans of “Skull Water,” by Heinz Insu Fenkl
literary fiction
WHAT WE CAN KNOW, by Ian McEwan. In 2119, when a nuclear accident and climate change have reshaped society, a humanities professor becomes obsessed with a literary mystery: a famous poem — recited at a dinner party in 2014 — that has been lost. In a tale spanning multiple narrators and a full century, the professor chases down the poem’s origin, the dark secret that cast it into obscurity and the slippery nature of knowledge itself.
For fans of “Possession,” by A.S. Byatt; “Station Eleven,” by Emily St. John Mandel; and “Lives of the Wives,” by Carmela Ciuraru
Romance
A WITCH’S GUIDE TO MAGICAL INNKEEPING, by Sangu Mandanna. Sera Swan was once the most formidable magical prodigy in Britain — until she drained her powers resurrecting her great-aunt. Fifteen years later, she discovers an old spell that could restore her power, and enlists a handsome magical historian to help her crack it. This cozy paranormal romance features a charming cast of supporting characters, with a dose of magical intrigue and plenty of swoon.
For fans of “The Spellshop,” by Sarah Beth Durst; “The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy,” by Megan Bannen; and “The House in the Cerulean Sea,” by TJ Klune
Nonfiction
politics
ABUNDANCE, by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson. “Each individual decision is rational,” Klein and Thompson write about government regulation. “The collective consequences are maddening.” In this polemic, the two journalists — Klein hosts a podcast for the The Times, and Thompson is a staff writer at The Atlantic — reimagine American liberalism away from bureaucratic red tape.
For fans of “Recoding America,” by Jennifer Pahlka; and “Why Nothing Works,” by Marc J. Dunkelman
philosophy
THE AGE OF CHOICE, by Sophia Rosenfeld. For centuries, when obedience was celebrated as the highest virtue, the right to choose for oneself in virtually all the key aspects of life would have seemed either absurd or wicked; only rebels questioned the strict authorities who led families, churches and states. Rosenfeld, a historian, offers a rich, compelling account of how the experience of choosing ceased to be the object of suspicion and condemnation and became instead the hallmark, at least in liberal, democratic societies, of any life worth living.
For fans of “Inventing Human Rights,” by Lynn Hunt; and “On Freedom,” by Maggie Nelson
food culture
ALL CONSUMING, by Ruby Tandoh. In these sparky, entertaining essays, Tandoh — the baking star turned firebrand food philosopher — examines our decadent, crispy, sticky, turmeric-dusted, thirst-trap recipe economy. “She wades through the chaotic food world of the 2020s armed with delightful snark and historical analysis in equal measure,” our reviewer wrote. “A romp, in short.”
For fans of “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” by Michael Pollan; “Home Cooking,” by Laurie Colwin; and “Fast Food Nation,” by Eric Schlosser
Tech
APPLE IN CHINA, by Patrick McGee. This smart and comprehensive account makes a devastatingly clear case that Apple’s decision under Tim Cook, the current C.E.O., to manufacture about 90 percent of its products in China has created an existential vulnerability not just for Apple, but for the United States — nurturing the conditions for Chinese technology to outpace American innovation.
For fans of “Chip War,” by Chris Miller; and “Red Carpet,” by Erich Schwartzel
Science
THE ARROGANT APE, by Christine Webb. Webb, a primatologist, belongs to a growing subfield of ecologists, naturalists and evolutionary biologists who posit that animals have minds and all that goes with them, including feelings, intentions, agency and consciousness. Her book argues against the pervasive belief in human exceptionalism and shows how data supporting the supposed chasm between human and animal intelligence has been systematically rigged in our favor.
For fans of “Mama’s Last Hug,” by Frans de Waal; and “An Immense World,” by Ed Yong
Memoir
AWAKE, by Jen Hatmaker. She was a queen bee in the world of online evangelicals — a writer, podcaster and pastor’s wife happily raising five children and tending to a thriving media career. Then Hatmaker turned over in bed one night in July 2020 after hearing her husband voice-texting “I can’t quit you” to another woman, and watched her world fall apart. This nervy, lucent memoir traces her life after that very public split.
For fans of “Educated,” by Tara Westover; “Tiny Beautiful Things,” by Cheryl Strayed; and “Untamed,” by Glennon Doyle
biography
BALDWIN, by Nicholas Boggs. In this tender new biography, Boggs goes far beyond other scholars in tracing how James Baldwin’s relationships affected his work. Charles Blow, who reviewed the book for us, called it “stunning,” writing that “the reader is immersed in the man of Baldwin, the chaos and the preternatural talent, the tragedy and the aching heart.”
For fans of “Talking at the Gates,” by James Campbell; “The Art of Burning Bridges,” by Geoffrey Wolff; and “Beautiful Shadow,” by Andrew Wilson
current events
BEING JEWISH AFTER THE DESTRUCTION OF GAZA, by Peter Beinart. For years, Beinart has been one of the most influential Jewish voices for Palestine, even as he continues to attend a predominantly Zionist Orthodox synagogue. In this calm and concise exploration of Israeli politics and Jewish tradition, he addresses a progressive friend with whom he fell out after Oct. 7 in the hopes of finding a space where productive debates can continue.
For fans of “The Question of Palestine,” by Edward Said; and “1949,” by Tom Segev
History
BLACK MOSES, by Caleb Gayle. A contributing writer for The Times Magazine revisits the gripping story of Edward McCabe — a businessman, politician and big-dream idealist who, in the wake of the Civil War and the disappointments of Reconstruction, tried to create an all-Black state in the newly opened territory of Oklahoma.
For fans of “The Black Utopians,” by Aaron Robertson; “The Ground Breaking,” by Scott Ellsworth; and “Soul City,” by Thomas Healy
memoir
BOOK OF LIVES, by Margaret Atwood. From the Quebec wilderness to the peaks of literary fame, Atwood has put her imagination and keen observation to work in ways that have changed the culture. The author of “The Handmaid’s Tale” and “The Blind Assassin” here turns the lens on herself, in a “memoir of sorts” that tracks both the profound experiences and the lighter moments that have informed her writing.
For fans of “Lit,” by Mary Karr; “Giving Up the Ghost,” by Hilary Mantel; and “Joyride,” by Susan Orlean
History
BORN IN FLAMES, by Bench Ansfield. This elegant book dismantles conventional wisdom regarding the fires that ravaged the Bronx and other communities of color in the 1970s. Ansfield shows that most of these fires, which have always been blamed on tenants, were in fact set by landlords; racist housing and insurance practices made it more profitable to burn buildings than to rent them.
For fans of “The Color of Law,” by Richard Rothstein; and “High-Risers,” by Ben Austen
Memoir
THE BROKEN KING, by Michael Thomas. In his bracing new memoir, Thomas considers the lives of several men in his family as well as his own battles with trauma and mental illness. He covers a range of Black experience in America, from the successes and failures of his absentee father to the criminal history of his brother and the relatively privileged upbringings of his two sons. Thomas Chatterton Williams, who reviewed it for us, wrote that “Thomas has rendered beautifully an excruciating existence from which it is impossible to turn away.”
For fans of “The Beautiful Struggle,” by Ta-Nehisi Coates; “Now Beacon, Now Sea,” by Christopher Sorrentino; and “Darkness Visible,” by William Styron
Biography
BUCKLEY, by Sam Tanenhaus. William F. Buckley — the aristocratic founder of the conservative magazine National Review — emerges from this exhaustive, immersive portrait by a former editor of the Book Review as the right’s “first intellectual entertainer,” an unabashed activist who intuitively the power of attention.
For fans of “Reagan,” by Max Boot; and “Nixonland,” by Rick Perlstein
SCIENCE
THE CALL OF THE HONEYGUIDE, by Rob Dunn. There was a time when humans and animals cooperated: symbiotic relationships that the science writer Rob Dunn terms “mutualisms.” Orcas hunted with the Indigenous Australian Thaua people; the Incan empire relied on shore birds to fertilize crops. Dunn draws on ancient human history, sociology, ecology and evolutionary biology to make a lively and unusually optimistic case for a return to living in harmony with nature.
For fans of “The Serviceberry,” by Robin Wall Kimmerer; and “The Hidden Life of Trees,” by Peter Wohlleben
ECONOMICS
CAPITALISM, by Sven Beckert. Ranging across centuries and continents, Beckert’s monumental history traces the life of the global economic system to its uncertain beginnings, finding not just one cradle of capitalism, but many.
For fans of “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” by Thomas Piketty; “Hayek’s Bastards,” by Quinn Slobodian; and “Born in Blackness,” by Howard W. French
Memoir and tech exposé
CARELESS PEOPLE, by Sarah Wynn-Williams. For seven years, beginning in 2011, Wynn-Williams worked at Facebook, eventually as a director of global public policy. In this insider account, she says the company was run by self-absorbed leaders who chafed at the burdens of responsibility and grew increasingly feckless, even as Facebook became a vector for disinformation and cozied up to authoritarian regimes.
For fans of “Burn Book,” by Kara Swisher; and “Broken Code,” by Jeff Horwitz
biography
CLAIRE McCARDELL, by Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson. The designer Claire McCardell is often credited as the inventor of American sportswear — wrap dresses, pocketed skirts, zippers women could do up themselves. In the hands of Dickinson, her life represents the fight for women’s identity and, incidentally, the birth of an American industry.
For fans of “Pockets,” by Hannah Carlson; and “When Women Ran Fifth Avenue,” by Julie Satow
history
THE CONTAINMENT, by Michelle Adams. In this powerful new book Adams, a law professor at the University of Michigan, recounts the failed effort to integrate Detroit’s schools through sweeping regional busing rules in the 1970s, struck down by the Supreme Court, and examines the case’s ongoing relevance.
For fans of “Unexampled Courage,” by Richard Gergel; and “Simple Justice,” by Richard Kluger
biographY
CRUMB, by Dan Nadel. R. Crumb’s underground comics, as exemplified by characters like Fritz the Cat, Mr. Natural and the big-footed amblers from the “Keep On Truckin’” cartoon, were instrumental in shaping the counterculture of the 1960s and beyond: His Zap Comix, not for kids, read like a stoner version of the Sunday funnies. Nadel’s sleek and judicious new book is an ideal, definitive biography of a fascinating and complicated figure.
For fans of “Just Kids,” by Patti Smith; “Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?,” by Roz Chast; and “Fun Home,” by Alison Bechdel
literary history
DARK RENAISSANCE, by Stephen Greenblatt. Quick, name the playwright who sparked the English Renaissance. Hint: It wasn’t Shakespeare. In this thrilling and twisty tale, Greenblatt — the Pulitzer-winning Harvard scholar known for bringing 16th-century England to life — turns his attention to Christopher Marlowe, the shoemaker’s son who secured his fame with notoriously provocative plays like “Tamburlaine the Great” and “Doctor Faustus.” With a denouement as propulsive as that of any spy novel, Greenblatt’s terrific book brilliantly captures the horror and the possibilities of that lost world.
For fans of “The Waiting Game,” by Nicola Clark; “Wolf Hall,” by Hilary Mantel; and “Hamnet,” by Maggie O’Farrell
separated at birth
DAUGHTERS OF THE BAMBOO GROVE, by Barbara Demick. Demick traces the divergent paths of a pair of twin girls born in China under the one-child rule. Their parents sent one of the babies to live with relatives, hoping she’d evade the scrutiny of authorities. Instead, she was kidnapped by a “family planning” agency and adopted by Americans who were unaware of her origins. Reported over many years, their story delivers an emotional wallop.
For fans of “Age of Ambition,” by Evan Osnos; and “Wild Swans,” by Jung Chang
Tech
EMPIRE OF AI, by Karen Hao. This portrait of Sam Altman, the tech mogul who helped make ChatGPT, dives deep into his company, OpenAI, but it also ranges well beyond the Bay Area with extensive fieldwork in Kenya, Colombia and Chile, where poorly paid workers filter violence and hate speech and data centers siphon prodigious amounts of water to run complex hardware.
For fans of “The Master Switch,” by Tim Wu; and “The Contrarian,” by Max Chafkin
sports
EVERY DAY IS SUNDAY, by Ken Belson. Pro football is always in the news and never out of season. According to the New York Times reporter Ken Belson, the credit belongs to a group of N.F.L. executives and team owners who turned a moribund game into a high-scoring carnival of acrobatic skill and controlled violence perfectly suited to a media revolution starved for new content. It includes three men still calling the shots: Roger Goodell, Robert Kraft and Jerry Jones.
For fans of “It’s Better to Be Feared,” by Seth Wickersham
revolutionary war History
THE FATE OF THE DAY, by Rick Atkinson. There is no better writer of narrative history than the Pulitzer Prize-winning Atkinson, who is able to transport readers to a different time and place without minimizing the differences of the past from the present. This book — the second in his planned trilogy about the American Revolution — offers an exceptional chronicle of the middle years of that multifront war. It is so compulsively readable that despite its length — around 800 pages — it’s difficult to put down.
For fans of “Wilderness at Dawn,” by Ted Morgan; “1776,” by David McCullough; and “Alexander Hamilton,” by Ron Chernow
history
A FLOWER TRAVELED IN MY BLOOD, by Haley Cohen Gilliland. Among the thousands of people “disappeared” by Argentina’s military dictatorship in the late 1970s and early ’80s were hundreds of pregnant women who were killed as soon as they gave birth, their babies distributed to military officials. In this gutting history, Gilliland retraces the lives of these women and their offspring through the stories of the determined Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo whose demand for information, and for their grandchildren, was unflagging.
For fans of “Some People Need Killing,” by Patricia Evangelista; “38 Londres Street,” by Philippe Sands; and “The Return,” by Hisham Matar
Cultural Criticism
GIRL ON GIRL, by Sophie Gilbert. Gilbert has compiled perhaps the first comprehensive examination of turn-of-the-millennium mainstream, cool-kid trends and ephemera, and how they were largely molded by those in power to sell the lie that self-objectification is empowerment.
For fans of “Toxic,” by Sarah Ditum; and “Liner Notes for the Revolution,” by Daphne A. Brooks
Big Apple History
THE GODS OF NEW YORK, by Jonathan Mahler. This rollicking chronicle of New York City at the end of the 1980s, by a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine, tells a story of near death and glamorous rebirth. Mahler captures a metropolis emerging from economic crisis to become the capital of global finance, while navigating AIDS, crack, homelessness, racial unrest and the power plays of larger-than-life characters like Ed Koch, Rudy Giuliani and Donald Trump.
For fans of “The Bonfire of the Vanities,” by Tom Wolfe; “Fear City,” by Kim Phillips-Fein; and “When the Clock Broke,” by John Ganz
memoir
I SEEK A KIND PERSON, by Julian Borger. He was a child when his father — an Austrian Jew who had fled to Wales in 1938, when he was 11 — died by suicide. Decades later, Borger discovered something startling: His father’s flight to freedom had been facilitated by a heartbreaking personal ad, one of dozens that frantic parents in Nazi Europe had placed to find foster homes for their children. In this haunting and revelatory book, Borger tells their stories alongside his own.
For fans of “Cold Crematorium,” by József Debreczeni; and “Noble Fragments,” by Michael Visontay
music history
JOHN & PAUL, by Ian Leslie. This tribute to John Lennon and Paul McCartney explores the way two extraordinarily gifted young men combined and exchanged their gifts while inspiring, challenging and learning from each other. Leslie, a British journalist, evokes the pair’s complex, remarkable dynamic in and out of the Beatles. It’s a book about soul, about grief and most of all about love.
For fans of “Positively 4th Street,” by David Hajdu; and “Revolution in the Head,” by Ian MacDonald
MIDDLE EAST History
KING OF KINGS, by Scott Anderson. In this authoritative retelling by Anderson, a veteran foreign correspondent, the 1979 Iranian Revolution, which replaced a secular, pro-Western shah with a radical Islamic cleric, became the instigating event in a seismic geopolitical realignment in the Middle East. The account is also a cautionary tale, offering a window onto gross foreign policy missteps on the part of the United States that continue to reverberate to this day.
For fans of “Black Wave,” by Kim Ghattas; “The Brothers,” by Stephen Kinzer; and “My Uncle Napoleon,” by Iraj Pezeshkzad
Sports
THE LAST MANAGER, by John W. Miller. This vivid biography captures the banty, blustering genius of Earl Weaver, who as the Baltimore Orioles manager was famous for his hot temper, theatrical antics and — not least — his impressively winning strategies.
For fans of “The New York Game,” by Kevin Baker; and “We Own This City,” by Justin Fenton
biography
MARK TWAIN, by Ron Chernow. Samuel Langhorne Clemens was a lot of things before he became the peerless writer known as Mark Twain: typesetter, riverboat pilot, journalist, Confederate militiaman, miner, businessman and more. Chernow’s voluminous biography presents Twain with all his complications and flaws.
For fans of “Hawthorne,” by Brenda Wineapple; and “The Saddest Words,” by Michael Gorra
shipwrecked! and married!
A MARRIAGE AT SEA, by Sophie Elmhirst. In 1972, a young British couple decided to ditch their jobs, sell their house and sail the world. All went well until a whale capsized their boat, at which point their story became one of miraculous survival and a relationship placed under unimaginable pressure. Elmhirst’s account is as much a meditation on intimacy as a remarkable adventure tale.
For fans of “Unbroken,” by Laura Hillenbrand; and “Sea Wife,” by Amity Gaige
memoir
MEMORIAL DAYS, by Geraldine Brooks. The Pulitzer-winning author of “Horse” and other novels here recalls her loving marriage to the journalist Tony Horwitz (himself a Pulitzer winner) and the stunned grief that led her to retreat to an island off Australia after his sudden death at age 60. Our critic Alexandra Jacobs called it “a modulated howl into the void.”
For fans of “In Love,” by Amy Bloom; “The Hero of This Book,” by Elizabeth McCracken; and “The Year of Magical Thinking,” by Joan Didion
history
MOTHER EMANUEL, by Kevin Sack. Written by a former reporter for The New York Times, this masterpiece of narrative nonfiction tells the story of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Church in Charleston, S.C., “the most historic Black church in the South’s most historic city,” now best known as the site of an egregious act of barbarism: the killing of nine congregants on June 17, 2015, by a white supremacist. Sack’s rich, captivating narrative features vivid prose, prodigious research and a palpable emotional engagement that is disciplined by a meticulous attention to the facts.
For fans of “Circle of Hope,” by Eliza Griswold; “Charlottesville,” by Deborah Baker; and “Grace Will Lead Us Home,” by Jennifer Berry Hawes
Russian history
MOTHERLAND, by Julia Ioffe. Ioffe comes from a long line of women professionals, including three generations of doctors, born in the Soviet Union, where working women — along with no-fault divorce, paid maternity leave and child support — were long the norm. Weaving family history into the larger story of the country’s groundbreaking “attempt to emancipate women and build a new Soviet person,” “Motherland” offers a fresh take on Russia’s turbulent 20th century.
For fans of “Secondhand Time,” by Svetlana Alexievich; and “Stalin’s Daughter,” by Rosemary Sullivan
Memoir
MOTHER MARY COMES TO ME, by Arundhati Roy. To the long roll call of difficult mothers in literature, add Mary Roy — Mrs. Roy to you, and, most tellingly, to her own daughter. That daughter is Arundhati Roy, who won a Booker Prize in 1997 for her first novel, “The God of Small Things,” and who uses this polished new memoir to recall the imperious and volatile woman who raised her.
For fans of “Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?,” by Jeanette Winterson; “The Book of Mother,” by Violaine Huisman; and “Pure Flame,” by Michelle Orange
Economic History
1929, by Andrew Ross Sorkin. For this novelistic account of the 1929 stock market crash, Sorkin — a New York Times reporter — combed through newspapers, archives, memoirs and other sources, including never-before-seen minutes of meetings at the Federal Reserve. His tightly focused portrait of history’s most spectacular financial collapse highlights the often tragic miscalculations of the bankers and politicians who were swept up in it.
For fans of “The Worst Hard Time,” by Timothy Egan; “The Forgotten Man,” by Amity Shlaes; and “Devil Take the Hindmost,” by Edward Chancellor
CURRENT EVENTS
ONE DAY, EVERYONE WILL HAVE ALWAYS BEEN AGAINST THIS, by Omar El Akkad. In this fiercely agonized book about Western responses to the devastation of Gaza, El Akkad is trying to get American readers to think of Palestinian victims not as “them” but as “us.” Part memoir and part polemic, his book is a distraught but eloquent cry against our tolerance for other people’s calamities.
For fans of “A Day in the Life of Abed Salama,” by Nathan Thrall; and “The Message,” by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Historical true crime
THE PEEPSHOW, by Kate Summerscale. This stranger-than-fiction case unpacks a series of sensational murders that rocked 1950s London after four bodies were discovered in a North Kensington apartment. When the public realized that two bodies had been found at the same address four years prior — and investigators unearthed the bones of more victims in the garden — the tabloids went wild. Summerscale, the multiple-award-winning author of five previous books, brings a novelist’s eye and a sociologist’s understanding to a trove of thrilling material.
For fans of “The Case of the Murderous Dr. Cream,” by Dean Jobb; “The Sinners All Bow,” by Kate Winkler Dawson; and “Story of a Murder,” by Hallie Rubenhold
BUNNY memoir
RAISING HARE, by Chloe Dalton. During the Covid pandemic, Dalton — a British writer and political adviser — stumbled across an abandoned newborn brown leveret, or hare, in the English countryside near her home and decided to raise it herself. Her sweetly meditative memoir, which includes illustrations, describes how her furry new housemate changed her outlook on life during the pandemic.
For fans of “H Is for Hawk,” by Helen Macdonald; and “Alfie and Me,” by Carl Safina
History
SHATTERED DREAMS, INFINITE HOPE, by Brandon M. Terry. The civil rights movement has been enshrined in American history as an exemplary model of transformative social action. Terry, a Harvard scholar, upends the conventional wisdom, rejecting both romanticized versions of the past and pessimistic accounts of the present to offer a nuanced theory of the movement — and of social movements in general — predicated on a rigorous philosophical vision of what he calls “tragic hope.”
For fans of “King,” by Jonathan Eig; and “America on Fire,” by Elizabeth Hinton
Memoir
THE SPINACH KING, by John Seabrook. This appealing memoir of family dysfunction is awash in liquor and leafy greens: The author, a longtime staff writer at The New Yorker, recounts how his grandfather turned a family spinach farm into an industrial behemoth, and exposes the greed and malfeasance behind the prosperous facade.
For fans of “Oh, the Glory of It All,” by Sean Wilsey; “The Beneficiary,” by Janny Scott; and “Mayhem,” by Sigrid Rausing
CURRENT EVENTS
THERE IS NO PLACE FOR US, by Brian Goldstone. Goldstone offers an immersive narrative of how five Atlanta families found themselves in the direst of straits: Working a lot and earning very little, they ended up sleeping in cars, crashing with relatives or paying for a squalid room in an extended-stay hotel, statistically invisible even as they suffered some of the most difficult years of their lives.
For fans of “Evicted,” by Matthew Desmond; “Maid,” by Stephanie Land; and “Invisible Child,” by Andrea Elliott
grief Memoir
THINGS IN NATURE MERELY GROW, by Yiyun Li. In her new book, Li offers an elegant, somewhat aloof rumination on the suicide of her son James at 19, in 2024 — six years after the suicide of his older brother, Vincent, then 16. This disturbing, inconsolable memoir is fiercely determined not to look away.
For fans of “Notes on Grief,” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie; and “Wave,” by Sonali Deraniyagala
Part memoir, part true crime
THE TRAGEDY OF TRUE CRIME, by John J. Lennon. Incarcerated at Sing Sing, where he is serving 28 years to life for murder, drug sales and gun possession, Lennon has built a distinguished career as a jailhouse journalist. In his first book, he unfolds his story while recounting those of fellow inmates and highlighting the myriad frustrations, dangers and absurdities of prison life.
For fans of “Solitary,” by Albert Woodfox; “American Prison,” by Shane Bauer; and “Correction,” by Ben Austen
History
WE THE PEOPLE, by Jill Lepore. Ever wondered why amending the U.S. Constitution is so hard? So have the thousands of people who have tried, and mostly failed, to change the document. Lepore, a Harvard historian and New Yorker staff writer, tells the story of the centuries-long fight to remake American law in colorful detail. It’s a warning against rigidity, and a prophecy for the future.
For fans of “The Gun, the Ship, and the Pen,” by Linda Colley; “Founding Partisans,” by H.W. Brands; and “America’s Unwritten Constitution,” by Akhil Reed Amar
GAY food culture
WHAT IS QUEER FOOD?, by John Birdsall. 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.
For fans of “Gay Bar,” by Jeremy Atherton Lin; “Provence, 1970,” by Luke Barr; and “Gay New York,” by George Chauncey
biography
WILD THING, by Sue Prideaux. Paul Gauguin’s boldly colored, formally inventive artwork inspired painters from van Gogh and Picasso to the German Expressionists. In this elegant biography, Prideaux draws on recently discovered source material to dispel myths about the Frenchman, whose life was as inventive as his art.
For fans of “The Art of Rivalry,” by Sebastian Smee; “Secrets of the Flesh,” by Judith Thurman; and “The Man in the Red Coat,” by Julian Barnes
History
THE ZORG, by Siddharth Kara. In 1781, the crew of a British slave ship decided to throw scores of enslaved sick people overboard to collect insurance premiums. The horrifying case captured international attention and, Kara argues, helped galvanize the abolition of the British slave trade. Our reviewer called this immersive, deeply researched history “a book of great importance and one that will likely become a classic.”
For fans of “The Slave Ship,” by Marcus Rediker; and “Swing Time,” by Zadie Smith
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