Every week, the 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.
culinary history
The Secret History of French Cooking
by Luke Barr
This is a tasty chronicle of the innovations, excesses and chauvinism of the French chefs who started a revolution in cooking in the 1970s, primarily Paul Bocuse. Calling the book “clear as consommé, punchy,” our critic Alexandra Jacobs noted, “Surprisingly, there has not been a big biography of Paul Bocuse, the first modern celebrity chef, who was so committed to the integrity of a signature Lyonnais poached chicken dish that he once smuggled pig bladders from France into the United States in his underwear.” Read our review.
dystopian fiction
The Natural Way of Things
by Charlotte Wood
The success of Wood’s last novel, “Stone Yard Devotional” — shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and one of the Book Review’s 10 best books of 2025 — likely has something to do with the reissue of “The Natural Way of Things.” First published in 2016, the novel, set at a brutal women’s prison in the Australian Outback, doesn’t always make for easy reading. But, our reviewer Leah Greenblatt wrote, “I would still invite you to throw yourself on this brier patch simply for the pleasure of Wood’s sentences, the rich and prickly wonder of her mind at work. She’s a rare kind of writer and a formidable one.” Read our review.
history
A Scandal in Königsberg
by Christopher Clark
In 1835, the Prussian city of Königsberg was roiled by a sex scandal, leading to criminal charges against two popular Lutheran preachers who were accused of starting a cult and promoting promiscuity and religious heresy. In this account of a moral panic with echoes of our day, Clark, a noted scholar of German history, pinpoints the factors that fed public outrage and the authorities who manipulated it for political gain. Read our review.
science
Salt Lakes
by Caroline Tracey
Tracey ventures across continents and millenniums to study the history, geology and future of an incredible natural phenomenon: salt lakes, nearly all of which are in danger of disappearing. From the Aral Sea to the Great Salt Lake in Utah, she takes the reader on a personal and geographical tour of some of the most uncanny and unknown parts of our world. Read our review.
History
Stay Alive
by Ian Buruma
How do people survive under authoritarianism? That’s the question that haunts this human-scale chronicle of Berlin during the Third Reich. Through letters, journals and memoirs, Buruma paints the portraits of everyday Berliners who did their best to keep their heads down, conform or compromise when the Nazis took over and dictatorship turned to war and genocide. Read our review.
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