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.
Humorous essays
The Land and Its People
by David Sedaris
In his newest collection, Sedaris takes on the indignities and freedoms of aging — from competitive infirmity to care taking to underpants — with his characteristic élan. You’ll find familiar faces and Sedaris’s trademark off-kilter humor, as well as a poignant tenderness. Roddy Doyle, who reviewed the book for us, wrote that he loves Sedaris’s work because “he knits the present to the past so that they become the same thing; for him being alive has always been strange and atrocious, contradictory, unfair and hilarious.” Read our review.
Cultural history
The Danger to Be Sane
by Rosa Montero; translated by Lindsey Ford
In this moving and idiosyncratic book, Montero explores the links between art and mental stability. Combining literary theory, history and first-person essay, she asks why so many artists aren’t “normal” — and whether that’s a bad thing. Read our review.
romance
By the Bootstraps
by Alexa Martin
After her mother dies, Luna Starr impulsively buys a house sight unseen in a small Texas town named Celestial, where she meets a hot cowboy and his hot twin brother at the ranch next door. All thrilling enough, until her feelings for one brother start to deepen and her old insecurities about being too needy come into play. Martin writes characters who feel like your lifelong friends as soon as they show up; this book is as bouncy and sugary and hopeful as birthday cake. Read our review.
BEACH READ
June Baby
by Shannon Garvey
A grieving 17-year-old is dispatched to Block Island to work for a mysterious Annie Leibovitz-like photographer and promptly falls in love with her nephew. That’s the setup of Garvey’s debut novel, an old-fashioned love letter to summer romance, sun-fueled creativity and long rides on rusty bikes (the only kind to have at the beach). Read our review.
Marilyn and Her Books
by Gail Crowther
Crowther attempts to debunk Marilyn Monroe’s dumb-blonde reputation by way of her private library: The star owned over 400 books ranging from “The Little Engine That Could,” by Watty Piper (possibly bearing her juvenile scrawl), to “Look Homeward, Angel” and other works by Thomas Wolfe, to Russian literature. (She hoped to play Grushenka in a movie version of “The Brothers Karamazov.”) Sensitive about not graduating from high school, Monroe studied world literature in an adult-extension program at U.C.L.A. “If you are ignorant, books won’t laugh at you,” she said poignantly. Read our review.
History
Stalin’s Apostles
by Antonia Senior
There seems to be an endless appetite for books about the Cambridge Five, the notorious double agents who passed British secrets to their Soviet handlers for nearly 20 years beginning in the 1930s. Unlike previous offerings, Senior’s book dwells less on why the traitors did what they did than on the hideous damage they inflicted, especially among the independence-minded people of Central and Eastern Europe who fell victim to Stalin’s expansionist ambitions, thanks in large part to intelligence provided by the group. Read our review.
FANTASY
The Midnight Train
by Matt Haig
The second installment in Haig’s Midnight World series centers on Wilbur, who boards a mystical train that takes him back in time to visit earlier chapters in his life. Our reviewer, Elisabeth Egan, wrote that “you’ll want to leave your skepticism and cynicism on the platform,” adding that if you loved “The Midnight Library,” you should climb aboard this one. “If not,” she added, “books are like trains. There’s another one every hour.” Read our review.
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