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.
science
A World Appears
by Michael Pollan
In his latest exploration of the human condition, Pollan turns his attention to the enduring mysteries of consciousness. What is it — and why does it exist? The book takes readers through neuroscience breakthroughs, ancient philosophy, art, music, psychedelics and poetry in a quest to discover whether to think is indeed to be, and how. Read our review.
family epic
A Far-Flung Life
M.L. Stedman
The beauty and breadth of the western Australian landscape stand in counterpoint to the horrors of the human lives playing out upon it in “A Far-Flung Life,” which makes the argument that a family is defined not by bloodline or by catastrophes but by the daily, dogged work of holding it together. Read our review.
Fashion history
Fashioning the Crown
by Justine Picardie
In this romp through British royal fashion and image-making between the Edwardian era and 1960, Picardie makes a compelling and well-researched case that the sartorial choices of kings and queens are central to the business of modern crownship, helping “balance the combination of remote majesty and human sympathy.” Read our review.
biography
Muv
by Rachel Trethewey
Trethewey, a British journalist, admits upfront to the challenges inherent in writing “Muv,” a biography of Sydney, Lady Redesdale, whose daughters, the six Mitford sisters, have been garnering headlines for nearly a century. What kind of mother nurtures and influences such astounding and diverse personalities? Read our review.
historical fiction
Field Notes From an Extinction
by Eoghan Walls
On an island off the coast of Ireland in 1847, a naturalist is documenting the behavior of a small colony of great auks, whom he has given Shakespearean nicknames. It is a world of ambergris, gruel, gizzards, guano and grog, and Walls pulls off the not-inconsiderable feat of engaging the reader with the minutiae of taxidermy and the fate of a posse of flightless alcids. Read our review.
history
El Paso
by Jazmine Ulloa
As she follows the interlacing paths of five families across generations and borders, Ulloa — a New York Times journalist — makes the case that El Paso is the heart not only of Texas, but of the American experience. Read our review.
thriller
Salvation
by C. Willliam Langsfeld
In this tight noir tale, three men are bound by murder: a killer, a pastor and a town marshal. Langsfeld lives in western Colorado, and that is where he sets his elegiac debut; his bone-deep knowledge of the landscape permeates every page. Read our review.
history
Reproductive Wrongs
by Sarah Ruden
A classicist and translator, Ruden traces the history of efforts to control women’s reproductive rights back to the first century B.C., delivering a bracing assessment of literary “anti-abortion propaganda” that ranges from the Roman poet Ovid to Augustine, Dickens and a contemporary “abortion survivor.” Read our review.
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