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.
True crime
London Falling
by Patrick Radden Keefe
Keefe’s latest book opens with a young man plunging to his death from a balcony overlooking the Thames and retraces, through immersive reporting, the tumultuous path that brought him there. His portrait of an ambitious London teenager consumed by a desire for extreme wealth is embedded within a panoramic account of an urban underworld awash in violence, corruption and greed. Read our review.
FICTION
American Fantasy
by Emma Straub
Stranded on the titular cruise ship without the sister who roped her into this trip in the first place, 50-year-old Annie — newly divorced, not into cruises — finds herself swept up in the tide of thousands of middle-aged women who’ve gathered at sea to sway to the music of their favorite 1990s boy band. Read our review.
thriller
Wolvers
by Taylor Brown
This page-turner explores the battle between man, wolf and nature through the perspectives of three characters: a gun-for-hire stalking a federally protected wolf; a man from a local ranching family with a newfound respect for wolves; and the she-wolf herself, One-Eleven. Brown’s descriptions of the pitiless, dangerous beauty of the natural world, and of man’s relationship to it, show a deep respect for the land. It’s clear where his sympathies lie. Read our review.
Biography
True Color
by Kory Stamper
While working as a dictionary editor, Stamper became fascinated by some of Merriam-Webster’s color descriptions — and by their equally colorful author, I.H. Godlove. Stamper brings us the story not just of one eccentric man’s fascinating life, but of 20th-century color science, aesthetics, industry and psychology in all their vibrant hues. Read our review.
thriller
Yesteryear
by Caro Claire Burke
To conservative vloggers — and many of her millions of followers on social media — Natalie Heller Mills is living the “true American dream”: Pregnant with her sixth child, she purports to spend all day frolicking on her organic farm in Idaho with her perfect kids, her cowboy husband and the flock of chickens she calls her “ladies.” The truth is, of course, much darker, and this debut novel takes us one surreal step further to illustrate the deep chasm between our digital selves and our real ones. Read our review.
History
Here Where We Live Is Our Country
by Molly Crabapple
What was the Jewish Bund? In this thrillingly energetic chronicle of the group’s rise and fall, Crabapple unearths the story of a labor movement that formed at the turn of the 20th century in the Russian empire to fight antisemitism, take down the czar and oppose ethnic nationalism of all stripes. Read our review.
Graphic novel
Corto Maltese
by Hugo Pratt
Pratt is near the top of a short list of the greatest cartoonists ever to ply the trade. His most famous creation, the tall, louche, antiheroic sailor Corto Maltese, is back in print in English with “Fable of Venice and Other Adventures,” a collection of five punchy short stories, originally published in 1967, heavy on swashbuckling and treasure hunting. Read our review.
poetry
Creature Feature
by Dean Young
Young, whose appealingly surreal poetry anticipated and echoed the more disorienting zigzags of internet culture, died in his 60s in 2022; this collection applies his characteristically giddy sense of unraveling to his own life and ill health, in work that seems fully aware of being pre-posthumous. Read our review.
mystery
The Ending Writes Itself
by Evelyn Clarke
On a dark and stormy night, seven authors gather in a foreboding residence. They’ve come at the invitation of an enigmatic host, who is nowhere to be seen, but has promised a weekend they’ll never forget. Night falls. Communication with the outside world is cut off. And then, the real fun begins. Read our review.
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