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, fantasies, 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.
Biography
Cormac McCarthy
by Tracy Daugherty
The prolific literary biographer uncovers new information about McCarthy, and is particularly adept at finding the overlap between his work and his life. Among McCarthy’s endeavors: dabbling in credit card fraud, attending cock fights and leaving a trail of romantic relationships, including one with a woman he met and began pursuing while she was a teenager. He cut an outsider figure, even in his own family, and developed a pitch-black worldview with conservative political leanings. These fascinating, illuminating episodes raise the question of whether great fiction requires the kind of single-mindedness and even arrogance that McCarthy cultivated. Read our review.
Literary fiction
Partita
by Barbara Kingsolver
A former piano prodigy receives an unexpected call from the man who derailed her ambitions years earlier, and must decide whether to open her life to him once again. Kingsolver’s new novel, her first since the Pulitzer-winning “Demon Copperhead,” is a lush and wrenching narrative about the paths not taken, the ingenuity of music and human decency. (There are some impressive sex scenes, too.) Read our review.
thriller
We Chase Shadows
by Richard Osman
This follow-up to Osman’s “We Solve Murders” picks up with its unlikely band of crime-solvers: a private security operative; her father-in-law, a retired cop; and a bewitching, best-selling author. A shady vitamin executive asks the trio to investigate the death of one of his bodyguards, whose corpse was deposited at his door with a menacing, if comically misspelled, note. Read our review.
Memoir
Death of an Ordinary Man
by Sarah Perry
Perry, a best-selling novelist, has written an ode to her father-in-law, who received a diagnosis of esophageal cancer and died nine days later, at age 77. She doesn’t skimp on the all-too-human details often kept private — the unpleasant physical symptoms, the maddening search for care, the bureaucracy, even the kindnesses — and captures a poignant moment as her family accepts impending death. The result is a masterpiece. Read our review.
political history
The Inheritance
by Janet Reitman
This empathetic, morally complex new book examines the fallout of the Sept. 11 attacks on the American psyche. Through her portraits of various subjects — a Marine veteran, a Black F.B.I. agent turned whistle blower, a lawyer defending Muslim clients — Reitman, a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, reveals a slow but unmistakable evolution in the national character, toward increasing suspicion, contempt, dehumanization, paranoia, conspiracy and nihilism. Read our review.
crime noir
Backwater
by James Sallis
Bishop, a former detective, now a jazz guitarist, has all but sworn off his hometown until a friend persuades him to investigate a murder there. As he discovers, carrying out police work is like performing a jazz solo he hasn’t played in years but still knows by heart. This is the final book by Sallis, a master of crime fiction who died in February; perhaps it’s doubly fitting that the book builds to a pitch-perfect closing line. Read our review.
speculative Fiction
The Occidental Book of the Dead
by T. Geronimo Johnson
This daring, twisty novel seems to be about a Black cop hoping to reunite with his childhood love … until subsequent sections force readers to reconsider everything they thought they knew about the story. The book takes on police brutality, racist conspiracies and much more — as our reviewer said, “It’s an athletic book for nerds who pump out supersets with ‘Infinite Jest’ and ‘House of Leaves,’ then wind down with Percival Everett.” Read our review.
U.S. History
The Rush
by Nathaniel Philbrick
A compulsively readable history of the gold rush, this new book argues that a feverish scramble for riches in an unfamiliar place might offer a compressed version of the national story — suggesting that reinvention, for individuals and even for the country at large, is just one lucky find away. Philbrick is a natural storyteller, and features delightfully vivid and strange characters while bringing the era’s political tussles to life. Read our review.
Investigative Journalism
Bad Boy for Life
by Cheyenne Roundtree
The author, a journalist for Rolling Stone, has written the most comprehensive biography to date of the hip-hop mogul Sean Combs, tracing an extensive history of crime and hubris across 30 years. It’s also a character study that uses meticulous detail and reporting to excellent effect, looking at Combs’s childhood and career. The result is an admirable example of how to write about a complicated, contemptible public figure without either diluting or overstating his cultural contributions. Read our review.
Memoir
Will and Attention
by Megan O’Gieblyn
This searching new memoir explores the author’s twin longings — for institutional religion and for alcohol — and her attempts to find ecstasy in both. As our critic Jennifer Szalai wrote, “This mesmerizing book, suffused with suffering and joy, ambivalence and insight, is itself an attempt to find a sense of wholeness — even if it is momentary and elusive, generated less by acts of will than by moments of grace.” Read our review.
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