New York Times Book Reviews
New in Paperback: ‘An American Marriage,’ ‘How Democracies Die’
Six new paperbacks to check out this week.
Categories: Book Reviews
Fiction: A Grieving Mother Converses With Her Dead Son in Yiyun Li’s New Novel
In “Where Reasons End,” an unnamed narrator plumbs the nature of suffering — and the limits of language — in a dialogue with the child she mourns.
Categories: Book Reviews
Children’s Books: Picture Books That Let Imaginations Soar
In the latest from Beth Ferry and Tom Lichtenheld, Shaun Tan and others, a boy and his dog head to the moon, a crab bakes cakes and a cat foils a bakery break-in.
Categories: Book Reviews
Profile: Meet the Guardian of Grammar Who Wants to Help You Be a Better Writer
Benjamin Dreyer sees language the way an epicure sees food. And he finds sloppiness everywhere he looks.
Categories: Book Reviews
Sketchbook: The Urban Grid of Writerdom
An illustrated map of the authorial life.
Categories: Book Reviews
The Shortlist: A Quartet of First Novels Takes Readers From Trinidad to the Himalayas
Disappearances link the works of Claire Adam, Madhuri Vijay, Juliet Lapidos and James Charlesworth: missing persons, missing manuscripts and missed connections.
Categories: Book Reviews
Crime: Marilyn Stasio’s Crime Column Exhumes the Murderous Past
New novels take readers back to Tudor England (C.J. Sansom), 1920s England (Charles Todd) and the age of Queen Victoria (Mick Finlay).
Categories: Book Reviews
Fiction: A Novel Set at the Dakota Imagines John Lennon as a Neighbor
In Tom Barbash’s “The Dakota Winters,” a searching young man finds an unlikely companion in the former Beatle’s last year of life.
Categories: Book Reviews
Nonfiction: A Deep Dive Into the ‘Underground’ World of Caves and Tunnels
Will Hunt travels from New York’s subways to Australian ochre mines to tell the subterranean story of what exists beneath us.
Categories: Book Reviews
From Our Archives: Revisiting Roberto Bolaño — ‘the Visceral Realist’
The Book Review’s past sheds light on the books of the present. This week: James Wood on the Chilean author’s legacy.
Categories: Book Reviews
Letters to the Editor
Readers respond to recent issues of the Sunday Book Review.
Categories: Book Reviews
Editors’ Choice: 10 New Books We Recommend This Week
Suggested reading from critics and editors at The New York Times.
Categories: Book Reviews
Nonfiction: The Brutal Economy of Cleaning Other People’s Messes, for $9 an Hour
In “Maid,” Stephanie Land describes what it’s like to be a single mother struggling to survive.
Categories: Book Reviews
Fiction: A Fantasy Set in Africa, by Way of Hieronymus Bosch, García Márquez and Marvel Comics
Michiko Kakutani reviews “Black Leopard, Red Wolf,” the first volume of Marlon James’s “Dark Star” trilogy. The novel is packed with dizzying references fused into something new and startling.
Categories: Book Reviews
Books News: Meg Medina Wins Newbery Medal and Sophie Blackall Is Awarded Her Second Caldecott
Women and Latinx authors and illustrators made a strong showing in this year’s prestigious honors, as diversity in children’s books is becoming more evident.
Categories: Book Reviews
Nonfiction: The Persistence of Anti-Semitism
Deborah E. Lipstadt’s “Antisemitism: Here and Now” charts the new guises of an enduring hatred.
Categories: Book Reviews
Fiction: A Novel About the Fate of a Piano — and the Dreams It Embodies
In “The Weight of a Piano,” Chris Cander follows the members of a family from Russia to California and traces the way music shadows their memories.
Categories: Book Reviews
Books News: Penguin Random House Closes the Prestigious Imprint Spiegel & Grau
The division published best-selling books by Ta-Nehisi Coates, Trevor Noah and more. Its closing is the latest move by Penguin Random House to streamline operations.
Categories: Book Reviews
Essay: Lena Dunham Pays Homage to Her Late Literary Hero Diana Athill
The British editor and writer, who died last week at 101, modeled a life of fierce, free-spirited independence.
Categories: Book Reviews
Nonfiction: An Anti-Facebook Manifesto, by an Early Facebook Investor
In “Zucked,” the venture capitalist Roger McNamee — a former mentor to Mark Zuckerberg — reveals the inner workings behind the platform’s troubling rise to global behemoth.
Categories: Book Reviews