New York Times Book Reviews

Six new paperbacks to check out this week.

From George Eliot and Mary Shelley to Joan of Arc and Coco Chanel, female icons from centuries past take the spotlight in three new books.

Written four decades ago, Yuko Tsushima’s novel “Territory of Light” tells of a woman in Tokyo coping with the dissolution of her marriage.

This week’s Crime column features novels about bad-boy cops and suburban serial killers, then offers an escape to scenic Provence.

Taylor Jenkins Reid, author of “Daisy Jones & The Six” — about the breakup of an iconic 1970s band — admits that she struggled with songwriting.

Readers respond to recent issues of the Sunday Book Review.

Suggested reading from critics and editors at The New York Times.

Writers of speculative fiction routinely invent rules and regulations as part of their novels’ worlds. These laws tell us more about our own politics than you might think.

“Good Will Come From the Sea,” a story collection by Christos Ikonomou, captures the desperation of his country’s citizens in the wake of economic devastation.

The author, most recently, of the memoir “Shout” doesn’t shun any genres: “That’s like avoiding colors or parts of the flavor spectrum. I want all kinds of stories on my plate.”

In his memoir, “I.M.,” the designer recalls his climb from Brooklyn misfit to American design icon.

In “Figuring,” Popova roams over 400 years of science and poetry, highlighting women who have added to the history of creativity and invention.

Lynne Olson’s “Madame Fourcade’s Secret War” tells of a woman who led the fight against the Nazis while combating sexism among her colleagues.

In “The Twice-Born: Life and Death on the Ganges,” Aatish Taseer mourns the politicization of traditional Hindu values and the rise of religious bigotry.

“Nobody’s Looking at You” collects profiles, reportage and literary criticism produced between 1996 and 2018 by the famed New Yorker staff writer.

A selection of books published this week; plus, a peek at what our colleagues around the newsroom are reading.

Sci-fi writers gave us satellite communication, army tanks, tablets, CCTV and the internet — before these things existed in real life. What explains their powers of foresight?

Leila Aboulela’s collection “Elsewhere, Home” gathers perspectives from Aberdeen to Cairo in a much-needed nod to the universality of the human condition.

We called “Sister Carrie” a book “one can get along very well without reading,” dismissed “Lolita” as “dull, dull, dull,” and had nothing nice to say about “Howards End.”

In his review, Preet Bharara calls David McCraw’s “Truth in Our Times” a behind-the-scenes look at the newspaper’s legal battles with the Trump administration and others.