At the age of 45, Lahiri, the acclaimed Indian American writer, decided to start writing in Italian. The comments section is closed. Alyssa Coles A Prince on Paper and other enemies-to-lovers romances, Bolu Babalolas debut novel, Honey and Spice. NO VISIBLE BRUISES By Rachel Louise Snyder. HALF BROKE HORSES: A True-Life Novel By Jeannette Walls. PACHINKO By Min Jin Lee. THE GREAT BELIEVERS By Rebecca Makkai. I applaud them, and if I were less haphazard, I would do it, too. NOTHING TO BE FRIGHTENED OF By Julian Barnes. (Doubleday, $32.50.) DUBOIS By Honore Fanonne Jeffers. EMPIRE OF COTTON: A Global History By Sven Beckert. 2666 By Roberto Bolao. Kiki has become known at her university for doling out romantic advice to her classmates, helping members of the schools Afro-Caribbean Society avoid heartache. By Mildred Armstrong Kalish. It is absorbing, lucid and true. THIS REPUBLIC OF SUFFERING:Death and the American Civil War By Drew Gilpin Faust. In middle age, Tracys optimism (or navet) is unchanged, our critic Molly Young writes. YOU MADE A FOOL OF DEATH WITH YOUR BEAUTY. (Milkweed, $22.) ), What books do you read on your trips? THE FACEMAKER: A Visionary Surgeons Battle to Mend the Disfigured Soldiers of World War I, by Lindsey Fitzharris. can decide that ice hockey is still in season (go, Rangers! (Minotaur, $27.99.) Set in the mist-shrouded town of Damariscotta, Maine, Whites vivid debut novel charts the trajectory of a lobstering family from humble beginnings to the top of a small-town criminal empire. ROOM By Emma Donoghue. VERONICA By Mary Gaitskill. Pasulka, a journalist, spent a decade following drag culture in Brooklyn, which she writes contains both the most experimental corners of the drag world and the most professional, and is more messy, freewheeling and avant-garde than how the art form appears in its increasingly mainstream appearances on TV and elsewhere. THE MASTER By Colm Toibin. The Old Drift, Namwali Serpells epic-length magical realist debut following four generations of a single family in Zambia enduring everything from white colonizers to the AIDS crisis, Afterlives, by the 2021 Nobel laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah. 11/22/63 By Stephen King. Translated by Natasha Wimmer. THE NINE: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court. Stodolas sobering investigation into the beach resort economy leaps from Thailand to Cap dAntibes to Senegal, looking at why these manufactured environments became the vacation ideal and how climate change threatens them all. The end of a vacation is an occasion for sadness. ABSURDISTAN By Gary Shteyngart. Happy reading. H Is for Hawk, Helen Macdonalds prizewinning account of training a goshawk while grieving for her father, An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us, by Ed Yong. Why Diverse Democracies Fall Apart and How They Can Endure. THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD By Colson Whitehead. (Scribner, $27.) A HOLOGRAM FOR THE KING By Dave Eggers. It is a great story. BOTH WAYS IS THE ONLY WAY I WANT IT By Maile Meloy. (Ballantine, $28.) We took turns reading by flashlight Michelle read a chapter, and then I did, passing the book back and forth as we sprawled out in the interstices between the luggage and the bags of groceries in our little no-seatbelt fort in the very back of the car. DE KOONING:An American Master By Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan. Fitzharris recounts the life and work of the pioneering reconstructive surgeon Harold Gillies, a specialist in mending those who survived the mechanized slaughter of World War I but were left with disfigured faces. Even if she shouldnt have to play it., THE LATECOMER, by Jean Hanff Korelitz. The perfect way to embark on a vacation into the unknown. What follows is a veritable trip through the demimonde, populated with the idle, dangerous rich and the desperate, hungry poor, all with motive and means to kill, Sarah Weinman writes in her latest crime column. She now returns, in a book that starts in the thick of #MeToo, when Tracy, now in her 40s with a daughter, wonders whether she has misjudged her own past. The works of classic travel writers, people like Jan Morris, Ryszard Kapuscinski, Patrick Leigh Fermor, Paul Theroux, Rebecca West and Herodotus, take readers on two trips at once. OUTLINE By Rachel Cusk. SHAKESPEARE IN A DIVIDED AMERICA By James Shapiro. Elena Ferrantes Neapolitan quartet; the work of Fernanda Melchor, Dogs of Summer, by Andrea Abreu, translated by Julia Sanches. SATURDAY By Ian McEwan. Vivian is a terrific character, plucky and resourceful, determined to choreograph a different life for herself., AN ISLAND, by Karen Jennings. My husband feels that his vacation reading ideally done while stretched out on a chaise by a gentle body of water is the only time he can really sink into a book without guilt. It was June of 1985, and I had just graduated from college. Mine was formed at the end of a holiday weekend in middle school in the 1970s, when my friend Michelle and I pretzeled ourselves into her parents station wagon for the long, dull ride to New York from Massachusetts. In a mixed review, Michelle Ruiz singles out the familys indignant novelist matriarch for praise, as well as Weiners willingness to shun sentimental views of motherhood in favor of a more complicated ambivalence: Thats the sort of biting, delicious, terribly human revelation that makes a beach read, Ruiz writes. DEACON KING KONG By James McBride. Tracy Flick, the protagonist of Perrottas novel Election (1998), was immortalized by Reese Witherspoon in the film adaptation of the same name. In the flashbacks to Samuels coming-of-age and then torturous captivity, Jennings renders a gritty and stripped-down portrait of the bleak family dynamics and social conditions that made him who he is., THE MIDCOAST, by Adam White. Translated by Natasha Wimmer. PRIESTDADDY By Patricia Lockwood. Korelitzs sparkling novel has all the hallmarks of a beach read: a dysfunctional family (featuring test-tube triplets), a major plot twist, a house on Marthas Vineyard. His debut collection, full of surprising drama, offers a fresh view of the precarious lives of marginalized people in the 21st century. FAR FROM THE TREE: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity By Andrew Solomon. By Karen Russell. Even if the game is rigged. Translated by Anne Born. THE STORY OF THE LOST CHILD: Book 4, The Neapolitan Novels: Maturity, Old Age By Elena Ferrante. THE TIGERS WIFE By Ta Obreht. INVISIBLE CHILD: Poverty, Survival and Hope in an American City By Andrea Elliott. This novel, the first romance of Emezis prolific and diverse career, features a widowed 29-year-old artist who unexpectedly finds love with an older chef facing an enduring sorrow of his own. A fast-paced account of the almost absurdly dangerous 19th-century quest by two friends turned enemies to solve the geographic riddle of their era. NO ONE IS TALKING ABOUT THIS By Patricia Lockwood. THE DARK SIDE: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals By Jane Mayer. (Hanover Square, $27.99.) THE CLUB By Leo Damrosch. Yong, whos become well known as a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer for The Atlantic, helping to make sense of the pandemic, here turns his attention to sensory experiences throughout the animal kingdom. https://www.nytimes.com/article/top-book-lists.html. EXIT WEST By Mohsin Hamid. How to mediate between the competing interests of autonomy and collectivity, the desire for self-sovereignty and the reality of interdependence, is the major question this novel poses, over and over, at familial, societal and global scale, Justin Taylor writes in his review. By Roz Chast. A meditation on mothers and daughters, Weiners latest novel also explores class conflicts, identity issues and real estate dramas. MAN GONE DOWN By Michael Thomas. This mesmerizing horror novel reimagines H.G. A MANUAL FOR CLEANING WOMEN: Selected Stories By Lucia Berlin. It thrilled and unsettled us. They are recording the effects of places or movements upon their own particular temperaments recording the experience rather than the event, as they might make literary use of a love affair, an enigma or a tragedy., Morris distinguished between the treacherous creative quagmire called fiction and the heightened realism of travel writing, the alliance of knowledge and sensation, nature and intellect, sight and interpretation, instinct and logic. This is a way of saying that the best travel writers do what the best narrative nonfiction writers do: They make things better by the way they describe them. In Anthony Marras new novel, Mercury Pictures Presents, a studio makes it big once America decides to enter the war. I was hooked from the opening line: Sir Malcolm Keane, K.C., put on his fur-lined coat in the cloakroom of the Cleveland Club at the corner of Pall Mall, picked up his soft black hat, doeskin gloves and closely furled umbrella, and came out into the big square hall where a huge fire was burning on the wide hearth. It was full of pointillistic description and high drama and intense emotion, perfect for my febrile mood. Inside The New York Times Book Review Podcast, 15 Favorite Episodes as the Book Review Podcast Turns 15, Like a Pile of Golden Retriever Puppies Drenched in Glitter, Memoir Writing Is Always an Act of Translation, A Tale of Golden Age Hollywood, Co-Starring Art and Agitprop, An Empathetic Account of the Complexity After Apartheid, Love or Hate Emmanuel Carreres Forceful Tangents, Theyre Back in Yoga, The Big, Bold Life of the Woman Who Brought Us the It Girl, In Robert Lowells Memoirs, Mental Illness, Creative Friends and a Takedown of Dad, In The Kingdoms of Savannah, Oddballs Circle Around a Murder Mystery. I had booked a cheap seat on a full overnight flight to Paris, and was too anxious and excited to sleep. H IS FOR HAWK By Helen Macdonald. The Boys begins with a letter from a bike touring company, asking the main character not to sign up for another trip. This is Katie Rundes first novel, and she writes with a fluid sensitivity to detail and mood, hitting tough questions hard and head-on, Judy Blundell writes in her review. THE ASSOCIATION OF SMALL BOMBS By Karan Mahajan. Studying this foreign language is, or can be, a liberation, Lahiri says: I write in Italian to feel free.. BRING UP THE BODIES By Hilary Mantel. SPECIAL TOPICS IN CALAMITY PHYSICS By Marisha Pessl. THE ART OF FIELDING By Chad Harbach. As a story of medical progress and extraordinary achievement, The Facemaker is grisly yet inspiring, our critic Jennifer Szalai writes. (Scribner, $26.99.) (Knopf, $28.) Gregory CowlesSenior Editor, Books@GregoryCowles. WAR By Margaret MacMillan. By taking you out of your head in those in-between moments waiting at the gate to board the plane, riding in the back of the bus between cities, lying in bed during the first night of jet-lagged insomnia in a faraway country it can restore you to yourself. Hilary A. Halletts Inventing the It Girl tells the story of the early Hollywood pioneer Elinor Glyn. Why? THE LOST PAINTING By Jonathan Harr. CLEOPATRA: A Life By Stacy Schiff. Translated by Tiina Nunnally and Michael Favala Goldman. Limn looks out her window, walks around her yard, and, like Emily Dickinson, trips over infinities., YOU MADE A FOOL OF DEATH WITH YOUR BEAUTY, by Akwaeke Emezi. DARK MONEY: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right By Jane Mayer. KAFKA ON THE SHORE By Haruki Murakami. LAST CALL AT THE NIGHTINGALE, by Katharine Schellman. ALEXANDER HAMILTON By Ron Chernow. So: one contemporary book that Ive been saving as a reward this summer, it might be Jennifer Egans The Candy House; one book that Ive been meaning to read but have not yet gotten to perhaps Shirley Hazzards Transit of Venus.. Anyone can read what you share. Its protagonists reinvent themselves with astonishing ingenuity. ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE By Anthony Doerr. (Hogarth, $25.) PENELOPE FITZGERALD: A Life By Hermione Lee. What saved us was the single book Michelle produced from her bag, in a hail-Mary literary move: The Silver Crown, by Robert C. OBrien. New readers are walking into the hands of a skilled storyteller whos not afraid to take on a big, messy tale of love, privilege and abuse.. (Hogarth, $27.) HIDDEN VALLEY ROAD By Robert Kolker. IN THE DARKROOM By Susan Faludi. THE SIXTH EXTINCTION: An Unnatural History By Elizabeth Kolbert. Moreno-Garcia immerses readers in the rich world of 19th-century Mexico, exploring colonialism and resistance in a compulsively readable story of a womans coming-of-age. They can be a destination, a guide or the tether that restores us to ourselves. Not everyone thinks of a book as a security blanket. (How thrilling to walk the real Chancery Lane after reading it so memorably portrayed in Bleak House.). The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym (William Collins, June 7) I Used to Live Here Once: The Haunted Life of Jean Rhys (Norton, June 28), The poetry of Frank OHara; Daniel Mendelsohns An Odyssey, a father-and-son memoir that doubles as a reintroduction to Homers epic, Also a Poet: Frank OHara, My Father, and Me, by Ada Calhoun. THE POWER By Naomi Alderman. THE PERFECT NANNY By Leila Slimani. From a wildfire photographer to a teenage misanthrope, these authors reflect on pain, courage and belonging. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. ASYMMETRY By Lisa Halliday. (Atria, $28.99.) We asked readers to nominate their favorite books published in the past 125 years. NW By Zadie Smith. Our romance columnist found much to like in the latest crop of summer novels. THE INVENTION OF NATURE: Alexander von Humboldts New World By Andrea Wulf. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Welcome to Sullivans, a Chicago bar and restaurant run by a family (the Sullivans, naturally) where secrets, loyalties, resentments, baseball and beer are part of the DNA. Help us choose the very best, based on this list of finalists. EUPHORIA By Lily King. Then there is travel writing itself. THE PLACES IN BETWEEN By Rory Stewart. BUILDING STORIES By Chris Ware. Picking up where Gurnahs 1994 novel Paradise left off, on the eve of the Great War in German East Africa, Afterlives is another multigenerational, character-driven saga of a modern-day Tanzania under European imperialism. (Atria, $27.) One summer, 73 books. And listen to us on the Book Review podcast. A GATE AT THE STAIRS By Lorrie Moore. FREEDOM By Jonathan Franzen. THE GOOD SOLDIERS By David Finkel. But a sense of helplessness is essential to the enemies of liberalism. APOLLOS ANGELS: A History of Ballet By Jennifer Homans. In Carreres latest, a best seller (and cause of scandal) in France, the authors life gets very bad and then slightly better. (This is a good technique for anyone who is not at home. CHRONIC CITY By Jonathan Lethem. AMERICAN PRISON: A Reporter's Undercover Journey Into the Business of Punishment By Shane Bauer. Follow New York Times Books on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, sign up for our newsletter or our literary calendar. Maybe its preposterous that she refuses, after all this time, to play by the rules of the game. Technically, summer doesnt begin for another week and a half. FAMILY LIFE By Akhil Sharma. THE DOOR By Magda Szabo. Kwon, writes. The years notable fiction, poetry and nonfiction, selected by the editors of The New York Times Book Review. A CHILDRENS BIBLE By Lydia Millet. THINKING, FAST AND SLOW By Daniel Kahneman. RED COMET: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath By Heather Clark. But Fukuyama disdains what he calls a laundry list of policy proposals and, rather elegantly, settles on a plea for moderation., THE GREAT EXPERIMENT: Why Diverse Democracies Fall Apart and How They Can Endure, by Yascha Mounk. Maybe its a credit to her integrity that she hasnt been squashed into submission. Calhouns father idolized the poet and had hoped to complete a biography; this book recounts Calhouns attempt to finish it herself. Now, we call this list the Ten Best Books and have done so since 2004. And listen to us on the Book Review podcast. It didnt really matter that the book Id brought, The Paradine Case, Robert Hichenss overwrought 1933 legal thriller about an upstanding, married London barrister who falls in love with a client a woman accused of poisoning her husband is not, by most objective standards, a great work of literature. This dance between the personal and the political, and the way the latter impacts the former, is the most interesting thematic element of the book, Liz Moore writes in her review. The years notable fiction, poetry and nonfiction, selected by the editors of The New York Times Book Review. FINISHING THE HAT: Collected Lyrics (1954-1981) With Attendant Comments, Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines and Anecdotes By Stephen Sondheim. EVICTED: Poverty and Profit in the American City By Matthew Desmond. 2018 was a good year for books. Read this coming-of-age story for its unsparing language and vivid sense of place. White Lotus, Mike Whites satire for HBO about the wealthy guests and beleaguered staff at an elite Hawaiian resort; The Brilliant Abyss, Helen Scaless book about life in the deep ocean, The Last Resort: A Chronicle of Paradise, Profit, and Peril at the Beach, by Sarah Stodola. Terrence Malicks film The Thin Red Line; a lingering sense of existential dread and confusion, The Twilight World, by the filmmaker Werner Herzog, translated by Michael Hofmann. Translated by Deborah Smith. Set in the wake of the 2016 election, Closes propulsive and funny novel shows how politics are always close to home. The narrator is a 10-year-old who idolizes her best friend, Isora, who is brash and fearless. This chameleon of a book was inspired by the writers discovery of recorded interviews between the poet Frank OHara and her father, the art critic Peter Schjeldahl. LIFE AFTER LIFE By Kate Atkinson. Neruda on the Park avoids pat answers, but tenderly and thoughtfully invites readers to weigh our own obligations to the places and people who made us., MARRYING THE KETCHUPS, by Jennifer Close. Also: One absorbing thriller. Traveling to London after reading Dickens is great fun, not just for his writing but for his geography. The Latecomer is consistently surprising. The imagination of Silvia Moreno-Garcia is a thing of wonder, Danielle Trussoni writes in her Summer Reading horror roundup: restless and romantic, fearless in the face of genre, embracing the polarities of storytelling the sleek and the bizarre, wild passions and deep hatreds with cool equanimity., THE HURTING KIND: Poems, by Ada Limn. She knows how to navigate a tangled tale and, he adds, takes pains to put her story in context., NERUDA ON THE PARK, by Cleyvis Natera. It cures your boredom, soothes your anxiety and provides stability and constancy. And this brings me back to my second-favorite reading-and-traveling memory, after my youthful car trip. IMPERIAL LIFE IN THE EMERALD CITY: Inside Iraqs Green Zone. Editors at The Times Book Review choose the best fiction and nonfiction titles this year. Other novels we recommend include a jazz-era mystery by Katharine Schellman, Karen Jenningss Booker-nominated tale of a lighthouse keeper in Africa, Jennifer Weiners story about a Cape Cod wedding and Katie Rundes debut, The Shore, about a New Jersey family bracing for the death of its ailing father. UNCANNY VALLEY By Rachel Anna Wiener. Set in and around a youth rehabilitation camp in Montanas Crow Nation, Roorbachs latest novel a love story between a 16-year-old blond girl and an older half-Taishanese man draws a compelling portrait of wayward teenagers who are both too tough and too vulnerable for their own good. So dive right in. RAYMOND CARVER: A Writers Life By Carol Sklenicka. THE SAVAGE DETECTIVES By Roberto Bolao. LIBERALISM AND ITS DISCONTENTS, by Francis Fukuyama. Anyone can read what you share. AUTUMN By Ali Smith. In Rundes heartfelt and bittersweetly funny debut, a family in New Jersey braces for the death of their beloved father, who has an aggressive form of brain cancer. DEPT. I love this books understanding of how tightly grief can tangle itself with elation, and how loss might elicit possession.