Suggested reading from critics and editors at The New York Times.
American fiction has always grappled with sin, atonement and mercy. In the second installment of an essay series on literature and faith, Ayana Mathis examines what we can learn from forgiveness.
An essay series on American literature and faith.
Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” got to her: “Sure, it’s a novel full of unbelievable violence and apocalyptic nightmare stuff,” says the best-selling author of “Wonder,” “Pony” and “White Bird,” soon to be a feature film. “But the humanity and love is there right from the first line.”
Art is long, life is short and starlings are immeasurable. It is a sensible thing to want to be one.
His latest novel, “The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store,” has received a number of raves, but the veteran novelist will respectfully avoid them.
The Shaw Festival in Canada is staging the novelist’s 1901 script, discovered only a few years ago. But how to get its mix of satire and melodrama just right?
In Angie Kim’s new novel, “Happiness Falls,” Adam Parson’s wife and children question everything they thought they knew about him.
In “The Breakaway,” a woman at a crossroads agrees to lead a cycling trip that turns out to be more than she bargained for.
A new biography of Anna May Wong, “Daughter of the Dragon,” is intended as a form of reclamation and subversion.
Yunte Huang, who has written two other books on Asian American cultural icons, said he is drawn to complex characters whose contradictions reflect the country’s fault lines.
In his lively “Empire of the Sum,” Keith Houston looks at the best — and worst — years of the pocket calculator’s life.
In “Quiet Street,” Nick McDonell reflects on America’s most entrenched elite and his place within it.
In “Live to See the Day,” the sociologist Nikhil Goyal tracks the lives of three teenagers as they try to balance school and survival in Philadelphia.
In “Necessary Trouble,” by Drew Gilpin Faust, and “Up Home,” by Ruth J. Simmons, the former presidents of Harvard and Brown recount their unlikely paths to leadership at two of America’s most elite universities.
Yunte Huang, who has written two other books on Asian American cultural icons, said he is drawn to complex characters whose contradictions reflect the country’s fault lines.
A sociologist, he challenged conventional thinking on matters as diverse as deviance, art making and marijuana use, and later found a particular following in France.
Christine Mangan’s “The Continental Affair,” a cat-and-mouse chase across 1960s Europe, evokes Gauloises, orange blossoms and corner cafes.
Jennifer Lynn Barnes, the author of The Inheritance Games trilogy and other young adult novels, recommends some of her favorite Y.A. mysteries.
In “Birth Control,” Allison Yarrow argues that this country’s male-dominated medical industry prioritizes control instead of the autonomy — and safety — of pregnant patients.
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