Editors’ Choice: 9 New Books We Recommend This Week
Suggested reading from critics and editors at The New York Times.
Fiction: A Kenyan Woman Probes Ancient Links Between Africa and Asia
The heroine of Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor’s novel “The Dragonfly Sea” embarks on a journey to China that will lead her back to her homeland, and a devotion to Sufism.
Fiction: A Novel That Evokes Sally Mann, Diane Arbus and Berenice Abbott
In Myla Goldberg’s “Feast Your Eyes,” a pioneering midcentury photographer juggles art and motherhood.
Nonfiction: The Last Great Freewheeling Diplomat
George Packer’s biography of Richard Holbrooke, “Our Man,” is a complex portrait of a complex man who had power, but never enough.
By the Book: By the Book: Adm. William H. McRaven
The author of “Make Your Bed” and, most recently, “Sea Stories: My Life in Special Operations” says “All Quiet on the Western Front” is the one book that best “captures the nature of a soldier.”
Nonfiction: A Historian Looks at Pregnancy and Mothering Through the Ages
In “Mother Is a Verb,” Sarah Knott casts light on forgotten beliefs and practices that will help readers place their own views in cultural context.
Children’s Books: Elizabeth Acevedo’s New Novel Is Literary Soul Food
“With the Fire on High,” the writer’s second novel (after her award-winning “The Poet X”), tells the story of a teenage mom who’s an aspiring chef.
Nonfiction: A Blundering Churchill, a Farsighted Roosevelt
Nigel Hamilton’s “War and Peace,” the third volume of his Roosevelt trilogy, takes a revisionist look at the two wartime partners.
Fiction: In a Faux-Victorian Fantasy World, Bookbinders Capture Souls
The craftsmen in Bridget Collins’s novel “The Binding” are able to remove a person’s memories and create books full of captured experiences.
Nonfiction: ‘The Cat in the Hat’ and the Man Who Made That
“Becoming Dr. Seuss,” a new biography of Theodor Geisel by Brian Jay Jones, chronicles the famous children’s book author’s influential career, zany imagination and original rhyme schemes.
Nonfiction: What, Exactly, Do We Mean by ‘Democracy’ Anyway?
In “Democracy May Not Exist, but We’ll Miss It When It’s Gone,” Astra Taylor examines the ways, both good and bad, the concept has been defended, defined and put into practice.
Fiction: A Debut Novel Revisits a Tragedy in an Asian-American Family
Chia-Chia Lin’s “The Unpassing” is set in 1980s Alaska, but its themes — of the immigrant struggle and private grief — are universal.
Fiction: A Novel About Surrogacy, Set at a ‘Farm’ Where the Crop Is Human Babies
In Joanne Ramos’s “The Farm,” the bodies of the less privileged “host” the unborn babies of the ultrarich.
Fiction: ‘Boy Swallows Universe’ Follows a Gritty Coming-of-Age in 1980s Australia
Trent Dalton used his own biography as inspiration for his debut novel.
Fiction: Spring Cleaning, Ali Smith Style
The third novel in her seasonal quartet — consumed with Brexit, refugee detention, social media — suggests we’re hurtling toward the horrific.
Nonfiction: The True-Crime Story That Harper Lee Tried and Failed to Write
In “Furious Hours,” Casey Cep investigates the Alabama murder case that was to have been the focus of Lee’s second book — as well as the famously reclusive writer herself, plumbing the mystery of her 50-year silence.
Fiction: Relive the ’60s Counterculture in ‘Revolutionaries’
Joshua Furst’s second novel tells the story of a radical from the perspective of his son.
Nonfiction: Inside the Elite World of National Spelling Bee Competitors
Shalini Shankar’s “Beeline” explores the stakes of these intense, “brain-sport” championships on Generation Z.
The Week in Books
New titles to watch for in May, a Canadian bookstore chain heads to the U.S. and more.
Fiction: A Sudanese Slave Starts a New Life in an Italian Convent
Véronique Olmi’s novel “Bakhita” reimagines the real-life story of St. Josephine Bakhita, captured as a child in Darfur and liberated in Venice.
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