'We Should Not Be Friends' offers a rare view of male friendship
Literary editor Will Schwalbe's new book is a tale about connecting across divides — which is particularly heartening in our polarized culture.
(Image credit: Knopf)
5 new mysteries and thrillers to help get you through winter
The long days of January and February usually herald some great reads featuring crime, suspense and — everyone's favorite — murder.
(Image credit: Meghan Collins Sullivan/NPR)
Want to be a writer? This bleak but buoyant guide says to get used to rejection
On Writing and Failure isn't your standard meditation on the art and nobility of writing as a profession; instead, author Stephen Marche argues writers should be prepared to fail — again and again.
(Image credit: Biblioasis)
'All the Beauty in the World' conveys Met guard's profound appreciation for art
Patrick Bringley's story — he jumped off the career ladder, deliberately taking a position divorced from ambition in order to find the space for quiet contemplation — is oddly suited to our times.
(Image credit: Simon & Schuster)
'Hijab Butch Blues' challenges stereotypes and upholds activist self-care
Lamya H's memoir is a study guide on Islam and a queer manifesto that follows them from a childhood a move to the U.S. through questions of faith, gender and sexuality.
(Image credit: The Dial Press)
3 books in translation that have received acclaim in their original languages
On a Woman's Madness and Forbidden Notebook have been highly lauded in their original languages for decades but, like the more recent Black Foam, inaccessible to English readers — until now.
(Image credit: Meghan Collins Sullivan/NPR)
Greta Thunberg's 'The Climate Book' urges world to keep climate justice out front
Activist Greta Thunberg was just 15 when she called on the world to take action on the climate crisis. Just as impressively, she has now pulled together essays by 100 scholars on what's needed now.
(Image credit: Michael Probst/AP)
A showbiz striver gets one more moment in the spotlight in 'Up With the Sun'
Author Thomas Mallon's sweeping new historical novel captures a slice of gay life in mid-to-late 20th century America as it reimagines the life — and violent death — of B-list actor Dick Kallman.
(Image credit: Penguin Random House)
'Brutes' captures the simultaneous impatience and mercurial swings of girlhood
In plunging us into the collective mind of a group of girls watching the search for a missing girl, author Dizz Tate creates an original, stylistically ambitious take on well-trodden subject matter.
(Image credit: Catapult)
'Black on Black' celebrates Black culture while exploring history and racial tension
Daniel Black's essays call for an overhaul of the U.S. criminal justice system, of the Black church, of the way Black people see themselves, and of the country itself — and do so with authority
(Image credit: Hanover Square Press)
5 YA books this winter dealing with identity and overcoming hardships
The pale daylight and early darkness of winter create a space for stories — in particular for stories that ask the reader to mull themes and ideas that can sometimes be difficult.
(Image credit: Meghan Collins Sullivan/NPR)
Classic LA noir meets the #MeToo era in the suspense novel 'Everybody Knows'
Jordan Harper's hardboiled plot centers on a "black-bag publicist" who works for a prestige crisis management firm, putting out fires and quieting scandals for Hollywood's elite.
(Image credit: Mulholland Books)
'After Sappho' brings women in history to life to claim their stories
Selby Wynn Schwartz's debut, longlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize, is partly a love letter to Virginia Woolf and poet Sappho, partly a work of literary criticism and partly a speculative biography.
(Image credit: Liveright)
'Children of the State' examines the American juvenile justice system
In a new book, Jeff Hobbs, author of The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace, looks at the evolution of the juvenile justice system in America — primarily through people, not statistics.
(Image credit: Scribner)
'How to Sell a Haunted House' is campy and tense, dark but also deep
Grady Hendrix's tale of siblings who come together after the deaths of their parents to sell their house fully embraces all the elements readers have come to love about Hendrix's storytelling.
(Image credit: Berkley)
Racism tears a Maine fishing community apart in 'This Other Eden'
In 1912, the 47 residents of Malaga Island were forcibly removed from their small, interracial community. Pulitzer Prize winner Paul Harding fictionalizes the story in a stunning new historical novel.
(Image credit: WW Norton)
Bret Easton Ellis' first novel in more than a decade, 'The Shards,' is worth the wait
Hermetic, paranoid, sleek, dark — and with brief explosions of the sex and violence that have characterized Ellis' oeuvre — The Shards is a stark reminder that the author is a genre unto himself.
(Image credit: Knopf)
'Inside the Curve' attempts to offer an overview of COVID's full impact everywhere
Visually striking — NatGeo and superb photography have always walked hand-in-hand — and incredibly complete, deep and nuanced, this is a book that comes close to the impossible.
(Image credit: Kazuma Obara/National Geographic)
'Sam,' the latest novel from Allegra Goodman, is small, but not simple
The novel follows a white working-class girl from age 7 through her late teens, navigating a world tightly circumscribed by class and culture.
(Image credit: Penguin Random House)
'Still Pictures' offers one more glimpse of writer Janet Malcolm
The New Yorker writer's posthumously published quasi-memoir is succinct and thought-provoking — and manages to capture so much of what made her so unfailingly interesting.
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