2666 By Roberto Bolao. A WORLD ON FIRE:Britains Crucial Role in the American Civil War By Amanda Foreman. Translated by Adrian Nathan West. DEPT. Maybe its preposterous that she refuses, after all this time, to play by the rules of the game. SING, UNBURIED, SING By Jesmyn Ward. TEN THOUSAND SAINTS By Eleanor Henderson. LIT: A Memoir By Mary Karr. HOW THE WORD IS PASSED: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America By Clint Smith. Tracy Flick, the protagonist of Perrottas novel Election (1998), was immortalized by Reese Witherspoon in the film adaptation of the same name. YOU MADE A FOOL OF DEATH WITH YOUR BEAUTY. If this novel is funny, it is also cutting, a nearly forensic study of family conflict, Allegra Goodman writes in her review. 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. (Del Rey, $28, to be published July 19.) (Knopf, $28.) PENELOPE FITZGERALD: A Life By Hermione Lee. ALEXANDER HAMILTON By Ron Chernow. In Carreres latest, a best seller (and cause of scandal) in France, the authors life gets very bad and then slightly better. THE LOST PAINTING By Jonathan Harr. Hermione Lees vivid and authoritative biographies of Virginia Woolf and Edith Wharton, The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym, by Paula Byrne, and I Used to Live Here Once: The Haunted Life of Jean Rhys, by Miranda Seymour. THE ASSASSINS GATE: America in Iraq By George Packer. 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. THE NEW YORKER STORIES By Ann Beattie. ON BEAUTY By Zadie Smith. MAYFLOWER: A Story of Courage, Community, and War By Nathaniel Philbrick. GRANT By Ron Chernow. Fans of Roorbachs prolific work will appreciate his signature lyricism and sense of place, his sweeping narrative, humor and romance, Gregory Brown writes, reviewing the book alongside two other coming-of-age novels. It also casts a light on the kinds of people and attitudes midcoastal Maine produces, with its jarring juxtapositions of poverty and wealth. THE SELLOUT By Paul Beatty. Pamela Paul, the editor of the Book Review, highlights memorable episodes from her eight years hosting the show, including conversations with Robert Caro, Isabel Wilkerson, James McBride and others. EXHALATION By Ted Chiang. The practice of editors sharing their picks of the year dates nearly back to the beginning of the Book Review in October 1896. LIBERALISM AND ITS DISCONTENTS, by Francis Fukuyama. We asked readers to nominate their favorite books published in the past 125 years. CHRONIC CITY By Jonathan Lethem. 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. ARGUABLY: Essays By Christopher Hitchens. 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. Then there is travel writing itself. Although Mounk is concerned about growing inequality and identity-based politics, he makes the case for optimism, advocating for diversity and inclusion. Translated by Tiina Nunnally and Michael Favala Goldman. 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. Translated by Len Rix. SAY NOTHING By Patrick Radden Keefe. Anyone can read what you share. CANT WE TALK ABOUT SOMETHING MORE PLEASANT? HAMNET By Maggie OFarrell. Translated by Natasha Wimmer. Anyone can read what you share. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $26.) (Milkweed, $22.) No stranger to eccentric obsessives in his acclaimed movies, like Fitzcarraldo and Grizzly Man, Herzog was inspired to write his first novel about Hiroo Onoda, a Japanese soldier who spent nearly 30 years after the end of World War II defending a small island in the Philippines, unwilling to believe the war was over. 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. What do we want from the books we take with us when we travel? AT THE EXISTENTIALIST CAF: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails By Sarah Bakewell. Our romance columnist found much to like in the latest crop of summer novels. 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. In the South African authors first novel to be published in the United States, a reclusive old lighthouse keeper living on an island somewhere in the south of the continent encounters a live refugee washed ashore, who treats him with a trust and even a kindness he cant perceive or hope to return. The Boys begins with a letter from a bike touring company, asking the main character not to sign up for another trip. (Ballantine, $28.) Read this coming-of-age story for its unsparing language and vivid sense of place. (Hogarth, $25.) Not everyone thinks of a book as a security blanket. In the present day, Tracys boss, a high school principal, is about to retire, and Tracy must beat out other candidates to assume the job. But the ambitious scope and the exploration of race, class, politics, real estate and the art world make this 448-page blockbuster a story for all seasons. A PROMISED LAND By Barack Obama. 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. SNOW By Orhan Pamuk. Follow New York Times Books on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, sign up for our newsletter or our literary calendar. I cant remember what we did the rest of the weekend, but it was the best car trip Ive ever taken, and it forever cemented in me the idea that a vacation book doesnt need to have anything to do with where you are; it can be a destination in itself. FREDERICK DOUGLASS: Prophet of Freedom By David W. Blight. And then one comforting old friend, often a childrens book like Charlottes Web or The Golden Compass. And Ill take my Kindle, which is no fun as a literary delivery mechanism, but which has the benefit of putting the worlds library at your fingertips. FREEDOM By Jonathan Franzen. Anyone can read what you share. THE NORTH WATER By Ian McGuire. (Algonquin, $27.95.) NETHERLAND By Joseph ONeill. LOST CHILDREN ARCHIVE By Valeria Luiselli. Also: One absorbing thriller. I had no job and as yet no prospect of one, and I didnt feel great as I prepared to embark on what was meant to be (and would finally be) a transformative Eurail adventure through Europe. Even if you dont know OHaras poetry (maybe start with Having a Coke With You), theres plenty to appreciate in this memoir. WHEN WE CEASE TO UNDERSTAND THE WORLD By Benjamn Labatut. EDUCATED: A Memoir By Tara Westover. 2018 was a good year for books. The second is the emotional trip. THE AGE OF WONDER: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science By Richard Holmes. Nateras style is refreshingly direct and declarative, and at its best, this approach feels confident and sharp, a mirror capturing the bleak comedies of life in a threatened community, Mia Alvar writes in her review. Elena Ferrantes Neapolitan quartet; the work of Fernanda Melchor, Dogs of Summer, by Andrea Abreu, translated by Julia Sanches. IN THE DARKROOM By Susan Faludi. The end of a vacation is an occasion for sadness. HOW TO CHANGE YOUR MIND: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence By Michael Pollan. 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. Some of the authors we admire weigh in on their favorite reads. 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. MALCOLM X: A Life of Reinvention By Manning Marable. THE PASSAGE OF POWER: The Years of Lyndon Johnson By Robert A. Caro. THE NINE: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court. By Mildred Armstrong Kalish. SHAKESPEARE IN A DIVIDED AMERICA By James Shapiro. THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD By Colson Whitehead. Editors at the Book Review talk about the years best books; Stefan Hertmans talks about War and Turpentine; and Ian McGuire discusses The North Water.. A HOLOGRAM FOR THE KING By Dave Eggers. A SHORT HISTORY OF WOMEN By Kate Walbert. The narrator is a 10-year-old who idolizes her best friend, Isora, who is brash and fearless. Her pursuit of Italian is about something far bigger than synonyms or dictionaries or nouns, Benjamin Moser writes in his review. To submit a letter to the editor for publication, write to, Nail-biting, Nerve-shredding Novels That Will Keep You Up at Night, Mysterious Disappearances, Jewel Heists and Creepy Babysitters, Barbecued, Battered, Boiled and Baked: Cookbooks for Summer, The Ultimate Summer Escape: Historical Fiction, Sweet, Sexy and Rebellious: Summers New Romance Novels, A Sense of Belonging: New Science Fiction and Fantasy, Roll Out the Red Carpet for New Books About Stage and Screen, Summer Reads Guaranteed to Make Your Heart Thump and Your Skin Crawl. Even if the game is rigged. THE DARK SIDE: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals By Jane Mayer. THE PLACES IN BETWEEN By Rory Stewart. EVICTED: Poverty and Profit in the American City By Matthew Desmond. (Celadon, $28.) THE GOLDFINCH By Donna Tartt. DEACON KING KONG By James McBride. The comments section is closed. No matter what you like thrillers, audiobooks, cookbooks, historical fiction, music books, sci-fi, romance, horror, true crime, sports books, Hollywood tell-alls we have recommendations for the perfect literary escape. And this brings me back to my second-favorite reading-and-traveling memory, after my youthful car trip. Hilary A. Halletts Inventing the It Girl tells the story of the early Hollywood pioneer Elinor Glyn. But a sense of helplessness is essential to the enemies of liberalism. Help us choose the very best, based on this list of finalists. Paris Is Burning, the 1991 documentary about the groundbreaking ballroom drag scene in New York City, How You Get Famous: Ten Years of Drag Madness in Brooklyn, by Nicole Pasulka. SPECIAL TOPICS IN CALAMITY PHYSICS By Marisha Pessl. 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. There are two ways to look at this. Gregory CowlesSenior Editor, Books@GregoryCowles, TRACY FLICK CANT WIN, by Tom Perrotta. I had booked a cheap seat on a full overnight flight to Paris, and was too anxious and excited to sleep. Alyssa Coles A Prince on Paper and other enemies-to-lovers romances, Bolu Babalolas debut novel, Honey and Spice. Why Diverse Democracies Fall Apart and How They Can Endure. Again and again in this collection, her sixth, Limn confronts natures unwillingness to yield its secrets its one of her primary subjects. DUBOIS By Honore Fanonne Jeffers. 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. THE INVENTION OF NATURE: Alexander von Humboldts New World By Andrea Wulf. 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. LAST CALL AT THE NIGHTINGALE, by Katharine Schellman. These 71 dazzling new titles including thrillers, cookbooks, photography collections and more will delight any reader. THE GREAT BELIEVERS By Rebecca Makkai. EUPHORIA By Lily King. WASHINGTON BLACK By Esi Edugyan. THE REST IS NOISE: Listening to the Twentieth Century By Alex Ross. Anyone who has lost someone by inches will recognize the struggle to push through despair and affirm the dogged endurance of love.. All creatures, from ticks to elephants, perceive the world in different ways. GILEAD By Marilynne Robinson. 11/22/63 By Stephen King. Translated by Natasha Wimmer. WHY DOES THE WORLD EXIST? 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. But over the years, that list has taken many different names and forms. Fair warning to readers seeking likable characters: The people here are fierce, and they fight dirty. And listen to us on the Book Review podcast. PACHINKO By Min Jin Lee. THE TIGERS WIFE By Ta Obreht. AUTUMN By Ali Smith. INVISIBLE CHILD: Poverty, Survival and Hope in an American City By Andrea Elliott. (Atria, $27.) DAYS OF FIRE: Bush and Cheney in the White House By Peter Baker. On a special episode of the podcast, taped live, editors from The New York Times Book Review discuss this years outstanding fiction and nonfiction. By Rajiv Chandrasekaran. REDEPLOYMENT By Phil Klay. THE DOOR By Magda Szabo. BRING UP THE BODIES By Hilary Mantel. Even if she shouldnt have to play it., THE LATECOMER, by Jean Hanff Korelitz. PRIESTDADDY By Patricia Lockwood. 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. His debut collection, full of surprising drama, offers a fresh view of the precarious lives of marginalized people in the 21st century. THE LAY OF THE LAND By Richard Ford. The important part of that equation isnt summer, anyway; its reading. Kwon, writes. 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. PREP By Curtis Sittenfeld. THE LOOMING TOWER: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 By Lawrence Wright. THE POWER By Naomi Alderman. Byrnes biography arrives at a time of rekindled interest. Both authors suggest that some form of national service might be a way to bind the national wounds. RED COMET: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath By Heather Clark. Reading that book in that car at that time transformed one of the worst parts of traveling the actual traveling into an interlude of delight. And listen to us on the Book Review podcast. 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. This debut drops readers into the Canary Islands in the early 2000s. 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. HOMELAND ELEGIES By Ayad Akhtar. WAVE By Sonali Deraniyagala. RAYMOND CARVER: A Writers Life By Carol Sklenicka. By Roz Chast. SMALL FRY: A Memoir By Lisa Brennan-Jobs. Now that some of us are planning to travel again, however tentatively, its time to consider the delicious question of vacation reading. THE WORLD IS WHAT IT IS: The Authorized Biography of V. S. Naipaul By Patrick French. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/09/books/review/10-new-books-we-recommend-this-week.html. WILL IN THE WORLD: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare By Stephen Greenblatt. We hope youll enjoy, and perhaps find inspiration in, the Best Books of years past. THE SUMMER PLACE, by Jennifer Weiner. Its protagonists reinvent themselves with astonishing ingenuity. THE SAVAGE DETECTIVES By Roberto Bolao. Herzog developed a friendship with Onoda before the ex-soldier died in 2014. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/21/books/summer-reading-suggestions.html, An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us, How You Get Famous: Ten Years of Drag Madness in Brooklyn, I Used to Live Here Once: The Haunted Life of Jean Rhys, Also a Poet: Frank OHara, My Father, and Me, The Last Resort: A Chronicle of Paradise, Profit, and Peril at the Beach. Each fall, the editors of the Times Book Review select the best fiction and nonfiction titles of the year. WAR TRASH By Ha Jin. But, really, what is time? It is a great story. AMERICAN PRISON: A Reporter's Undercover Journey Into the Business of Punishment By Shane Bauer. OF SPECULATION By Jenny Offill. 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. APOLLOS ANGELS: A History of Ballet By Jennifer Homans. THE EMPERORS CHILDREN By Claire Messud. ON JUNETEENTH By Annette Gordon-Reed. Wayne Koestenbaum, reviewing it, calls the book a meticulously researched, century-spanning chronicle of queer life that captures, with a plain-spoken yet lyric touch, the locales power to stun and shame, to give pleasure and symbolize evanescence., THE SHORE, by Katie Runde. THE EVOLUTION OF BEAUTY: How Darwins Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World and Us By Richard O. Prum. Fukuyama writes with a crystalline rationality, Joe Klein writes in a review that also considers Yascha Mounks The Great Experiment (below). I generally choose mine in the manner of a bride organizing her something old, something new accessories. THE CLUB By Leo Damrosch. 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.. In this earnest, provocative debut novel, a mother and daughter take different approaches to the impending gentrification of their Dominican neighborhood in New York City. Parletts concise and personal history of the legendary gay enclave off Long Islands South Shore brings in everyone from Walt Whitman to Andy Warhol, but never devolves into a sepia-hued exercise in nostalgia. NO VISIBLE BRUISES By Rachel Louise Snyder. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Editors at The Times Book Review choose the best fiction and nonfiction titles this year. WAR By Margaret MacMillan. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. The years best books, selected by the editors of The New York Times Book Review. An Existential Detective Story By Jim Holt. You Made a Fool of Death With Your Beauty is an unabashed ode to living with, and despite, pain and mortality, our reviewer, R.O. The Latecomer is consistently surprising. A CHILDRENS BIBLE By Lydia Millet. ROOM By Emma Donoghue. THE LOVE SONGS OF W.E.B. SATURDAY By Ian McEwan. Millard has earned her legions of admirers, Edward Dolnick writes in his review. Anyone can read what you share. THE PERFECT NANNY By Leila Slimani. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $30.) From a wildfire photographer to a teenage misanthrope, these authors reflect on pain, courage and belonging. 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.