100 Notable Books of 2024
Here is the standout fiction and nonfiction of the year, selected by the staff of The New York Times Book Review.
As you browse, you can keep track of how many you’ve read or want to read. By the time you reach No. 100, you’ll have a personalized reading list to share. (Want to be among the first to see our 10 Best Books? Sign up to receive our newsletter.)
Fiction
SEXY PERIMENOPAUSE FICTION
ALL FOURS by Miranda July
The unnamed heroine of July’s gaspingly explicit comic novel plans a cross-country road trip, only to stop 30 minutes from home. There she lavishly redecorates a motel room and begins an odd but passionate affair with a younger man who works at a rental-car agency.
For fans of “Big Swiss” by Jen BeaginI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
SPECULATIVE FICTION
BEAUTYLAND by Marie-Helene Bertino
In 1970s Philadelphia, an alien girl sent to Earth before she’s born communicates with her fellow life-forms via fax as she helps gather intel about whether our planet is habitable. This funny-sad novel follows the girl and her single mother as they find the means to persevere.
For fans of “The Book of Strange New Things” by Michel Faber and “Contact” by Carl SaganI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
NOIR
BLACK RIVER by Nilanjana Roy
This brilliant, brutal and utterly affecting novel, about the murder of an 8-year-old child in rural India, uses the trappings of the mystery to examine deeper ills in the entire country.
For fans of “The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida” by Shehan KarunatilakaI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
POETRY
BLUFF by Danez Smith
Smith’s poetry balances a delight in the possibilities of language with an innate skepticism about its use in the world; here is a poet who nurses the tension between art and action and exhorts readers to acknowledge injustice while appreciating the chaotic nature of human existence.
For fans of “American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin” by Terrance Hayes and “Ordinary Beast” by Nicole SealeyI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
FANTASY EPIC
THE BOOK OF LOVE by Kelly Link
After three teenagers are brought back from the dead, the magic-wielding band teacher who revived them gives them a series of tasks to stay alive. This is the first novel from a master of the short story, and it pushes our understanding of what fantasy can be.
For fans of “Ninth House” by Leigh Bardugo and “Neverworld Wake” by Marisha PesslI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
ARTHURIAN FANTASY
THE BRIGHT SWORD by Lev Grossman
Grossman, who is best known for his Magicians series, is at the top of his game with this take on the myth of King Arthur, which resoundingly earns its place among the best of Arthurian tales. The novel follows a knight who helps lead a ragtag band to rebuild Camelot in the wake of the king’s death.
For fans of “Wolf Hall” by Hilary MantelI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
LITERARY FICTION
THE COIN by Yasmin Zaher
The narrator of this smart and sneering novel of capital and its consequences is an unnamed Palestinian schoolteacher in New York City who becomes involved in a scheme to buy Hermès Birkin bags and scalp them to “trashy and unworthy” buyers. In a spiraling, hallucinogenic plot, the narrator seesaws between jaded American consumerism and the sadness and guilt of displacement.
For fans of “The Guest” by Emma Cline and “My Year of Rest and Relaxation” by Ottessa MoshfeghI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
MIXED-RACE DRAMEDY
COLORED TELEVISION by Danzy Senna
The eternal conflict between making art and selling out gets a fresh take in Senna’s funny, foxy and fleet new novel about a struggling mixed-race couple — she’s a writer, he’s a painter — in Los Angeles. The jokes are good, the punches land, and the dialogue is tart: You often feel you’re listening in on a three-bottles-into-it dinner party.
For fans of “Erasure” by Percival Everett and “All Fours” by Miranda JulyI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
LITERARY FICTION WITH A SOUPÇON OF SPY
CREATION LAKE by Rachel Kushner
An American agent infiltrates a commune of French environmentalists in Kushner’s philosophical rendition of the spy novel, which blends pointed comic observation with earnestness in vinaigrette harmony. You know from this book’s opening paragraphs that you’re in the hands of a major writer, one with a gift for almost effortless intellectual penetration.
For fans of “Birnam Wood” by Eleanor Catton and “Already Dead” by Denis JohnsonI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
SPECULATIVE FICTION
DEAD IN LONG BEACH, CALIFORNIA by Venita Blackburn
Blackburn’s first novel (after two inventive short story collections) is an experimental and disarmingly funny look at death and loss. Narrated by dystopian artificial intelligence machines, the story follows a woman who impersonates her brother by texting from his phone after his suicide.
For fans of “Death Valley” by Melissa Broder and “The Fifth Season” by N.K. JemisinI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
HISTORICAL FICTION
THE EMPUSIUM by Olga Tokarczuk
In 1913, at a health resort in what is now Poland, a shy and sickly student discovers a terrible secret: Every year around the first full moon in November, a man, sometimes two, is torn to pieces in the nearby forest. This novel by the 2018 Nobel laureate, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones, pits nature against the state and the social world, with a particular emphasis on gender.
For fans of “When We Cease to Understand the World” by Benjamín Labatut and “Trust” by Hernan DiazI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
HISTORICAL FANTASY
THE FAMILIAR by Leigh Bardugo
A lowly servant girl in 16th-century Spain has a secret: There’s magic in her fingertips, perhaps the kind that anxious kings and other assorted schemers would kill for. The best-selling fantasist Bardugo infuses this new standalone novel with both rich historical detail and a heady sense of place and romance.
For fans of “Spinning Silver” by Naomi Novik and “Shadow of Night” by Deborah HarknessI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
POETRY
A FILM IN WHICH I PLAY EVERYONE by Mary Jo Bang
The poems in Bang’s latest collection, her ninth, are full of pleasure, color, sound and light — but also torment.
For fans of “The Captain Asks for a Show of Hands” by Nick Flynn and “Exit Opera” by Kim AddonizioI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
POETRY
FOREST OF NOISE by Mosab Abu Toha
Written in the months since Israel’s invasion of Gaza, these poems conjure memories of orange trees, lost family and brutal airstrikes with palpable grief and uncertainty. “Even our souls,” writes Abu Toha, a Palestinian poet, “get stuck under the rubble.”
For fans of “The Country Between Us” by Carolyn ForchéI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
SUMMER ROM-COM
FUNNY STORY by Emily Henry
In this heartfelt and humorous romp, a librarian and a bartender move in together after their respective partners leave them for each other. Though they’re polar opposites — she’s introspective and insecure; he’s gregarious but emotionally guarded — they have an immediate connection. This book pulls out all of Henry’s signature stops: sparkling banter, thoughtfully rendered family trauma and a charming community of side characters.
For fans of “Georgie All Along” by Kate Clayborn and “Party of Two” by Jasmine GuilloryI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
HORROR
GHOSTROOTS by ’Pemi Aguda
These stories, set in an alternate version of Lagos, Nigeria, in which supernatural phenomena make the impossible commonplace, unflinchingly explore complicated human emotions. Wildly inventive and odd, but written with surgeonlike precision, they herald the arrival of a major voice in speculative fiction.
For fans of “Magic for Beginners” by Kelly LinkI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
THRILLER
THE GOD OF THE WOODS by Liz Moore
A pair of missing siblings at an Adirondack summer camp spark a reckoning about the powerful, wealthy and possibly wicked family whose house — and presence — loom over the lakeside idyll.
For fans of “The Fever” by Megan Abbott and “Saint X” by Alexis SchaitkinI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
LITERARY FICTION
GODWIN by Joseph O’Neill
This globe-trotting novel by the author of “Netherland” chronicles the quest of a man named Mark Wolfe to find a mysterious soccer prodigy in West Africa and the unraveling of his workplace back in Pittsburgh. Mark shares narratorial duties with his colleague Lakesha Williams; their stories build into a study of greed and ambition that our critic called “populous, lively and intellectually challenging.”
For fans of “The Darling” by Russell BanksI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
ROMANTIC COMEDY
GOOD MATERIAL by Dolly Alderton
Alderton’s novel, about a 35-year-old struggling to make sense of a breakup, delivers the most delightful aspects of romantic comedy — snappy dialogue, realistic relationship dynamics, funny meet-cutes and misunderstandings — and leaves behind clichéd gender roles and the traditional marriage plot.
For fans of “Romantic Comedy” by Curtis Sittenfeld and “Lessons in Chemistry” by Bonnie GarmusI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
POLITICAL FICTION
GREAT EXPECTATIONS by Vinson Cunningham
In this impressive first novel, a Black campaign aide coolly observes as aspiring power players angle to connect with a candidate who more than resembles Barack Obama.
For fans of “Primary Colors” by AnonymousI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
PUNCHY DEBUT
HEADSHOT by Rita Bullwinkel
Set at a young women’s boxing tournament in Reno, Nev., this novel centers on eight contestants, and the fights — physical and emotional — they bring to the ring. As our critic wrote, this story’s impact “lasts a long time, like a sharp fist to your shoulder.”
For fans of “Chain-Gang All-Stars” by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah and “The Swimmers” by Julie OtsukaI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
THRILLER
THE HUNTER by Tana French
French’s moody, mesmerizing thriller — a sequel of sorts to “The Searcher” — paints a rich portrait of a rural community in western Ireland roiling with “unseen things,” where a Chicago cop has decided to retire.
For fans of “Case Histories” by Kate AtkinsonI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
SAD IRISH MILLENIAL FICTION
INTERMEZZO by Sally Rooney
Rooney’s latest novel is about brothers, a successful barrister and a competitive chess player, who are mourning the death of their father and navigating the lingering bitterness between them. But its primary subject, as in all of Rooney’s work, is love in its various permutations, the minutiae of falling in and out of it.
For fans of “The Idiot” by Elif Batuman and “Kairos” by Jenny ErpenbeckI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
REIMAGINED CLASSIC
JAMES by Percival Everett
In this reworking of the “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” Jim, the enslaved man who accompanies Huck down the Mississippi River, is the narrator, and he recounts the classic tale in a language that is his own, with surprising details that reveal a far more resourceful, cunning and powerful character than we knew.
For fans of “Demon Copperhead” by Barbara Kingsolver and “The Fraud” by Zadie SmithI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
POETRY
JOY IN SERVICE ON RUE TAGORE by Paul Muldoon
Muldoon’s latest poetry collection continues his longtime trick of marshaling obscure references into fluent, fun and rollicking lyrics that lull you in with their musicality, then punch you in the gut with their full force once you decipher their meanings.
For fans of “The Rain in Portugal” by Billy Collins and “House of Lords and Commons” by Ishion HutchinsonI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
FAMILY SAGA
LONG ISLAND COMPROMISE by Taffy Brodesser-Akner
Based on a true story, this novel follows a dysfunctional suburban family decades after the father, a prominent businessman, is kidnapped from his driveway. His adult children lay out the ways they are screwed up by latent trauma, their father’s repression and the wealth that insulates them.
For fans of “The Bee Sting” by Paul Murray and “White Teeth” by Zadie SmithI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
UNCATEGORIZABLE
MARTYR! by Kaveh Akbar
A young Iranian American aspiring poet and recovering addict grieves his parents’ deaths while fantasizing about his own in Akbar’s remarkable first novel, which, haunted by death, also teems with life — in the inventive beauty of its sentences, the vividness of its characters and the surprising twists of its plot.
For fans of “The White Tiger” by Aravind Adiga and “Empty Hearts” by Juli ZehI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
LITERARY FICTION
THE MIGHTY RED by Louise Erdrich
A love triangle is at the heart of this novel, which is set against the backdrop of a North Dakota beet farm during the economic meltdown of 2008-9. It’s as much about the financial crash and environmental destruction as it is about the people most impacted by these devastations.
For fans of “Olive Kitteridge” by Elizabeth StroutI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
POETRY
MODERN POETRY by Diane Seuss
The grandiose title is tongue in cheek — mostly. These witty, sexy, sometimes heartbreakingly personal lyrics demonstrate how ordinary life can be the stuff of poetry, and also, thrillingly, how poetry can be a vital part of modern life.
For fans of “Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry” by John Murillo and “Context Collapse” by Ryan RubyI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
GRAPHIC NOVEL
MY FAVORITE THING IS MONSTERS, BOOK 2 by Emil Ferris
If you read Ferris’s original 2017 graphic novel, you can’t forget it: a beguiling, haunted hybrid of personal memoir, murder mystery and 20th-century time portal. This surreal and densely referential follow-up, drawn in Ferris’s signature cross-hatched style, continues to follow 10-year-old Karen Reyes in circa-1968 Chicago as she wrestles with loss, sexual identity and a host of secrets.
For fans of “Feeding Ghosts” by Tessa HullsI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
MYSTERY
THE MYSTERIOUS CASE OF THE ALPERTON ANGELS by Janice Hallett
A modern take on the epistolary novel, this riveting mystery lets readers sift through texts, emails and WhatsApp messages alongside a true-crime journalist in an effort to discover the real story behind a series of occult deaths.
For fans of “Magpie Murders” by Anthony HorowitzI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
LITERARY FICTION
NEIGHBORS AND OTHER STORIES by Diane Oliver
This deceptively powerful posthumous collection by a writer who died at 22 follows the everyday routines of Black families as they negotiate separate but equal Jim Crow strictures, only to discover uglier truths.
For fans of “Slapboxing With Jesus” by Victor LaValle and “Drown” by Junot DíazI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
LITERARY FICTION
OUR EVENINGS by Alan Hollinghurst
Hollinghurst’s latest brings readers deep into the trials and tribulations of Dave Win, an English Burmese actor confronting confusing relationships, his emerging sexuality, racism and England’s changing political climate over the course of his life, all tied together by Hollinghurst’s keen eye and affecting prose.
For fans of “NW” by Zadie SmithI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
GOURMET EUROTRIP ROMANCE
THE PAIRING by Casey McQuiston
In the latest queer romance from the author of “Red, White & Royal Blue,” Theo and Kit, two exes who haven’t seen each other since their disastrous breakup four years ago, find themselves on the same European food tour. The book is a sexy, sensory feast, weaving together luscious descriptions of petal-pink pastries, salted Negronis and lavender-strewn countrysides amid the inferno of their rekindled passion.
For fans of “The Day of the Duchess” by Sarah MacLean and “Yerba Buena” by Nina LaCourI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
LITERARY FICTION
PIGLET by Lottie Hazell
Two weeks before her wedding, a cookbook editor at a London publishing house discovers that her fiancé is cheating on her. Determined to meet her family’s ridiculously high expectations, and hungry (in every sense of the word) for perfection, she forges ahead with plans for the wedding of everyone else’s dreams.
For fans of “The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake” by Aimee Bender and “Nightbitch” by Rachel YoderI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
SCIENCE FICTION
THE PRACTICE, THE HORIZON AND THE CHAIN by Sofia Samatar
Written with sly and slicing grace, this far-future fable is set on spaceships stratified into rigid social hierarchies. A professor plucks a boy from the lowest level, called the Hold, to be equal parts educated by and exhibited to the faculty and other students. But what the boy and professor learn from each other changes them both, and could transform their worlds.
For fans of “The Saint of Bright Doors” by Vajra ChandrasekeraI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
DOWN UNDER FEVER DREAM
PRAISEWORTHY by Alexis Wright
This bracing satire of clashing worldviews in Australia begins with a toxic haze settling over an Aboriginal town, where one resident believes he can fight climate change by replacing conventional transport with hordes of donkeys. The novel only gets stranger and funnier from there.
For fans of “Safe Haven” by Shankari ChandranI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
SCIENCE FICTION
RAKESFALL by Vajra Chandrasekera
A book in 10 parts, “Rakesfall” shifts wildly in structure and narration. Uniting all the threads is a kind of oscillating theme: Souls return over time, sometimes as two people, sometimes four or more, engaged with each other over the thorny question of how to endure fascism and kill kings.
For fans of “This Is How You Lose the Time War” by Amal El-Mohtar and Max GladstoneI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
LITERARY FICTION
REBOOT by Justin Taylor
This satire of modern media and pop culture follows a former child actor who is trying to revive the TV show that made him famous. Taylor delves into the worlds of online fandom while exploring the inner life of a man seeking redemption — and something meaningful to do.
For fans of “Beautiful Ruins” by Jess WalterI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
NSFW STORIES
REJECTION by Tony Tulathimutte
This collection of linked stories tracks the losers in the great American popularity contest: shoe gazers who are mostly short and unattractive, and cut from the herd. Tulathimutte is writing about alienation and skin starvation, a longing for the nonexistent touches of friends and the embraces of lovers.
For fans of “American Psycho” by Bret Easton Ellis and “Homesick for Another World” by Ottessa MoshfeghI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
LITERARY FICTION
THE SAFEKEEP by Yael van der Wouden
In this taut, remarkable novel set in 1960s Amsterdam, Isabel clings to her childhood home after the death of her mother, fixating on a broken china plate. When her brother brings his girlfriend into the house, Isabel is rude to the point of cruelty — until the novel’s psychological drama gives way to a love story of such intensity that it is easy to forget about the broken china.
For fans of “Eastbound” by Maylis de Kerangal and “We Do What We Do in the Dark” by Michelle HartI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
PUBLISHING WORLD THRILLER
THE SEQUEL by Jean Hanff Korelitz
This delicious follow-up to “The Plot” finds Anna Williams-Bonner basking in literary acclaim (and moola from her husband’s estate) — until pesky excerpts from a manuscript resurface and put questions of authorship, and the publishing world’s values, under the microscope.
For fans of “Palace of the Drowned” by Christine Mangan and “Last Resort” by Andrew LipsteinI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
LITERARY FICTION
SHRED SISTERS by Betsy Lerner
This coming-of-age novel, overcast with the inconstant cloud of mental illness, maps the effect of a daughter’s volatility on her parents and younger sister — and probes what exactly it means for love to be unconditional.
For fans of “My Sister, the Serial Killer” by Oyinkan Braithwaite and “The Most Fun We Ever Had” by Claire LombardoI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
LITERARY FICTION
THE SILENCE OF THE CHOIR by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr
Seventy-two migrants settle in a small Sicilian town in this polyphonic novel, translated into English by Alison Anderson. Sarr — who won the Prix Goncourt, France’s most prestigious literary prize, in 2021 — not only follows the newcomers, but also considers the inner lives of the villagers, whose reactions vary considerably.
For fans of “The Wrong End of the Telescope” by Rabih Alameddine and “Girl, Woman, Other” by Bernardine EvaristoI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
THRILLER
SMOKE KINGS by Jahmal Mayfield
Can there ever be restitution for the harm done to generations of Black people in America? Mayfield takes the question to a provocative extreme in this thriller, which follows a group of four friends as they kidnap descendants of people who long ago committed racially motivated hate crimes.
For fans of “Friday Black” by Nana Kwame Adjei-BrenyahI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
LITERARY FICTION
SOMEONE LIKE US by Dinaw Mengestu
Mengestu’s brilliantly slippery novel centers on a journalist who is supposed to spend Christmas with his wife and young son in the Virginia suburb where his Ethiopian immigrant mother lives; instead, he ends up in Chicago investigating the criminal record of the man he assumes is his father.
For fans of “Netherland” by Joseph O’Neill and “Native Speaker” by Chang-rae LeeI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
HISTORICAL FAMILY SAGA
WANDERING STARS by Tommy Orange
This follow-up to Orange’s debut, “There There,” is part prequel and part sequel; it trails the young survivor of a 19th-century massacre of Native Americans, chronicling not just his harsh fate but also those of his descendants. In its second half, the novel enters 21st-century Oakland, following the family in the aftermath of a shooting.
For fans of “Martyr!” by Kaveh AkbarI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
HISTORICAL FICTION
WHALE FALL by Elizabeth O’Connor
Brief, blunt and exquisite, O’Connor’s debut is set in the fall of 1938 on a Welsh island with a population of 47, including the bright, restless 18-year-old Manod. Unsettling disruptions to the landscape include a whale corpse washed up on the beach and English ethnographers who enlist Manod’s help but woefully distort island life in their work.
For fans of “Charlotte Gray” by Sebastian Faulks and “The Whalebone Theatre” by Joanna QuinnI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
POIGNANT AUTOFICTION
WHAT DOES IT FEEL LIKE? by Sophie Kinsella
A best-selling author and mother of five wakes up from surgery to remove a brain tumor and needs to be reminded, again and again, how she has arrived at this point. Kinsella’s autobiographical novella is both devastating and, against all odds, devastatingly funny.
For fans of “The Fault in Our Stars” by John Green and “Between Two Kingdoms” by Suleika JaouadI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
LITERARY FICTION
WILD HOUSES by Colin Barrett
After a poorly planned abduction upends the lives of several young characters in a rural Irish town, Barrett shifts gracefully between the kidnappee, who’s being held in a basement by two unstable brothers, and his intrepid girlfriend, who sets out to find him.
For fans of “Close to Home” by Michael Magee and “Mayflies” by Andrew O’HaganI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
HISTORICAL FICTION
THE WOMEN by Kristin Hannah
In her latest historical novel, Hannah shows the Vietnam War through the eyes of a combat nurse. But what the former debutante witnesses and experiences when she comes home from the war is the true gut punch of this timely story.
For fans of “Absolution” by Alice McDermott and “The Berry Pickers” by Amanda PetersI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
HALLUCINOGENIC HISTORICAL FICTION
YOU DREAMED OF EMPIRES by Álvaro Enrigue
The Mexican writer Enrigue recasts the fateful meeting between Hernán Cortés and the Aztecs in this hallucinatory novel, translated by Natasha Wimmer. Moctezuma is fearsome yet depressed, often tripping on magic mushrooms, while the conquistadors grow increasingly anxious.
For fans of “Tell Them of Battles, Kings, and Elephants” by Mathias Énard and “Civilizations” by Laurent BinetI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
QUEER SPORTS ROMANCE
YOU SHOULD BE SO LUCKY by Cat Sebastian
A story about losing love and losing in baseball and finding unexpected love despite all your mistakes, this story cuts to the heart of what it means to be human (and also, there’s soup).
For fans of “Evvie Drake Starts Over” by Linda HolmesI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
Nonfiction
BIOGRAPHY
THE ACHILLES TRAP by Steve Coll
This history stretches from Hussein’s earliest days in power to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003, tracking the dictator’s state of mind with the help of 2,000 hours of rarely accessed audio from high-level meetings that Hussein “recorded as assiduously as Richard Nixon,” Coll says.
For fans of “The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq” by George Packer and “Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq” by Thomas E. RicksI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
FEEL-BAD MEMOIR
ALL THE WORST HUMANS by Phil Elwood
This memoir by a former public relations operative for the wealthy and the corrupt is greasy fun — stocked with scoundrels, cocktails and guns, and showing off the charm and quick wit that catapulted Elwood to the top of the sleazy, amoral world of high-end spin.
For fans of “Thank You for Smoking” by Christopher BuckleyI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
ESSAYS
ALL THINGS ARE TOO SMALL by Becca Rothfeld
A striking debut by a young critic who has been heralded as a throwback to an era of livelier discourse. Rothfeld has published widely and works currently as a nonfiction book critic for The Washington Post; her interests range far, but these essays are united by a plea for more excess in all things, especially thought.
For fans of “Having and Being Had” by Eula Biss and “Stranger Faces” by Namwali SerpellI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
THE KIDS ARE NOT ALL RIGHT
THE ANXIOUS GENERATION by Jonathan Haidt
In “The Coddling of the American Mind,” Haidt took a hard stand against helicopter parenting. In this pugnacious follow-up, he turns to what he sees as technology’s dangers for young people. Haidt, a digital absolutist, cedes no ground on the issue of social media.
For fans of “Who’s Raising the Kids?: Big Tech, Big Business, and the Lives of Children” by Susan Linn and “My Age of Anxiety: Fear, Hope, Dread, and the Search for Peace of Mind” by Scott StosselI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
CULINARY MEMOIR
BE READY WHEN THE LUCK HAPPENS by Ina Garten
Garten’s gift has been to make everything look effortless: the recipes in her 13 cookbooks; the glorious array of salads and cupcakes in her former food store, Barefoot Contessa; the many occasions when she’s advised viewers to substitute store-bought items for homemade on the Food Network. In this memoir, however, she shows how much luck and labor it took to achieve the success that she clearly enjoys.
For fans of “Love, Loss and What We Ate: A Memoir” by Padma Lakshmi and “Eat a Peach: A Memoir” by David ChangI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
LITERARY CRITICISM
THE BLACK BOX by Henry Louis Gates Jr.
In his latest book, the Harvard scholar shows how African American writers have used the written word to shape their reality despite constraints imposed on them from outside, using the metaphor of the box to reflect ordeals withstood and survived since Africans were first brought to this continent.
For fans of “Self-Portrait in Black and White: Unlearning Race” by Thomas Chatterton Williams and “The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke” by Jeffrey C. StewartI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
PHILOSOPHICAL FAMILY MEMOIR
THE BLACK UTOPIANS by Aaron Robertson
The farm Robertson’s grandparents owned in Promise Land, Tenn., a town founded by formerly enslaved people after the Civil War, serves as the springboard for this sensitive, often deeply personal exploration of utopianism in Black American thought and life.
For fans of “The Unsettled” by Ayana Mathis and “The New Naturals” by Gabriel BumpI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
FEMINIST HISTORY
THE BLUESTOCKINGS by Susannah Gibson
Before Mary Wollstonecraft, Susan B. Anthony or Virginia Woolf, there were the Bluestockings, a group of British women writers and thinkers who, as Gibson writes in this intimate social history, transgressed sexist conventions to educate themselves, produce books on a range of subjects and contribute to some of England’s liveliest salons.
For fans of “The Club: Johnson, Boswell, and the Friends Who Shaped an Age” by Leo Damrosch and “The Exceptions: Nancy Hopkins, MIT, and the Fight for Women in Science” by Kate ZernikeI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
NARRATIVE NONFICTION
CHALLENGER by Adam Higginbotham
As recounted in this history of the 1986 space shuttle disaster, the tragedy was a preventable lesson in hubris and human error. Higginbotham is an intrepid journalist and skillful storyteller who takes care to humanize the players involved even as he focuses on the relentless string of snafus that plagued the mission.
For fans of “Fire Weather: A True Story From a Hotter World” by John VaillantI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
FOOD BIOGRAPHY
CHOP FRY WATCH LEARN by Michelle T. King
In 1971, this newspaper called Fu Pei-mei “the Julia Child of Chinese cooking.” But as King’s biography notes, it was really the other way around: The legendary Fu, who taught generations to cook dishes from all over China, preceded Child on TV by two months. King interviews women who learned from Fu’s cookbooks and show, making the case that she was a cultural force.
For fans of “Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking: A Memoir of Food and Longing” by Anya von Bremzen and “Appetite For Life: The Biography of Julia Child” by Noel Riley FitchI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
RELIGION
CIRCLE OF HOPE by Eliza Griswold
As many American evangelical congregations moved to the political right over the past decade, Circle of Hope, in Philadelphia, became more progressive. With sensitivity and compassion, Griswold chronicles the church’s fateful decision to embrace a mission of racial justice, delivering, in her account of the crisis that followed, a portrait in miniature of our passionate, divided nation.
For fans of “The Kingdom, The Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism” by Tim Alberta and “Reading Genesis” by Marilynne RobinsonI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
FILM HISTORY
COCKTAILS WITH GEORGE AND MARTHA by Philip Gefter
Rarely seen diary entries from the screenwriter who adapted Edward Albee’s Broadway hit are a highlight of this unapologetically obsessive behind-the-scenes look at the classic film starring Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor.
For fans of “Alright, Alright, Alright: The Oral History of Richard Linklater’s ‘Dazed and Confused’” by Melissa MaerzI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
WWII MEMOIR
COLD CREMATORIUM by József Debreczeni
In this transcendent Holocaust memoir by a journalist and poet internee, translated by Paul Olchváry, the details of the concentration camps and their horrors are rendered so precisely that any critical distance collapses. Debreczeni’s account was published in 1950 and lay obscure for decades because of Cold War politics.
For fans of “Fateless” by Imre Kertész and “Night” by Elie WieselI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
MEDIA MEMOIR
CONNIE by Connie Chung
Chung’s entertaining and revealing memoir traces the triumphs and disappointments of her groundbreaking career in broadcast journalism, which reached its pinnacle when she was named co-anchor of the “CBS Evening News” alongside Dan Rather — only to see herself sidelined by a controlling Rather and by sexism in the industry.
For fans of “The Rulebreaker: The Life and Times of Barbara Walters” by Susan Page and “Ticking Clock: Behind the Scenes at ‘60 Minutes,’” by Ira RosenI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
TV HISTORY
CUE THE SUN! by Emily Nussbaum
From “Queen for a Day” to “The Real World,” “Survivor” and “The Apprentice,” it’s all here in Nussbaum’s passionate, exquisitely told origin story of reality TV. With muscular prose and an exacting eye for detail, the New Yorker staff writer outlines how such shows united high and low art into a potent pop-culture concoction that we love to hate, hate to love and just can’t quit.
For fans of “When Women Invented Television: The Untold Story of the Female Powerhouses Who Pioneered the Way We Watch Today” by Jennifer Keishin ArmstrongI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
GLITZY DOWNTOWN MEMOIR
DO SOMETHING by Guy Trebay
Trebay is a veteran of the style wars: Prior to joining this paper, he did stints as a handbag designer, a busboy at Max’s Kansas City, a model and a reporter at The Village Voice, chronicling a lost New York that was as gritty as it was glamorous. Trebay knew everyone; this memoir is indeed a who’s who of that vanished Gotham. But more than that, it’s a love letter to a city, a life and a family, and to beauty itself.
For fans of “Love Goes to Buildings on Fire: Five Years in New York That Changed Music Forever” by Will Hermes and “M Train” by Patti SmithI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
CLASSICAL MUSIC HISTORY
EVERY VALLEY by Charles King
King uses Handel’s “Messiah,” possibly “the greatest piece of participatory art ever created,” as a hub whose spokes radiate outward to a host of key historical forces and personalities that characterize 18th-century Britain.
For fans of “Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph” by Jan SwaffordI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
CURRENT EVENTS
EVERYONE WHO IS GONE IS HERE by Jonathan Blitzer
This urgent and propulsive account of Latin American politics and immigration makes a persuasive case for a direct line from U.S. foreign policy in Central America to the current migrant crisis.
For fans of “Solito: A Memoir” by Javier Zamora and “One Mighty and Irresistible Tide: The Epic Struggle Over American Immigration, 1924-1965” by Jia Lynn YangI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
GRIEF MEMOIR
FI by Alexandra Fuller
In her fifth memoir, Fuller describes the sudden death of her 21-year-old son. Devastating as this elegant and honest account may be — it’s certainly not for the faint of heart — it also leaves the reader with a sense of having known a lovely and lively young man.
For fans of “Once More We Saw Stars: A Memoir” by Jayson Greene and “The Long Goodbye: A Memoir” by Meghan O’RourkeI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
SEX, DRUGS & TECHNO MEMOIR
HEALTH AND SAFETY by Emily Witt
Witt’s boyfriend, Andrew, started behaving erratically when pandemic lockdowns put an end to the underground party scene in Brooklyn’s Bushwick neighborhood. “Health and Safety” — which braids that scene, Andrew’s breakdown and Witt’s work as a journalist during the first Trump administration — also encompasses a bigger breakdown, one that eroded the boundaries between their subculture and the world at large.
For fans of “The Vulnerables” by Sigrid Nunez and “The Best Minds: A Story of Friendship, Madness, and the Tragedy of Good Intentions” by Jonathan RosenI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
ECONOMICS
THE HIDDEN GLOBE by Atossa Araxia Abrahamian
A journalist who grew up in Geneva, Abrahamian explores the spread of freeports, free zones and other “extraterritorial domains” of the sort common in her hometown, all created to benefit wealthy people or countries by offering them special perks or exempting them from local laws and regulations.
For fans of “Unruly Places: Lost Spaces, Secret Cities, and Other Inscrutable Geographies” by Alastair Bonnett and “How the World Ran Out of Everything: Inside the Global Supply Chain” by Peter S. GoodmanI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
TRANSITION MEMOIR
I HEARD HER CALL MY NAME by Lucy Sante
Sante, who for decades has been a leading literary and cultural critic, here traces her late-in-life gender transition, reflecting on a career of seeking truths through writing while hiding an important truth about herself. The book vividly presents New York in the 1970s and documents a transformation both internal and external.
For fans of “Come Back in September: A Literary Education on West Sixty-Seventh Street, Manhattan” by Darryl Pinckney and “Just Kids” by Patti SmithI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
ESSAYS
I JUST KEEP TALKING by Nell Irvin Painter
Painter, a historian and author who left academia to attend art school at the age of 64, highlights her original mind and irreverent wit in this collection, with reflections on Black American figures including Sojourner Truth, Martin R. Delany and Clarence Thomas, interspersed with artwork by Painter herself.
For fans of “Lessons for Survival: Mothering Against ‘the Apocalypse’” by Emily RaboteauI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
POLITICAL BIOGRAPHY
JOHN LEWIS by David Greenberg
This panoramic and richly insightful biography tells the full story of the civil rights hero who became a long-serving U.S. representative and a moral force in America. It gives Lewis’s post-civil-rights story the depth of attention it deserves — and shows how this mild-mannered seminarian submerged his pacifist tendencies to succeed in the bare-knuckled world of electoral politics.
For fans of “You Have to Be Prepared to Die Before You Can Begin to Live: Ten Weeks in Birmingam That Changed America” by Paul Kix and “King: A Life” by Jonathan EigI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
SURVIVAL MEMOIR
KNIFE by Salman Rushdie
In this candid, plain-spoken memoir, Rushdie recalls the attempted assassination he survived in 2022 during a presentation about keeping the world’s writers safe from harm. His attacker had piranhic energy. He also had a knife. Rushdie lost an eye, but he has slowly recovered thanks to the attentive care of doctors and the wife he celebrates here.
For fans of “Experience: A Memoir” by Martin AmisI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
LINGUISTIC ANTHROPOLOGY
LANGUAGE CITY by Ross Perlin
In this history of New York, Perlin, a linguist, focuses on residents fighting to preserve their spoken heritages. The result is sweeping and intimate, simultaneously a call to arms and a tribute to a place that contains almost as many tongues as speakers.
For fans of “Names of New York: Discovering the City’s Past, Present, and Future Through Its Place Names” by Joshua Jelly-Schapiro and “New Yorkers: A City and Its People in Our Time” by Craig TaylorI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
SUPREME COURT MEMOIR
LOVELY ONE by Ketanji Brown Jackson
Crediting the mentors who lifted her up on her path to success, this memoir by the Supreme Court’s newest justice is deeply personal and full of hope, and highlights a fairy-tale marriage to her college boyfriend.
For fans of “Becoming” by Michelle Obama and “Up Home: One Girl’s Journey” by Ruth J. SimmonsI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
AMERICAN HISTORY
MADNESS by Antonia Hylton
Hylton spent a decade researching the history of Crownsville, a segregated mental hospital that operated in Maryland for 91 years. The result is not just a work of painstaking reporting, but a deeply human, often tragic story of an American failure to care for Black minds and bodies.
For fans of “Under the Skin: The Hidden Toll of Racism on American Lives and on the Health of Our Nation” by Linda Villarosa and “The Nickel Boys” by Colson WhiteheadI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
CURRENT EVENTS
THE MESSAGE by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Fusing a meditation on the political potential of storytelling with intimate accounts of trips to Senegal, where he visits the former slave-trading center Gorée Island; South Carolina, to support a high school instructor under fire for teaching his prize-winning book “Between the World and Me”; and the West Bank, where he witnesses life under the Israeli occupation, Coates decries injustice and the Western media’s complicity in it.
For fans of “A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy” by Nathan Thrall and “The Question of Palestine” by Edward SaidI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
CURRENT EVENTS
THE NEW INDIA by Rahul Bhatia
An Indian investigative journalist, Bhatia watched in dismay as relatives, friends and fellow citizens embraced the increasingly extreme politics of his country’s Hindu nationalist prime minister, Narendra Modi. In this ambitiously reported account, he chronicles India’s turn toward authoritarianism and violence through the stories of ordinary people and public figures.
For fans of “I Am on the Hit List: A Journalist’s Murder and the Rise of Autocracy in India” by Rollo Romig and “A Burning” by Megha MajumdarI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
SPORTS
THE NEW YORK GAME by Kevin Baker
What makes New York baseball unique, the novelist and historian argues in this insightful, beautifully crafted narrative — which concludes with the end of World War II — is its role as a chronicler of cultural change. Whatever baseball’s roots in cow pastures and small towns, it came of age as an urban game.
For fans of “Summer of ’49” by David HalberstamI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
FAMILY HISTORY MEMOIR
NO ONE GETS TO FALL APART by Sarah LaBrie
In her affecting debut, the TV writer chronicles her mother’s descent into what would eventually be diagnosed as schizophrenia, while also exploring the through-line of mental illness that snakes through her family history. In an inner monologue that reveals snippets of bizarre behavior, LaBrie also worries about her own tenuous grasp on emotional stability, imagining her mother’s mental illness “making its way through her into me.”
For fans of “The Best Minds: A Story of Friendship, Madness, and the Tragedy of Good Intentions” by Jonathan Rosen and “The Collected Schizophrenias: Essays” by Esmé Weijun WangI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
CURRENT EVENTS
PRIVATE REVOLUTIONS by Yuan Yang
For six years, Yuan Yang, a journalist, followed four very different young women as they navigated what she calls China’s “new social order” — a country changing dramatically into an industrial superpower. The result is a moving work of reportage that toggles between global and personal.
For fans of “Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China” by Jung Chang and “Sparks: China’s Underground Historians and Their Battle for the Future” by Ian JohnsonI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
POLITICAL BIOGRAPHY
REAGAN by Max Boot
Boot, a historian and foreign policy analyst, grew up idolizing Ronald Reagan. But in this measured, comprehensive biography of the 40th president, he explores the legacy of the Reagan years to ask whether they paved the way for Donald J. Trump, whose rise led Boot to abandon his embrace of the right.
For fans of “G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century” by Beverly Gage and “Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century” by George PackerI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
POSTCOLONIAL BIOGRAPHY
THE REBEL’S CLINIC by Adam Shatz
This absorbing biography of the Black psychiatrist, writer and revolutionary Frantz Fanon highlights a side of him that’s often eclipsed by his image as a zealous partisan — that of the caring doctor, who ran a secret clinic for Algerian rebels.
For fans of “Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life” by Jon Lee Anderson and “The Meursault Investigation” by Kamel DaoudI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
CURRENT EVENTS
THE RETURN OF GREAT POWERS by Jim Sciutto
Sciutto’s absorbing account of 21st-century brinkmanship takes readers from Ukraine in the days before Russia’s invasion to the Taiwan Strait, where Chinese jets flying overhead raise tensions across the region. The author also shows how the battles are waged not just on the ground and in the air, but also in undersea communication cables, across satellites in outer space and over the growing frontiers of artificial intelligence.
For fans of “Lenin’s Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire” by David Remnick and “New Cold Wars: China’s Rise, Russia’s Invasion, and America’s Struggle to Defend the West” by David E. Sanger with Mary K. BrooksI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
LITERARY CRITICISM
SALVAGE by Dionne Brand
Brand, a Trinidadian-born poet and novelist, wears her erudition lightly in this eloquent and witty book of essayistic meditations on English literary classics, teasing out the ways in which novels from Thackeray’s “Vanity Fair” to Charlotte Brontë’s “Jane Eyre” conceal within their pages the ravages of British colonialism for its Black and Indigenous subjects.
For fans of “The Fraud” by Zadie SmithI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
CURRENT EVENTS
SOLDIERS AND KINGS by Jason De León
A feat of immersive fieldwork, this account by an anthropologist, nearly seven years in the making, shines needed light on the lives of human smugglers, many of them fleeing the same violence and poverty as their clients, who ferry migrants across the southern border.
For fans of “The Snakehead: An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underworld and the American Dream” by Patrick Radden Keefe and “Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity” by Katherine BooI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
UNCOUPLING MEMOIR
SPLINTERS by Leslie Jamison
Jamison, who has previously written stylishly about her experiences with addiction, abortion and more, here delivers a searing account of divorce and the bewildering joys of new motherhood, cementing her status as one of America’s most talented self-chroniclers.
For fans of “Dept. of Speculation” by Jenny Offill and “Liars” by Sarah MangusoI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
POLITICS
STOLEN PRIDE by Arlie Russell Hochschild
The renowned sociologist returns with a sequel to her prescient “Strangers in Their Own Land,” a Trump country dispatch from the Deep South. This time, she takes stock of the financial and emotional struggles of an Appalachian coal mining town, where a caravan of white supremacists arrived to find new recruits shortly after Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential win.
For fans of “Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City” by Matthew Desmond and “An American Dreamer: Life in a Divided Country” by David FinkelI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
DANCE HISTORY
THE SWANS OF HARLEM by Karen Valby
For those who believe that the narrative of Black prima ballerinas begins and ends with Misty Copeland, Valby’s rich, prismatic portrait of the five dancers who formed the core of the Dance Theater of Harlem’s inaugural 1969 class offers a joyful and spirited corrective.
For fans of “Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race” by Margot Lee ShetterlyI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
BASKETBALL MEMOIR
THERE’S ALWAYS THIS YEAR by Hanif Abdurraqib
Growing up on the east side of Columbus, Ohio, Abdurraqib — a cultural critic and poet — was hugely influenced by LeBron James, but basketball was also a more personal utopia for him and his community, “our little slice of streetball heaven.”
For fans of “Shooting Stars” by LeBron James and Buzz BissingerI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
RELIGION
UNDIVIDED by Hahrie Han
When Han, a political scientist, learned that a mostly white and broadly conservative Cincinnati megachurch had resolved to fight racial injustice in its community, she decided to follow the story. The result is a sensitive study of admirable intentions, earnest action and the often painful price of real change.
For fans of “Circle of Hope: A Reckoning With Love, Power, and Justice in an American Church” by Eliza GriswoldI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
ADVENTURE MEMOIR
A WALK IN THE PARK by Kevin Fedarko
Two friends decide to walk the length of the Grand Canyon. What could go wrong? As this wildly entertaining book demonstrates, everything you can imagine, and then some. Fedarko takes us for a ride that’s often harrowing, frequently hilarious and full of wonderful nature writing.
For fans of “Wild” by Cheryl StrayedI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
AMERICAN HISTORY
WHEN THE CLOCK BROKE by John Ganz
For this account of America in the 1990s, Ganz ditches the familiar narrative about a decade of relative peace and prosperity for a disturbing tale of populists, nativists and demagogues who, acting on the margins of U.S. politics, helped shatter the post-Cold War consensus and usher in antidemocratic forces that plague the country today.
For fans of “Reaganland: America’s Right Turn, 1976-1980” by Rick PerlsteinI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
BIOGRAPHY
THE WIDE WIDE SEA by Hampton Sides
Sides tracks Captain Cook’s third and final voyage across the globe, painting a vivid and propulsive portrait of an explorer reckoning with the fallout of what he and others had wrought in expanding the map of Europe’s power.
For fans of “The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder” by David Grann and “The Empire of Necessity: Slavery, Freedom, and Deception in the New World” by Greg GrandinI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾
BIOGRAPHY OF A MARRIAGE
A WILDER SHORE by Camille Peri
Robert Louis Stevenson’s American wife, Fanny Van de Grift, was a powerful personality in her own right: an individualist who paid no mind to conventional gender roles, and a brave and sometimes reckless adventurer who encouraged Stevenson’s penchant for a wandering life.
For fans of “The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism” by Megan Marshall and “Alice James: A Biography” by Jean StrouseI’ve read itI want to read itBUY BOOK ▾