The Jackal, the Fox and Auld Lang Syne

Our critic recommends old and new books.

BY MOLLY YOUNG | NYTimes Books | Disclosure

For Kashana Cauley, Doomsday Isn’t So Hypothetical

The TV writer’s debut novel, “The Survivalists,” imagines a community of gun-stockpiling preppers in Brooklyn.

BY LAURA WARRELL | NYTimes Books | Disclosure

What a 1985 Novel Can Tell Us About Life in the 2020s: Almost Everything

Don DeLillo’s book “White Noise,” newly adapted for the screen by Noah Baumbach, precisely diagnosed the modern condition, Dana Spiotta writes.

BY DANA SPIOTTA | NYTimes Books | Disclosure

6 New Paperbacks to Read This Week

This week’s new paperback releases include Jami Attenberg’s memoir, a new translation of plays by Alexander Pushkin and much more.

BY MIGUEL SALAZAR | NYTimes Books | Disclosure

Rick Rubin Wants You to Read Sherlock Holmes Before You’re 21

“The earlier the better,” says the record producer and author of the forthcoming book “The Creative Act: A Way of Being.” “The stories are engaging and they train readers to look deeply into all they see. A great primer for awareness practice.”

Unknown Author | NYTimes Books | Disclosure

Does Best-Selling Advice Stand the Test of Time?

A look back on popular wisdom from five, 10 and 15 years ago reveals two truths and a big fat lie.

BY ELISABETH EGAN | NYTimes Books | Disclosure

Newly Published Visual Books, From Laurie Lipton to Plant Magic

A selection of recently published books.

Unknown Author | NYTimes Books | Disclosure

Art Spiegelman on Life With a ‘500-Pound Mouse Chasing Me’

Known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning comic book, “Maus,” the author has had a busy year, after the book was banned and jump-started a fresh debate about the sanitization of history. Frankly, he’s ready to get back to work.

BY ALEXANDRA ALTER | NYTimes Books | Disclosure

A Documentarian Travels the World Asking: ‘Have You Eaten Yet?’

From the Arctic to the Amazon, Cheuk Kwan traces a diaspora through Chinese restaurants owned and operated by immigrant families.

BY JIAYANG FAN | NYTimes Books | Disclosure

For An Yu, the Living Are More Adrift Than the Ghosts

“Ghost Music” follows a piano teacher in Beijing as she struggles to connect to her husband and mother-in-law over meals of mysterious mushrooms.

BY ALEXANDRA KLEEMAN | NYTimes Books | Disclosure

The Most Sought After Manuscript in Publishing? The Jan. 6 Report.

Publishers are releasing more than half a dozen editions of the report, and are now in a frantic race to be first to market.

BY ALEXANDRA ALTER AND ELIZABETH A. HARRIS | NYTimes Books | Disclosure

The Power of a Good Narrative, in Your Ear or Otherwise

From Bloomsbury to the Billboard Hot 100, these audiobooks will hook you based on story alone.

BY SEBASTIAN MODAK | NYTimes Books | Disclosure

What Inspires a Poet to Write a Novel? Ask Kathleen Glasgow.

After charmingly announcing that “Girl in Pieces” is a No. 1 best seller, the author opened up about why she wrote this book.

BY ELISABETH EGAN | NYTimes Books | Disclosure

The Dinner Party Writers Dream Of

Some authors are better on the page. Others, though, promise a rollicking good time. For a decade, we’ve asked authors which writers they’d like as dining companions. Here’s what they told us.

Unknown Author | NYTimes Books | Disclosure

Read Your Way Through Edinburgh

Edinburgh calls to readers, its pearl-grey skies urging them to curl up with a book. Maggie O’Farrell, the author of “Hamnet,” suggests reading that best reflects her city.

BY MAGGIE O’FARRELL | NYTimes Books | Disclosure

The Sound of Sonny

Aidan Levy has written a revealing, comprehensive biography of the improviser-hero Sonny Rollins.

BY BEN RATLIFF | NYTimes Books | Disclosure

Cormac McCarthy Loves a Good Diner

His novels are full of food scenes, often in modest digs. Why do they resonate so much?

BY DWIGHT GARNER | NYTimes Books | Disclosure

For Jan Morris, Staying in One Place Was Never an Option

A new biography examines what made the prolific travel writer and transgender figure so driven, and who was ignored along the way.

BY ALEXANDRA JACOBS | NYTimes Books | Disclosure

The Library of Things, the Inconstant Gardener and How We Lived Then

Our critic recommends old and new books.

BY MOLLY YOUNG | NYTimes Books | Disclosure

A Belarusian Writer Who Calls for Poems Made of Barbed Wire

In “Motherfield,” her first collection to appear in English, Julia Cimafiejeva grapples with questions of language, nationalism and oppression.

BY JENNIFER WILSON | NYTimes Books | Disclosure

A Biracial Family Risks Persecution in 1920s Cape Town

Resoketswe Manenzhe’s debut novel, “Scatterlings,” witnesses the dissolution of a young family in the wake of South Africa’s Immorality Act, which outlawed interracial relationships.

BY V.V. GANESHANANTHAN | NYTimes Books | Disclosure

Courtly Love Can Be Deadly

In the historian Sarah Gristwood’s “Tudors in Love,” for both monarchs and courtiers the stakes are higher than romance.

BY TINA BROWN | NYTimes Books | Disclosure

Newly Published, From Feminist Resistance to Ancient Empire

A selection of recently published books.

Unknown Author | NYTimes Books | Disclosure

A Manual for Ear-Cleaning Women

Jamie Marina Lau’s “Gunk Baby” sets a workers’ revolution in a cheesy shopping mall.

BY ALEXANDRA TANNER | NYTimes Books | Disclosure

A Book of Cheeky Obituaries Highlights ‘Eccentric Lives’

This new collection from Britain’s Daily Telegraph is full of oddballs, mavericks and cranks.

BY DWIGHT GARNER | NYTimes Books | Disclosure

6 Unforgettable Y.A. Thrillers to Add to Your Reading List

Faridah Abike-Iyimide, the author of “Ace of Spades,” recommends some of her favorites.

BY FARIDAH ABIKE-IYIMIDE | NYTimes Books | Disclosure

A Family Drama, Taiwan History and Murder Case, Rolled Into One

“Ghost Town,” a novel by Kevin Chen, recounts the overlapping — and hotly contested — memories of a Taiwanese family.

BY PETER C. BAKER | NYTimes Books | Disclosure

That’s Entertainment! Here’s a Dishy History of Hollywood.

Jeanine Basinger and Sam Wasson’s new book is a fat, teeming, showbiz-nerd-satisfying tome with something for every showbiz-nerd taste.

BY LISA SCHWARZBAUM | NYTimes Books | Disclosure

11 New Books We Recommend This Week

Suggested reading from critics and editors at The New York Times.

Unknown Author | NYTimes Books | Disclosure

When It Comes to Picture Books, Santa Sells

At this time of year, the best-selling books for children are all Christmas, all the time. And they’re not even new!

BY ELISABETH EGAN | NYTimes Books | Disclosure

Tell Us: What Book Was Your Favorite Read of 2022?

We want to know what books, new or old, you read and loved this year.

BY MJ FRANKLIN | NYTimes Books | Disclosure

The Best True Crime of 2022

From the Jazz Age to the Jim Crow South to late-1960s Southern California, from serial robberies to kidnappings to double homicides: narratives all the more chilling because they happened.

BY TINA JORDAN | NYTimes Books | Disclosure

The Best Audiobooks of 2022

Hearing a memoir in the author’s voice can make a big difference, and not just when the author is Viola Davis. Plus: A creepy novel gets creepier in audio.

BY LAUREN CHRISTENSEN | NYTimes Books | Disclosure

‘Butts: A Backstory’ Tells Us to Take Them Seriously

In her new cultural history, Heather Radke considers how women’s backsides have been described, displayed and fetishized — and what that says about gender, race and more.

BY LAUREN CHRISTENSEN | NYTimes Books | Disclosure

The Common Denominator for Mothers? Guilt.

In her new book, “Screaming on the Inside,” Jessica Grose unpacks the heavy burdens that arrive with the birth of a child.

BY KIM BROOKS | NYTimes Books | Disclosure

The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of 2022

Pandemics, witchcraft, terrifying A.I.: speculative fiction that stood out in 2022.

BY AMAL EL-MOHTAR | NYTimes Books | Disclosure

The Best Romance Novels of 2022

The genre has had an exceptional year — one of its best of all time.

BY OLIVIA WAITE | NYTimes Books | Disclosure

With Bora Chung as Our Guide, We Walk Ourselves Into the Trap

The 10 chilling stories in “Cursed Bunny” use creepy fetishes and proliferating waste as metaphors for the female condition.

BY VIOLET KUPERSMITH | NYTimes Books | Disclosure

A Queer Coming-of-Age in Corona, Queens

Bushra Rehman’s “Roses, in the Mouth of a Lion” follows a young Pakistani Muslim protagonist as she discovers her nascent intellect and sexuality.

BY MAY-LEE CHAI | NYTimes Books | Disclosure

From the Mundane to the Divinely Gross, Anything Goes in This Novel

“Solenoid,” by the Romanian writer Mircea Cartarescu, is an endlessly strange study of existence and the longing to escape it.

BY DUSTIN ILLINGWORTH | NYTimes Books | Disclosure

A Punk Rocker Searches for His Bass and the Friend Who Stole It

Sam Lipsyte’s new novel, “No One Left to Come Looking for You,” centers on the 1990s music scene in downtown New York.

BY ADELLE WALDMAN | NYTimes Books | Disclosure

How America Became Addicted to Exercise

In “Fit Nation,” Natalia Mehlman Petrzela charts the evolution of our national attitudes toward fitness.

By YASMINE ALSAYYAD | NYTimes Books | Disclosure

A Very Young Gymnast

In “Winterland,” Rae Meadows’s fifth novel, an 8-year-old from Siberia gets the nod to train with elite athletes in the U.S.S.R.

BY MEGAN ABBOTT | NYTimes Books | Disclosure

Walkers in the City

During the pandemic, the New York Times architecture critic, Michael Kimmelman, toured parts of New York on foot with architects, urban planners and other experts. His book “The Intimate City” is a record of what they saw.

BY ROBERT SULLIVAN | NYTimes Books | Disclosure

Where Words Fail, Humor Glimmers

In his memoir, “A Heart That Works,” Rob Delaney recalls the unthinkable — his son’s death — with honesty and levity.

BY MARY LAURA PHILPOTT | NYTimes Books | Disclosure

From Marguerite Duras, an Uncovered Tale of Young Womanhood

“The Easy Life,” the author’s second novel, is translated into English for the first time.

BY ALEXANDRA JACOBS | NYTimes Books | Disclosure

With ‘Last Day in Lagos,’ Marilyn Nance Gathers a Diaspora

Over a month spent at FESTAC ’77, the photographer captured the intimacy of Pan-African celebration.

BY CALEB AZUMAH NELSON | NYTimes Books | Disclosure

9 New Books We Recommend This Week

Suggested reading from critics and editors at The New York Times.

Editors' Choice | NYTimes Books | Disclosure

Douglas Brinkley Would Like to Invite Thoreau to Dinner

The historian, whose new book is “Silent Spring Revolution,” would also invite E.O. Wilson and Rachel Carson: “We could talk about the 11,000 bird species the Cornell Lab of Ornithology is helping to conserve in the face of climate change.”

Unknown Author | NYTimes Books | Disclosure

Write Every Day? Tracy Deonn Recommends Thinking Instead.

Before she put pen to paper — or fingers to keyboard — this fantasy novelist spent a long time getting to know her protagonist.

BY ELISABETH EGAN | NYTimes Books | Disclosure