Review: ?Biography of X,? by Catherine Lacey

Catherine Lacey?s new novel follows a polarizing artist through a fractured country.

Book Review: ?Meganets,? by David B. Auerbach

Who?s really in charge of our online behavior? No one, David Auerbach argues in ?Meganets.?

Book Review: ?The Nursery,? by Szilvia Molnar

In her debut novel, ?The Nursery,? Szilvia Molnar paints an honest, frightening and claustrophobic picture of new motherhood.

Four Thrilling New Romance Novels

New romance novels brim with shining, seductive, beautifully crafted sentences.

Book Review: ?The People?s Hospital,? by Ricardo Nuila

In ?The People?s Hospital,? Ricardo Nuila explores the ways in which a space for those stranded by the American health care system serves as an unlikely model.

22 Works of Fiction to Read This Spring

Watch for reality-bending explorations of time and space, a Western horror novel from Victor LaValle and new fiction from Han Kang. Plus: Tom Hanks (yes, that Tom Hanks) releases his debut novel.

What We?re Reading

Gilbert Cruz talks to Book Review staff members about the books they?ve been enjoying lately.

Trang Thanh Tran Has a Song for That

From Pomplamoose to MXMS to Taylor Swift, this best-selling author?s playlist is tailored to all the moods in ?She Is a Haunting.?

19 Works of Nonfiction to Read This Spring

New memoirs, a landmark biography of Martin Luther King, Jr., a look at the woman who helped halt the rise of a K.K.K. leader ? and more.

Book Review: ?Wandering Souls,? by Cecile Pin

In Cecile Pin?s debut novel, ?Wandering Souls,? the tale of three young Vietnamese migrants transforms into a larger meditation about how and why refugee stories are told.

The Many Lives of Jeannette Walls

The writer of ?The Glass Castle? starts a new chapter with a rip-roaring novel set during Prohibition.

She Never Existed. Catherine Lacey Wrote Her Biography Anyway.

In her new novel, ?Biography of X,? Lacey dreams up a larger-than-life, narcissistic artist, and rewrites American history to tell her story.

Book Review: ?Commitment,? by Mona Simpson

In Mona Simpson?s new novel, ?Commitment,? a precariously functioning family fractures under the pressure of mental illness. Or does it?

In Rehearsal One Minute, Laid Off the Next: The Fate of Broadway?s ?Room?

Actors were two weeks into rehearsals when the show, which was set to star the Tony-winning actress Adrienne Warren, was postponed indefinitely.

Book Review: ?Little Rosetta and the Talking Guitar,? by Charnelle Pinkney Barlow, and ?Rock, Rosetta, Rock! Roll, Rosetta, Roll!,? written by Tonya Bolden and illustrated by R. Gregory Christie

Before her, guitarists played the blues, and mostly sat down doing it. Sister Rosetta Tharpe stepped out.

What Happens on Page 76 in This Season?s New Books?

The artist Didier William envisions new releases by Victor LaValle, Mona Simpson and more.

Jailed in Egypt at 17, He Wrote to Survive and to Share His Long Ordeal

Sentenced as a teenager to 15 years for ?unlawful assembly,? Abdelrahman ElGendy started recording the abuses of prison life. The idea of someday publishing his memoir gave him a reason to live.

9 New Books We Recommend This Week

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

Broadway?s ?Room,? Starring Adrienne Warren, Postpones Run Indefinitely

The show, scheduled to open in April at the James Earl Jones Theater, was adapted from Emma Donoghue?s best-selling 2010 novel.

Book Review: ?Still Life With Bones,? by Alexa Hagerty

In ?Still Life With Bones,? Alexa Hagerty recounts her training in the science of forensic exhumation at mass grave sites in Guatemala and Argentina ? and what such work means for the families of victims.

Mona Simpson?s Fiancé Promised to Read ?Middlemarch.? He Never Did. Now He?s Her Ex.

?Certain men are constitutionally incapable of reading one of the greatest novels ever written,? says the author, whose new novel is ?Commitment.?

Poem: [All things now remind me]

This poem is a heartbreaker for all who know or will know soon enough what it is like to once have been ?young and desirous? and to be those things no more.

New Crime Books From Joyce Carol Oates, Harini Nagendra and More

In Joyce Carol Oates?s ?48 Clues Into the Disappearance of My Sister,? a troubled, resentful younger sibling describes the long-ago events.

Book Review: ?Birchers,? by Matthew Dallek

A new account of the John Birch Society by Matthew Dallek charts its history ? and outsize influence on the contemporary Republican Party.

Read Your Way Through Miami

To love Miami is to accept that it is a city in flux. Jonathan Escoffery, one of its writers, recommends books that help shape the Florida metropolis.

Newly Published, From a Mozambican Emperor to Nazi Face Transplants

A selection of recently published books.

Who Was Leonardo?s Mother? A Novelist Has Evidence She Was Enslaved.

An author has a theory that the artist?s mother, Caterina, was kidnapped as a girl in the Caucasus area of Central Asia.

Amy Schwartz, Who Captured Life as Viewed by a Child, Dies at 68

The dozens of books for young readers that she wrote and illustrated had a knack for finding ?the wondrous in the mundane.?

John Jakes, Who Hit the Jackpot With Historical Novels, Dies at 90

His sagas of the Revolution and the Civil War sold tens of millions of copies, were adapted for TV and put him in the pantheon of big-name authors.

Ann Napolitano?s New Novel, ?Hello Beautiful,? Is the 100th Pick of Oprah?s Book Club

Ann Napolitano toiled in obscurity for years. Novels went unpublished; agents turned her down. She found recognition with ?Dear Edward.? Then came the call: ?Hello Beautiful? was the 100th pick for what is arguably the most influential book club in the world.

In the Search for Latin America?s Disappeared, Memories and Evidence Entwine

In ?Still Life With Bones,? the anthropologist Alexa Hagerty describes how she learned to see the dead with a forensic eye ? and to listen to the living.

Book Review: ?How to Think Like a Woman,? by Regan Penaluna

In ?How to Think Like a Woman,? Regan Penaluna, a scholar who left the field, takes it to task for its historical misogyny and persistent sexism.

Book Review: ?Truth and Repair,? by Judith Herman

In ?Truth and Repair,? her follow-up to 1992?s ?Trauma and Recovery,? the psychiatrist Judith Herman argues that healing is more than a ?private, individual matter.?

Book Review: ?Y/N,? by Esther Yi

In Esther Yi?s weird and wondrous ?Y/N,? a bored young woman in thrall to a boy band buys a one-way ticket to Seoul.

Book Review: ?The Lost Americans,? by Christopher Bollen

In Christopher Bollen?s novel ?The Lost Americans,? a New Yorker seeks answers about her brother?s sudden death abroad.

Book Review: ?The Real Work: On the Mystery of Mastery?

In ?The Real Work,? the longtime New Yorker staff writer dissects the process of mastering new skills by acquiring some himself.

Book Review: ?Walking Practice,? by Dolki Min

In Dolki Min?s debut novel, ?Walking Practice,? an extraterrestrial who crash-lands on Earth shows what it means to feel out of place in one?s body and its surroundings.

Book Review: ?Heart Sutra,? by Yan Lianke

?Heart Sutra? focuses on faith under state control.

Why Would Someone Steal Unpublished Manuscripts?

Filippo Bernardini has been accused by the government of stealing over 1,000 book manuscripts. In court filings, he said he was motivated not by money but by a love of reading.

Review: ?The Dog of the North,? by Elizabeth McKenzie

In ?The Dog of the North,? Elizabeth McKenzie maps the zany travels of an injury-prone clan with a hole at its center.

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