The filmmaker Jane Schoenbrun envisioned a sci-fi TV series about a sinister video store. “Public Access Afterworld” is the ambitious 600-page result.
In the filmmaker Jane Schoenbrun’s first novel, a strange broadcast invites curious outsiders to an alternate world behind the screen.
The new book by the reporter Matthew Cole connects $2 billion in slush funds from gulf state leaders to Trump’s son-in-law in an effort to influence U.S. policy.
Six takeaways from a new memoir by Mr. Woodward, the star Washington Post reporter, including his disappointment with the newspaper’s billionaire owner.
At 24, Tini Younger is one of the biggest food influencers on TikTok. Her new challenge: Selling a cookbook to young people with scant connection to the kitchen.
In a new book, Fredrik deBoer argues that deinstitutionalization, the anti-psychiatry movement and Gen Z’s romanticization have done more harm than good.
In “American Socialist,” Shawn Gude tracks the rise and fall of the movement led by the left-wing presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs.
In the show “her her,” Jane Benson anatomizes Mary Shelley’s novel, highlighting its feminism and creating visual works that are also vocal scores.
“Morel’s Invention,” by Adolfo Bioy Casares, explores ideas that are quickly becoming daily realities.
Chad Harbach’s “The Brightness” explores the fraught politics of college life and the precarious years that come after it.
The teddy bear lives in the New York Public Library. Though a trip to Britain has been discussed, he doesn’t seem to be moving back home.
In “Dead Batteries,” a woman must raise her neurodivergent child while surviving in a deadly postapocalyptic world.
Jonathan Van Meter has a new book out on Kardashian. She is just one of the world’s most famous women who have confided in him.
Meghan O’Gieblyn’s new memoir, “Will and Attention,” is about the limits of willpower. But it’s also about grace.
In Neal Stephenson’s new novel, a foppish reporter stumbles into a plot to secure materials crucial to building nuclear weapons.
Sam Wasson venerates Frank Capra, who directed a clutch of Hollywood classics. His new biography aims to challenge an earlier, unflattering portrait.
In the fizzy if didactic “Peck & Peck,” Bonnie Garmus observes a young man climbing the ranks of a very eccentric literary magazine.
Publishers generally don’t race to acquire story collections these days, but studios appear eager to shell out for unpublished short works.
Sarah Helm, who is married to Britain’s national security adviser, posted of her support for the author Sally Rooney and a banned pro-Palestinian activist group. A furor ensued.
“A Talent for Murder” turns the novelist into a suspicious character in a psychological thriller. The author’s caustic personality makes the leap plausible.
Leigh Bardugo and Paul Tremblay share the books that scared them as kids, the stories that still unnerve them and their recommendations for readers new to horror.
This Manhattan walking tour includes used-book emporiums, animal- and vegetable-themed stores and bookshop bars that serve up literature with a boozy twist.
After a five-year hiatus, Sarah J. Maas returns with the latest installment in her best-selling romantasy series.
A probing, excellent account of one crusading medical professor explores the humanity behind literature’s master of deduction.
Whether you’re following a path through the woods or gasping at a voice from the ghost world, Daniel Nayeri’s new novel surprises and delights.
For the best-selling fantasy author Leigh Bardugo, the worlds of Stephen King were more appealing than the world of “Sweet Valley High.” Growing up surrounded by popular kids who played volleyball and drove convertibles, she found more of an escape in horror and science fiction than in stories that reminded her of her own life.
Imagination, empathy and intelligence should matter as well as identity
Reading recommendations from critics and editors at The New York Times.
Leigh Bardugo is the best-selling author behind the Ninth House trilogy, which just concluded with the release of “Dead Beat.” But her introduction to the joys of being scared out of her wits was way back in fifth grade.
Spending seven hours and 51 minutes at the second annual marathon reading of Sylvia Plath’s novel in Manhattan.
“This World of Tomorrow,” co-starring Kelli O’Hara, will come to Broadway next fall.
His Slackjaw column drew on his life, which included going blind and being locked up in a psychiatric ward. Two of his books were praised by Thomas Pynchon.
Plus: The justices’ book deals mean the court can’t rule on cases involving a media conglomerate.
Emily Dickinson makes 50 words contain endless possibilities.
Helen Mirren and Alden Ehrenreich star in a psychological thriller about Patricia Highsmith as she grapples with her most famous creation.
Just in time for Halloween.
Magic lanterns, doppelgängers and unsettling events haunt “The Shadow of the Object,” an intoxicatingly off-kilter novel.
The horror and dark fantasy writer is known for his gruesome imagination and lush, baroque prose. Here’s where to start.
Chad Harbach broke big with “The Art of Fielding.” While set on the same campus, his long-awaited follow-up arrives at a different literary moment.
Thélyson Orélien, a celebrated novelist, used artificial intelligence while writing a breakout book, his publisher says.
A jaunty new history recounts how the online encyclopedia turned the promise of collective creation into a global juggernaut.
For the first time, a young heroine from the toy juggernaut is at the center of a book for adults, written by a novelist who admires her pluck.
A collection of pictures depicting a Jewish family’s life before the Holocaust were sent on a wild journey through the Brooklyn Public Library system.
Nikole Hannah-Jones discusses her approach to writing her recent essay with Patrick Healy, an assistant managing editor at The New York Times.
A urologist’s inquiry into the magician’s final days is the latest effort to grapple with outstanding questions about his demise.
The playwright Lauren Yee paints an amusing portrait of a Chinese American father-daughter relationship before taking audiences on a delightfully wild ride.
Nikole Hannah-Jones’s recent essay examines a decision she made about her daughter’s education that she hoped would challenge New York City’s school system. Hannah-Jones discusses her approach to writing the essay and the public response with Patrick Healy, an assistant managing editor at The New York Times.
The “Bojack Horseman” designer Lisa Hanawalt bridles at glib therapists and is hot to trot for Mister Rogers in her new graphic memoir.
K-Ming Chang’s “Needlemouth” blends body horror with feminist allegory in the story of three cousins grappling with their inherited trauma.
A new book from the RealReal, the secondhand designer retailer, has ideas for how to develop taste that is your own.
The actress and comedian riffs on the essay Nora Ephron wrote for The Times in 2008.
With its bracing studies of fiction’s secrets, this 66-year-old work of literary criticism still surprises and delights.
Nearly five decades after the disease first appeared, many filmmakers, writers and others are finding new meaning in catastrophe.
Our columnist on new horror fiction, including the latest from Stephen Graham Jones and Tananarive Due.
In “Sitcom,” the longtime TV writer and producer Chuck Lorre gives his candid take on Charlie Sheen, Roseanne Barr and the “Big Bang” cast.
Unless we can regenerate the depth of the theological tradition alongside the depth of spiritual transformation, our churches deserve to be empty.
Thanks to begrudging cooperation from the comedian and writer, a new biography is suitably kvetchy, if a little too long and a little too nice.
David McCloskey, a C.I.A. analyst turned spy novelist, has just released his fifth book, “London Station.”
The works of the British art critic John Berger offer the antidote to our age of infinite scrolling.
A U.S. Naval Academy professor and prolific author, he emphasized the strategic importance of naval superiority since the Civil War.
A Russified education did not forbid access to my own culture, it just quietly weakened my instinct to reach for it.
A new history of World War II Vienna illustrates the specific devastation of a thriving Jewish city.
At Sotheby’s, a feast of rare science books includes volumes from Copernicus, Galileo and Newton that together revolutionized human understanding of the cosmos.
Each October, the international publishing business descends on Frankfurt, Germany, for days of dealing and long nights of partying.
In “Redemption,” the Pulitzer Prize winner Lawrence Wright asks whether people sentenced to die in Texas should have a second chance.
In “Every Story Is a Love Story,” a widower develops complicated feelings for the woman who upended his life.
Penny Hardy photographed the restaurant sheds that cropped up across the city in 2020. Only a fraction of them remain today.
Jennifer Szalai, Alexandra Jacobs and Dwight Garner discuss their approach to reading and offer stacks and stacks of book recommendations.
In “Bogland,” Merritt R. Turetsky argues for the importance of that least glamorous of terrains, the bog.
In Kara LaReau’s “Licorice,” a shelter kitten adopted by a boy named Max is tormented by the lingering presence of her recently departed predecessor.
And I couldn’t believe a piece of him still existed in this world.
Reading recommendations from critics and editors at The New York Times.
In our first edition of The Backstory, a new newsletter about Times journalism, we’re diving into coverage of a rape allegation and talking to a critic who says we’re not tough enough on Trump.
A charter school named for Earl Monroe is dedicating a new building, which features a basketball-and-book-themed mural.
A meandering manifesto illustrates the challenges of building cultural criticism on big reading and decadent contrariness.
Artist, novelist, playwright, wrestler, fashion muse — the Rosalyn Drexler rediscovery is on (again).
For her follow-up to “Lessons in Chemistry,” she’s written a novel about poetry editors, one of whom is a “typeface connoisseur.” On the other hand, don’t get her started on clowns.
The best-selling author John Scalzi recommends his favorite alien thrillers, mad scientist tales and an intergalactic spin on “Moby Dick.”
The restaurant Rules is an institution. Now the National Trust, which preserves Britain’s heritage, plans to safeguard the landmark.
Ms. Rooney and her publisher said that she could no longer receive royalties from British sales because she pledged to donate book revenues to Palestine Action, which is banned in Britain.
Three thieves broke into a private museum in central France and took off with a 330-pound book cover created by the surrealist master Salvador Dalí.
Emmanuel Carrère’s latest book combines a nuanced portrait of his formidable mother with a meditation on the fraught nature of truth.
A new biography argues that the artist famous for haunting canvases of solitary figures in late-night diners was deeply influenced by his times.
In her latest work, the historian Marion Gibson focuses on the victims of a deadly English witch hunt.
The challenge for Barbara Kingsolver and Yiyun Li: capturing how dedication to the piano can be a source of joy and pain.
Min Jin Lee, the author of the new novel “American Hagwon,” breaks down the phenomenon of young children living far from home that inspired one of the characters in the book.
In a 1999 book, she chronicled the spy agency’s secret backing of Cold War culture projects to manipulate public opinion against Communism in Western Europe.
How the creator of “The Lowdown” and “Reservation Dogs” is telling the stories of America with a little help from his friends, family and heroes.
Breaking a weekslong silence, Thélyson Orélien, a Haitian-Canadian writer, still rejected accusations about his new novel, ‘It Was Either That or Die.’
Very little is clear in M. John Harrison’s Booker-nominated novel “The End of Everything,” except that nothing is as it seems.
In Yiyun Li’s new historical novel, two pianists on opposite sides of the world are brought inexorably together, by music.
A new book traces the careers of five talented Black women artists and activists who converged at a venue where performance and politics collided.
In her latest book, “A Dead White,” Wendy S. Walters considers the seemingly neutral background of daily life.
Alexander Maksik’s new novel explores the bonds and strains of a father-daughter relationship amid a developing crisis.
Before John Berendt wrote his classic “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil,” he trained his keen eye on men’s wear and manners in a long-running Esquire column.
Four decades after his death, a revealing trove of the author’s possessions is up for auction.
Making a book of my dad’s train photos shifted my gaze away from all that he was losing.
Mo Crist has three family goals, but financing them is a tricky proposition in an expensive city like New York.
Her 1982 novel “Brother of the More Famous Jack” is a pocket classic about a young woman who falls in with a raucous family.
In “The Best Kind of American,” Kim Ghattas shows what an American’s assassination in Lebanon four decades ago reveals about chaos in the Middle East.
In Julie Orringer’s novel “Luna, Phoenix, Queen,” a husband discovers his ailing wife’s secret, steamy manuscript — and co-opts it as his own.
A new biography and a flurry of reissues underline how the prolific author of “Ways of Seeing” continues to be read and embraced.