Tom Yawkey: Patriarch of the Boston Red Sox by Bill Nowlin
/
A wonky, magnificent work of baseball writing that will be necessary reading for all Red Sox fans.
Read More
Lullaby by Leïla Slimani
/
Winner of the Prix Goncourt last year, this character study alternates between the perspectives of its two central female characters.
Read MoreThe Divine Comedy by Dante, translated by Clive James
/
There is an astonishment, a certain mad arrogance (or even madder humility) in presenting an English translation of Dante's Divine Comedy to a 21st Century audience without any accompanying notes. Purists might say 'the poem - any poem - should be able to stand on its own, to speak clearly without the crutch of notes' - but such purists are seldom translators.
Read MoreRise and Kill First by Ronen Bergman
/
A picture of what decades of persecution will do to the moral fiber of a nation surrounded by enemies.
Read MoreEisenhower: Becoming the Leader of the Free World by Louis Galambos
/
A brisk, almost aphoristic biography, covering every stage of Eisenhower's life.
Read MoreThe Take by Christopher Reich
/
An international crime-thriller with plot twists coming literally until the book's final page.
Read MoreIt's Even Worse Than You Think by David Cay Johnston
/
The Trump presidency is about Trump. Period. Full stop.
Read MorePhone by Will Self
/
A book that is, in addition to all its stylistic pyrotechnics, a magnificent portrait of fragility.
Read MoreThe Wizard and the Prophet by Charles C. Mann
/
Braided twin narratives of two philosophies – and the lives of the men who espoused them.
Read MoreThe Book: An Homage by Burkhard Spinnen
/
A light, entirely uncritical series of more-or-less connected brief musings on various aspects of the bookish life.
Read MoreHasidism: A New History
/
An amazing story shot through with persecution and revelation, played out against the governmental and ideological convulsions that gave rise to the modern world.
Read MoreGnomon by Nick Harkaway
/
Firmly in the fantastic, this is a big, bristlingly detailed science fiction thriller whose plots thread and fold back upon themselves.
Read MoreThe Weight of an Infinite Sky by Carrie La Seur
/
A soft-spoken and convincingly wise novel set in the rural vastness of Montana, ambitiously patterned on Hamlet.
Read More
Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood
/
Margaret Atwood's novel Alias Grace is adapted into a lavish TV series.
Read MoreBlood Fury by J. R. Ward
/
In J. R. Ward's latest “Black Dagger” volume, sheet-scorching shenanigans very nearly take a back seat to meaningful relationships. Are our favorite warrior-vampires becoming … sensitive?
Read MoreThe Chalk Man by C. J. Tudor
/
In C.J. Tudor's much-hyped debut thriller, a mysterious figure in 2016 is using the secret cryptogram-language devised by a group of misfit kids back in 1986.
Read MoreConfessions by Saint Augustine
/
Readers who recall the big, marvelous WW Norton edition of the complete works of Isaac Babel from over a decade ago will remember the vivid, otherworldly experience of reading it, and of course a large part of that experience was the handiwork of translator Peter Constantine, who has now, intriguingly, turned his hand to translating one of the strangest and most fundamental works of the Western canon, the Confessions of Saint Augustine.
Read MoreTrumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic by David Frum
/
Atlantic senior editor David Frum's new book is about more than just the appalling spectacle of the Trump candidacy and presidential administration. In Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic, Frum declares a national crisis and cites Trump more as a warning symptom than the full manifestation of a disease.
Read MoreGetting Off: One Woman's Journey Through Sex and Porn Addiction by Erica Garza
/
Erica Garza’s new memoir about sex and porn addiction, Getting Off, is candid, quick, and as structurally clever, as commercially savvy, as it is intimate and sincere. It isn’t an addiction memoir that tries to shock, or to sustain the reader’s interest with long gruesome episodes of lowpoints or shady dealings or binges.
Read More