A look at the novels and nonfiction that can transport you to faraway places – without ever leaving home.
All Adults Here
FICTION | In Straub’s infectiously warm fourth novel, an acerbic widow grapples — for the first time — with what kind of parent she was and how that shaped her three kids, and their kids, decades later.
Review: Emma Straub's 'All Adults Here' puts a fresh and funny spin on the multigenerational family saga
Big Summer
FICTION | While most major book releases were pushed back due to the coronavirus pandemic, the debut of Weiner’s 14th novel was moved up, because the sooner readers had this dose of summer fun in their hands, the better. Weiner takes a breezy romp through online influencer culture, leveling a withering gaze at the Instagram fake-it-till-you-make-it crowd.
Review: Jennifer Weiner's 'Big Summer' is a breezy romp through online influencer culture
The City We Became
FICTION | File this one under prescient fiction: In the Hugo Award winner’s sprawling and provocative new novel, New York City and its denizens battle an alien force intent upon eradicating them.
Review: N.K. Jemisin's fantasy tale 'The City We Became' shows the resilience of New York
Deacon King Kong
FICTION | The National Book Award-winning author of “The Good Lord Bird” sets his new novel in a 1969 Brooklyn housing project where an elderly deacon, for no discernible reason, attempts to kill a local drug dealer, setting in motion several funny, chaotic stories.
Review: James McBride's 'Deacon King Kong' offers a rollicking examination of a Brooklyn community
Dirt
Adventures in Lyon as a Chef in Training, Father, and Sleuth Looking for the Secret of French Cooking
MEMOIR | The author of “Heat” uprooted his family and moved to Lyon, France — the so-called world capital of gastronomy — to learn the secrets of French cooking. It’s an education all right, both in the country’s cultural history and the high-pressure, nitty-gritty reality of working in a Michelin-caliber kitchen.
Friends and Strangers
FICTION | The author of “Maine” and “Saints for All Occasions” brings together two very different characters: a new mother struggling to adjust to small-town life and a college senior moonlighting as a babysitter. The story offers an insightful examination of everything from social media’s magnetic pull to the power dynamics between domestic workers and their employers. (Available June 30)
Hidden Valley Road
Inside the Mind of an American Family
NONFICTION | Kolker offers a deeply compassionate and chilling account of how one mid-century family of 14 — including six brothers with schizophrenia — navigated illness, violence and the crushed promise of the American Dream.
Review: The turbulent lives of six brothers with schizophrenia
Make Russia Great Again
FICTION | If anyone can succeed at the near-impossible task of satirizing the Trump administration, it’s the author of “Thank You For Smoking.” His next novel is a fictional memoir by Herb Nutterman, Trump’s seventh chief of staff. (Available July 14)
The Mirror and the Light
FICTION | Mantel caps her Booker Prize-certified Thomas Cromwell trilogy with a masterful finale that charts the undoing of Henry VIII’s scheming right-hand man.
Review: 'Thee Mirror and the Light' is a masterful finale to Hilary Mantel's Cromwell trilogy
Party of Two
ROMANCE | Guillory, whose novels “The Wedding Date” and “The Proposal” established her as a rom-com virtuoso, returns with another frothy romance, this time involving a lawyer and an up-and-coming senator. (Available June 23)
Pelosi
NONFICTION | Underneath Ball’s smart, solid biography of the first female speaker of the House lies an important lesson: Despite our fixation on political showmanship, politics works best in our complicated democracy when its practitioners can navigate their way through the byzantine cloakrooms of power. Nancy Pelosi certainly can.
The Resisters
FICTION | This dystopian novel, set in a starkly stratified version of the United States, follows a husband and wife — second-class citizens with a history of fighting their corrupt government. But what will they do when they have the opportunity to change their circumstances, thanks to a daughter who turns out to be a baseball prodigy?
Review: Gish Jen's 'The Resisters' reminds us of the importance of standing up for what's right
Rodham
FICTION | After fictionalizing the life of Laura Bush with “American Wife,” Sittenfeld focuses on another first lady, with a novel told from the perspective of Hillary Rodham. But in this alternate history, Hillary never marries Bill, which means her life turns out differently — even if the misogyny remains the same.
Review: In Curtis Sittenfeld's 'Rodham,' Hillary doesn't become a Clinton. And Donald Trump isn't president.
Simon the Fiddler
FICTION | Jiles follows her National Book Award finalist, “News of the World,” with another Civil War-era western. This one focuses on Simon, a spunky redheaded musician who is no weepy sentimentalist. Yet when he sees Doris, a pretty Irish nanny, he can’t hold his emotions in check.
Review: Paulette Jiles returns to the Civil War era with the romantic western 'Simon the Fiddler'
Such a Fun Age
FICTION | Reid’s entertaining debut poses thorny questions about race and class. When a grocery store security guard accuses a young black woman of kidnapping the white child she babysits, the fallout upends several lives.
Review: In 'Such a Fun Age,' Kiley Reid takes aim at race and class in America
Uncanny Valley
MEMOIR | There’s an unsettling undercurrent throughout Wiener’s propulsive memoir of life in Silicon Valley, where she was magnetically drawn to the tech scene, even as the red flags multiplied.
Review: Inside the unnerving world of Silicon Valley — and how it invaded cyberspace
Utopia Avenue
FICTION | The next novel from the author of “Cloud Atlas” and “Number9Dream” — both shortlisted for the Booker Prize — follows the swift rise of a British psychedelic band in the late 1960s with all the hedonism, A-list cameos and LSD you might expect. (Available July 14)
Valentine
FICTION | What begins like a thriller about a Texas girl escaping from a rapist blossoms into a poignant and complex story told from the perspectives of several women forced to negotiate a culture of masculine brutality in a 1970s oil town.
Review: Elizabeth Wetmore's 'Valentine' is a thrilling debut that deserves your attention
The Vanishing Half
FICTION | After her best-selling debut, “The Mothers,” there’s plenty of anticipation for Bennett’s tale of black identical twin sisters who grow up to lead very different lives when one abandons her hometown and her culture to pass for white. (Available June 2)
Writers & Lovers
FICTION | King’s joyous and romantic tale of a 31-year-old writer clinging to her dream of a creative life perfectly balances heartbreak and hope when a slew of setbacks suddenly reveal a promising path forward.
Review: Lily King's 'Writers & Lovers' delivers pure joy
