This lush, provocative historical from National Book Critics Circle Award winner O’Farrell (Hamnet) follows a young woman who is married off at 15 amid the complex world of 16th-century Italian city-states. O’Farrell bases her heroine, Lucrezia de’ Medici, on a real-life figure depicted in ... Continue reading »

Set in the late 1920s, Harrison’s outstanding ninth whodunit featuring the Reverend Mother Aquinas (after 2021’s Murder in an Orchard Cemetery) opens with an unexpected visit from Dr. Thompson, the bishop of Cork’s Anglican Church of Ireland. Thompson reports that one of the Reverend Mother... Continue reading »

Nayler’s masterful debut combines fascinating science and well-wrought characters to deliver a deep dive into the nature of intelligent life. Marine biologist Ha Nguyen gets the opportunity of a lifetime when she’s invited to study a recently discovered society of intelligent octopuses in Vietnam’s ... Continue reading »

Bestseller McClain (the Safe Haven series) launches her Hometown Brothers series with a magnetic second-chance romance. Marine biologist Ryan Hastings returns to the Chesapeake Bay’s Teaberry Island to stay with his foster mother, Betty Raines, as she mourns the death of her husband, Wayne. He’s ner... Continue reading »

In this taut, claustrophobic drama from Stechshulte (The Amateurs), a man named Glen’s road trip to attend a friend’s wedding takes an unexpected turn. When his car breaks down on an isolated stretch of road on a dark and rainy night, the familiar horror premise brings him to the home of th... Continue reading »

Spanning 30-plus years and 11 collections, Nurkse’s poems are as fresh and bizarre as ever, lingering at checkpoints, border crossings, transit areas, and “that uncertain moment/ between false dawn and dawn.” Nurkse’s portraits of travelers—with “their suitcases tied with twine, their sacks made of ... Continue reading »

This propulsive thriller from Parks (Woman in Shadow) follows a small-town art instructor who must face her past to stop a murderer. Sam Williams is miraculously unscathed after an SUV crashes into the temporary classroom where she teaches art to elementary schoolers in LaCrosse, Wash. An i... Continue reading »

Horowitz (Our Dogs, Ourselves), head of Barnard College’s Dog Cognition Lab, charts the first year of a puppy’s life in this splendid dog behavior explainer. Aiming to “keep a lens firmly on the puppy’s point of view,” Horowitz offers a week-by-week milestone breakdown that starts with pupp... Continue reading »

In this exceptional guide, Wade, head baker of Chicago’s Publican Quality Bread, calls on his knowledge and good humor to show home bakers how to “increase the tools in your toolbox one by one.” As much as it refers to both his own career path—no formal training—and his urgings to use sustainably gr... Continue reading »

This urgent exegesis by Columbia Theological Seminary professor Sechrest (Can White People Be Saved?) looks at what the Bible can teach contemporary Christians about addressing racial injustice. She examines “situations in contemporary life that ‘rhyme’ with the situations addressed in the ... Continue reading »

Using insightful prose, Kuehn’s (When I Am Through with You) haunting novel follows two teens struggling to connect while recovering from individual mental health challenges. Mexican and Colombian Camila Ortiz and Black Danielle Washington are roommates at rural Georgia’s Peach Tree Hills, ... Continue reading »