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Reading recommendations from critics and editors at The New York Times.
Jan. 15, 2026, 3:00 p.m. ET
Every week, the critics and editors at the New York Times Book Review pick the most interesting and notable new releases, from literary fiction and serious nonfiction to thrillers, romance novels, mysteries and everything in between.
You can save the books you’re most excited to read on a personal reading list, and find even more recommendations from our book experts.
Memoir
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Strangers
by Belle Burden
In 2023, Burden went viral with an essay entitled “[Was …
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Reading recommendations from critics and editors at The New York Times.
Jan. 15, 2026, 3:00 p.m. ET
Every week, the critics and editors at the New York Times Book Review pick the most interesting and notable new releases, from literary fiction and serious nonfiction to thrillers, romance novels, mysteries and everything in between.
You can save the books you’re most excited to read on a personal reading list, and find even more recommendations from our book experts.
Memoir
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Strangers
by Belle Burden
In 2023, Burden went viral with an essay entitled “Was I Married to a Stranger?” Here, she explores the full heart-shock of that episode — the sudden disintegration of a long and largely joyful marriage, undone weeks into the pandemic by the revelation that her husband had not only been unfaithful but also seemed to wish to vanish almost entirely from their shared life, which included three young children. Read our review.
historical fiction
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Call Me Ishmaelle
by Xiaolu Guo
Though it occasionally stumbles, this is an astonishing, ambitious, vivid retelling of Herman Melville’s “Moby-Dick” filled with the galling details of whaler life and whale slaughter, and the portrayal of Ishmaelle’s dolorous yearning and inviolate hope. Read our review.
Memoir
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Catapult
by Jim Paul
Two young men collaborate on the backyard project of a lifetime: building a catapult so they can shoot stones into the ocean. essentially for the fun of it. First published in 1991 and newly reissued, “Catapult” has become a cult book, a literary outlier that provides offbeat solace for readers who like good capers and stupid and futile gestures. Read our review.
Comic Novel
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The Hitch
by Sara Levine
If only Queen Elizabeth were still around to read Levine’s second novel, the oddball tale of a 6-year-old boy who insists he’s being inhabited by the soul of a recently deceased corgi. Narrating the story, and frantically trying to set things right, is the boy’s aunt, a yogurt mogul with boundary issues who agreed to play parent for one brief week. An emergency exorcism wasn’t on the calendar. Read our review.
Education
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Miracle Children
by Katie Benner and Erica L. Green
Two New York Times reporters detail how the T.M. Landry College Preparatory Academy — a tiny, unaccredited private school in Louisiana run by a charismatic grifter — hoodwinked college admissions deans who were under pressure to increase racial and economic diversity. They were so eager for P.R.-enhancing Black children with dramatic stories of conquering abuse that they somehow didn’t notice, or care, that T.M. Landry was not, by any reasonable definition, a school. Read our review.
Literary fiction
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This is the cover of “Lost Lambs,” by Madeline Cash.
Lost Lambs
by Madeline Cash
A novel stacked with deadpan wit and wordplay, Cash’s “Lost Lambs” centers on the flailing Flynn family: a mother dabbling in polyamory, a deeply depressed dad and their three precocious adolescent daughters — one of whom may have cracked the case on a local billionaire’s financial shenanigans. Read our review.
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