The Book Review

Summer arrives just over a month from now, and along with your last-minute scramble for a house share or a part-time job scooping ice cream, you're probably also wondering what to read. On this week's episode, Gilbert Cruz talks with Joumana Khatib about some of the books they're most looking forward to, from a James Baldwin biography to the true-life story of a young couple shipwrecked in the Pacific and a political thriller co-written by James Patterson and Bill Clinton.Books discussed:“The Beast in the Clouds: The Roosevelt Brothers' Deadly Quest to Find the Mythical Giant Panda,” by Nathalia Holt“Atmosphere: A Love Story,” by Taylor Jenkins Reid“The Gunfighters: How Texas Made the West Wild,” by Bryan Burrough“Next to Heaven," by James Frey“A Marriage at Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession, and Shipwreck,” by Sophie Elmhirst“The Sisters,” by Jonas Hassen Khemiri“The First Gentleman,” by Bill Clinton and James Patterson“King of Ashes,” by S.A. Cosby“Bonding," by Mariel Franklin“Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil,” by V.E. Schwab“Katabasis,” by R.F. Kuang“Baldwin: A Love Story,” by Nicholas Boggs Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

At 82, Isabel Allende is one of the world's most beloved and best-selling Spanish-language authors. Her work has been translated into more than 40 languages, and 80 million copies of her books have been sold around the world. That's a lot of books.Allende's newest novel, “My Name Is Emilia del Valle” is about a dark period in Chilean history: the 1891 Chilean civil war. Like so much of Allende's work, it's a story about women in tough spots who figure out a way through. Thematically, it's not that far off from Allende's own story. She was raised in Chile, but in 1973, when she was 31, raising two small children and working as a journalist, her life was upended forever. That year a military coup pushed out the democratically elected president, Salvador Allende, who was her father's cousin. She fled to Venezuela, where she wrote “The House of the Spirits,” which evolved from a letter she had begun writing to her dying grandfather. That book became a runaway best seller and it remains one of her best-known.Allende and Book Review editor Gilbert Cruz spoke about her life and career. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Set in New York in the 1980s, Adam Ross's new novel, “Playworld,” tells the story of a young actor named Griffin as he navigates the chaos of the city, of his family and of being a teenager, and the dangers that swirl around each. Although “Playworld” grapples with bleak material, it sparkles with Ross's vivid eye and sardonic sense of humor. The result is a dark, off-kilter bildungsroman about one overextended teenager trying to figure himself out while being failed, continually, by every adult around him.On this week's episode, the Book Club host MJ Franklin discusses “Playworld” with his colleagues Dave Kim and Sadie Stein. Here are the books discussed in this week's episode:“Playworld,” by Adam Ross“Mr. Peanut,” by Adam Ross“The Catcher in the Rye,” “Nine Stories,” “Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction,” and “Franny and Zooey,” by J.D. Salinger“Long Island Compromise,” by Taffy Brodesser-Akner“How Little Lori Visited Times Square,” by Amos Vogel, illustrated by Maurice Sendak“The Squid and the Whale,” directed by Noah Baumbach“The Goldfinch,” by Donna Tartt“Headshot,” by Rita Bullwinkel“The Copenhagen Trilogy,” by Tove Ditlevsen“Jakob von Gunten,” by Robert Walser Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Last summer, when The New York Times Book Review released its list of the 100 Best Books of the 21st Century, one of the authors with multiple titles on that list was Hilary Mantel, who died in 2022. Those novels were “Wolf Hall” and “Bring Up the Bodies,” the first two in a trilogy of novels about Thomas Cromwell, the all-purpose fixer and adviser to King Henry VIII.Those books were also adapted into a 2015 television series starring Mark Rylance as Cromwell and Damien Lewis as King Henry. It's now a decade later and the third book in Mantel's series, “The Mirror and the Light,” has also been adapted for the small screen. Its finale airs on Sunday, April 27.Joining host Gilbert Cruz on this week's episode is Mantel's former editor Nicholas Pearson. He describes what it was like to encounter those books for the first time, and to work with a great author on a groundbreaking masterpiece of historical fiction. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

A century after “The Great Gatsby” was first published, F. Scott Fitzgerald's slender novel about a mysterious, lovelorn millionaire living and dying in a Long Island mansion has become among the most widely read American fictions — and also among the most analyzed and interpreted. As the Book Review's A.O. Scott wrote in a recent essay about the book's centennial: “What we think about Gatsby illuminates what we think about money, race, romance and history. How we imagine him has a lot to do with how we see ourselves.”Scott joins the host Gilbert Cruz on the podcast this week to discuss Fitzgerald's novel and its long afterlife, looking at the ways “Gatsby” has made its way into the fabric of American culture. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

In his new novel, “Twist,” the National Book Award-winning Irish writer Colum McCann tells the story of a journalist deep at sea in more ways then one: A man adrift, he accepts a magazine assignment to write about the crews who maintain and repair the undersea cables that transmit all of the world's information. Naturally, the assignment becomes more treacherous and psychologically fraught than he had anticipated. On this week's episode, McCann tells host Gilbert Cruz how he became interested in the topic of information cables and why the story resonated for him at multiple levels.“Now, I don't know if the novel is prescient in any way. I wanted to talk about repair. And when I got deep into the subject, I did talk about repair — which is, human repair or actual repair of a cable. But I also ended up talking about sabotage, too. And the sabotage of these cables is something that has to be on our minds.” Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

The novel “We Do Not Part,” by the Nobel laureate Han Kang, involves a pet-sitting quest gone surreal: It follows a writer and documentarian whose hospitalized friend beseeches her to take care of her stranded pet parakeet on an island hundreds of miles away. When she arrives, the writer finds not only the bird but also an apparition of her friend, who has a devastating history to tell.Transforming real life into a haunting dreamscape, “We Do Not Part” is about grief, tragedy, the weight of the past, and the painful but essential work of remembering, delivered by one of the most electrifying writers working today. (Han's 2016 novel, “The Vegetarian,” won the International Booker Prize and was chosen as one of The New York Times's Best Books of the 21st Century.) On this week's episode, the Book Club host MJ Franklin discusses “We Do Not Part” with with fellow Book Review editors Lauren Christensen and Emily Eakin.  Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

The director Steven Soderbergh has just released his second film of 2025: the spy thriller "Black Bag," starring Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett. In January 2024, Soderbergh spoke with host Gilbert Cruz about some of the more than 80 books that he read in the previous year. (This episode is a rerun.)Books discussed:"How to Live: A Life of Montaigne," by Sarah Bakewell"Stanley Kubrick's 'The Shining,'" by Lee Unkrich and J.W. Rinzler"Cocktails with George and Martha," by Philip GefterThe work of Donald E. Westlake"Americanah," by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie"Pictures From an Institution," by Randall Jarrell"Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will," by Robert M. Sapolsky Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Every season brings its share of books to look forward to, and this spring is no different. Host Gilbert Cruz is joined by Book Review editor Joumana Khatib to talk about a dozen or so titles that sound interesting in the months ahead.Books discussed on this episode:"Dream Count," by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie"Sunrise on the Reaping," by Suzanne Collins"The Buffalo Hunter Hunter," by Stephen Graham Jones"Medicine River: A Story of Survival and the Legacy of Indian Boarding Schools," by Mary Annette Pember"Great Big Beautiful Life," by Emily Henry"John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs," by Ian Leslie"Yoko: A Biography," by David Sheff"Searches," by Vauhini Vara"Strangers in the Land: Exclusion, Belonging, and the Epic Story of the Chinese in America," by Michael Luo"Rabbit Moon," by Jennifer Haigh"Mark Twain," by Ron Chernow"Authority," by Andrea Long Chu"Spent," by Alison Bechdel"Fish Tales," by Nettie Jones Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Samantha Harvey's novel “Orbital,” which won the Booker Prize last year, has a tight, poetic frame: We follow one day in the lives of six people working on a space station above Earth, orbiting the planet 16 times every 24 hours. But this is not a saga of adventure or exploration. It's a quiet meditation on what it means to be human, prompted by a series of personal reckonings each character faces while floating 250 miles above home.This week on the Book Review Book Club, MJ Franklin talks about “Orbital” with fellow Book Review editors Joumana Khatib and Jennifer Harlan. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

You're familiar with Edward Gorey, whether you know it or not. The prolific author and illustrator, who was born 100 years ago this week, was ubiquitous for a time in the 1970s and 1980s, and his elaborate black-and-white line drawings — often depicting delightfully grim neo-Victorian themes and settings — graced everything from book jackets to the opening credits of the PBS show “Mystery!” to his own eccentric storybooks like “The Gashlycrumb Tinies,” in which young children come to unfortunate but spectacular ends.On this week's episode, the Book Review's Sadie Stein joins Gilbert Cruz for a celebration of all things Gorey.“He was so incredibly prolific,” Stein says. “He was Joyce Carol Oates-like in his output. And it's amazing when you look at the work because the line drawings, as you mentioned, are so intricate. It looks almost like pointillism sometimes, like it would have taken hundreds of hours. But he was either preternaturally disciplined or incredibly fast, and each one that I've ever seen at least is beautiful. And complete in a way.” Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

One day, several decades ago, the writer Winnie Holzman was shopping in a Manhattan bookstore where a particular cover caught her eye. It showed a woman with a green face, a black hat pulled down over her eyes. The book was “Wicked” by Gregory Maguire, a retelling of L. Frank Baum's “Oz” stories from the perspective of the Wicked Witch of the West. “When I turned it over and read the little précis on the back, it blew my mind,” Holzman said. “I thought it was such a brilliant premise.” The book ended up on Holzman's bookshelf, with its enigmatic cover facing out.Years later, the composer Stephen Schwartz contacted Holzman to ask if she'd be interested in adapting Maguire's book for the stage. The musical they wrote together opened in 2003, and it is now one of the most successful shows in Broadway history. The producers started talking about a movie adaptation, but Holzman was cautious: “We had to really kind of clear our minds and kind of reconceive the whole story.”The film version of “Wicked” opened in 2024, starring Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, and with a screenplay by Holzman and Dana Fox. It is one of the highest-grossing movies of the year and is nominated for 10 Academy Awards, including Best Picture.Winnie Holzman joins Gilbert Cruz, the editor of the Book Review, to discuss the benefits and drawbacks of adapting your own adaptation. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

The screenwriter Peter Straughan has become adept at taking well known — and beloved — books and adapting them for the big and small screens. He was first nominated for an Oscar for his screenplay of the 2011 film “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy,” based on the classic John le Carré spy novel, and then adapted Hilary Mantel's “Wolf Hall” trilogy into an award-winning season of television, with an adaptation of the third novel coming out soon. Now he has been nominated for a second Oscar: for his screenplay for “Conclave,” based on Robert Harris's political thriller set in the secret world of a papal election.“It's almost like mosaic work,” Straughan tells Gilbert Cruz, the editor of The New York Times Book Review, about adapting books. “You have all these pieces; sometimes they're going to be laid out in a very similar order to the book, sometimes a completely different order. Sometimes you're going to deconstruct and rebuild completely.”In the third episode of our special series devoted to Oscar-nominated films adapted from books, Cruz talks with Straughan about his process of translating a book to the screen, and about the moments in ‘‘Conclave” that he found most exciting to adapt.Produced by Tina Antolini and Alex BarronEdited by Wendy DorrEngineered by Daniel RamirezOriginal Music by Elisheba IttoopHosted by Gilbert Cruz Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Elijah Wald's 2015 book, “Dylan Goes Electric! Newport, Seeger, Dylan and the Night That Split the Sixties,” traces the events that led up to Bob Dylan's memorable performance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. The book is about Dylan, but also about the folk movement, youth culture, politics and the record business. For the writer and director James Mangold, Wald's work provided an opportunity to tell an unusual story about the musician.“You could structure a screenplay along the lines of what Peter Shaffer did with “Amadeus,'” Mangold told the Book Review editor Gilbert Cruz. “I don't really know what I learned about Mozart watching “Amadeus.” But I do know that I learned a lot about how we mortals feel about people with immense talent.”Mangold's film “A Complete Unknown” is a chronicle of Dylan's early years on the New York folk scene, and it avoids easy explanations for the musician's genius and success. “What if the thing we don't understand, we just don't want to understand,” said Mangold, “which is that he's actually different? That he's just a different kind of person than you or I?”In the second episode of our special series devoted to Oscar-nominated films adapted from books, Cruz talks with Mangold about making a film centered on one of music's most enigmatic figures. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

When the filmmaker and photographer RaMell Ross first read “The Nickel Boys,” Colson Whitehead's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about two Black boys in a dangerous reform school in the 1960s, he couldn't help but put himself in the shoes of its protagonists, Elwood and Turner.In his film adaptation of the book, Ross does that to the audience: You see what the characters see, because it's filmed from the main character's point of view. “I wondered,” Ross said, “how do you explicitly film from the perspective of a Black person?”It was an experiment that has paid off in critical acclaim. “Nickel Boys” has been nominated for two Academy Awards: best adapted screenplay and best picture.In the first episode of our special series devoted to Oscar-nominated films adapted from books, host Gilbert Cruz talks with Ross about why he made the film this particular way. Produced by Tina Antolini and Alex BarronWith Kate LoPrestiEdited by Wendy DorrEngineered by Sophia LanmanOriginal music by Elisheba IttoopHosted by Gilbert Cruz Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

The novel “Our Evenings,” by Alan Hollinghurst, follows a gay English Burmese actor from childhood into old age as he confronts confusing relationships, his emerging sexuality, racism and England's changing political climate in the late 20th and early 21st century. It's the story of a life — beautifully related by a literary master whose 2004 novel “The Line of Beauty” won the Booker Prize and was named to the Book Review's 100 Best Books of the 21st Century.Reviewing “Our Evenings” for us last year, Hamilton Cain wrote that the book “is that rare bird: a muscular work of ideas and an engrossing tale of one man's personal odyssey as he grows up, framed in exquisite language, surrounding us like a Wall of Sound.”You can join our book club discussion in the comments here.We would love to hear your thoughts about this episode, and about the Book Review's podcast in general. You can send them to books@nytimes.com. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

In Alafair Burke's new thriller, “The Note,” three friends are vacationing together in the Hamptons when they have an unpleasant run-in with a couple of strangers and decide to exact drunken, petty revenge. But the prank they pull — a note reading “He's cheating on you” — snowballs, eventually embroiling them in a missing-persons investigation and forcing each woman to wonder what dark secrets her friends are hiding.Burke joins host Gilbert Cruz and talks about how she came up with the idea for “The Note,” and how she goes about writing her books in general.“I always have a few ideas, just, like the setup in my head,” she says. “And then I also have characters in my head. They're not aligned together initially. I might just be thinking about a character who's interesting to me for various reasons. It might be the back story that's interesting, or it might be a personality trait that's interesting. And then I'll have a setup, like, three women go on vacation and stir up some nonsense that gets them in trouble. And for me, when I can start writing is when — it's almost like matchmaking: Oh, OK, if I take that character that I've been thinking about with that back story and that set of anxieties and I put her in this scenario, that's going to get interesting.” Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Decades ago, after he lost in home in a California wildfire, the travel writer and essayist Pico Iyer started to go to a small monastery in Big Sur in search of solitude. On this week's episode he discusses those retreats, which he writes about in his new book "Aflame: Learning from Silence.""It's true that even from a young age, I only had to step into the silence of any monastery or convent and I felt a kind of longing, the way other people feel a longing when they see a delectable meal or a Pistachio gelato." Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

And we're back! Happy new year, readers. On this week's episode, Gilbert Cruz and Joumana Khatib talk about some of the upcoming books they're most anticipating over the next several months.Books discussed on this episode:"Stone Yard Devotional," by Charlotte Wood"Aflame: Learning from Silence," by Pico Iyer"Onyx Storm," by Rebecca Yarros"Glyph," by Ali Smith"The Dream Hotel," by Laila Lalami"The Colony," by Annika Norlin"We Do Not Part," by Han Kang"Playworld," by Adam Ross"Death of the Author," by Nnedi Okorafor"The Acid Queen: The Psychedelic Life and Counterculture Rebellion of Rosemary Woodruff Leary," by Susannah Cahalan"Tilt," by Emma Pattee"Dream Count," by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie"Hope: The Autobiography," by Pope Francis"Jesus Wept: Seven Popes and the Battle for the Soul of the Catholic Church," by Philip Shenon"The Antidote," by Karen Russell"Source Code: My Beginnings," by Bill Gates"Great Big Beautiful Life," by Emily Henry"Sunrise on the Reaping," by Suzanne Collins Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

The Book Review podcast is off for the holidays, but please enjoy this episode of the The New York Times's Culture Desk show from earlier this fall.In 2004, Susanna Clarke published her debut novel, the sprawling 800-page historical fantasy “Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell.” It was a sensation. Clarke sold millions of copies, won literary awards and landed on best-seller lists.After just one book, Clarke was regarded as one of Britain's greatest fantasy novelists. It would be 16 years before she resurfaced with her second novel, “Piranesi.”So, where did she go? And what is she doing now?On the 20th anniversary of her masterpiece, the Times reporter Alexandra Alter visited Clarke at her limestone cottage in England's Peak District to discuss her winding path to literary stardom and, above all else, her complex relationship with magic. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Clare Keegan's slim 2021 novella about one Irishman's crisis of conscience during the Christmas season, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, has also been adapted into a film starring Cillian Murphy. In this week's episode, MJ Franklin discusses the book with his colleagues Joumana Khatib, Lauren Christensen, and Elizabeth Egan.  Keegan's book was also one of The New York Times Book Review's 100 best books of the 21st century. As we wrote, "Not a word is wasted in Keegan's small, burnished gem of a novel, a sort of Dickensian miniature centered on the son of an unwed mother who has grown up to become a respectable coal and timber merchant with a family of his own in 1985 Ireland. Moralistically, though, it might as well be the Middle Ages as he reckons with the ongoing sins of the Catholic Church and the everyday tragedies wrought by repression, fear and rank hypocrisy."  Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Dwight Garner, Jennifer Szalai and Alexandra Jacobs — staff critics for The New York Times Book Review — join host Gilbert Cruz to look back on highlights from their year in books.Books discussed:"Intermezzo," by Sally Rooney"All Fours," by Miranda July"You Dreamed of Empires," by Álvaro Enrigue"When the Clock Broke," by John Ganz"Radiant: The Life and Line of Keith Haring," by Brad Gooch"Miss May Does Not Exist: The Life and Work of Elaine May, Hollywood's Hidden Genius," by Carrie Courogen"My Beloved Monster," by Caleb Carr"Rejection," by Tony Tulathimutte"Beautyland," by Marie-Helene Bertino"Free and Equal: A Manifesto for a Just Society," by Daniel Chandler"Seeing Through: A Chronicle of Sex, Drugs and Opera," by Ricky Ian Gordon Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Following our Top 10 Books of 2024 episode, we are re-running our book club discussion about one of the novels on our year-end list: "Good Material."How to explain the British writer Dolly Alderton to an American audience? It might be best to let her work speak for itself — it certainly does! — but Alderton is such a cultural phenomenon in her native England that some context is probably helpful: “Like Nora Ephron, With a British Twist” is the way The New York Times Book Review put it when we reviewed her latest novel, “Good Material,” earlier this year.“Good Material” tells the story of a down-on-his-luck stand-up comic dealing with a broken heart, and it has won Alderton enthusiastic fans in America. In this episode, the Book Review's MJ Franklin discusses the book with his colleagues Emily Eakin and Leah Greenblatt.  Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Don't let anyone tell you differently — end of year list time is a wonderful time, indeed. And, as we do every December, we are ready to discuss the 10 best books of the year. Host Gilbert Cruz gathers the editors of the New York Times Book Review to discuss the most exciting fiction and nonfiction of the year.The New York Times Book Review's Top 10 Books of 2024"James," by Percival Everett"You Dreamed of Empires," by Álvaro Enrigue; translated by Natasha Wimmer"Good Material," by Dolly Alderton"All Fours," by Miranda July"Martyr!," by Kaveh Akbar"The Wide Wide Sea," by Hampton Sides"Everyone Who is Gone is Here," by Jonathan Blitzer"Reagan," by Max Boot"I Heard Her Call My Name," by Lucy Sante"Cold Creamatorium," by József Debreczeni; translated by Paul Olchváry Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

The broad outlines of "James" will be immediately familiar to anyone with even a basic knowledge of American literature: A boy named Huckleberry Finn and an enslaved man named Jim are fleeing down the Mississippi River together, each in search of his own kind of freedom.But where Mark Twain's “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” treated Jim as a secondary character, a figure of pity and a target of fun, Percival Everett makes him the star of the show: a dignified, complicated, fully formed man capable of love and wit and rage in equal measure.In this episode from May, the Book Review's MJ Franklin discusses the book, which was recently awarded the National Book Award, with his colleagues Joumana Khatib and Gregory Cowles. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

It begins with one of the most iconic lines in literature: “Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.”“One Hundred Years of Solitude,” Gabriel García Márquez's magical realist parable of imperialism in Latin America, is a tale of family, community, prophesy and disaster. In this week's episode, the Book Review's MJ Franklin discusses the book with his colleagues Gregory Cowles and Miguel Salazar. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

As part of The New York Times Book Review's project on the 100 Best Books published since the year 2000, Nick Hornby called "Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland" one of the "greatest literary achievements of the 21st century." The author Patrick Radden Keefe joins host Gilbert Cruz to talk about his book, which has now been adapted into an FX miniseries.Keefe has now seen his reporting on the life of Irish Republican Army soldier Dolours Price and others make its way from a New Yorker magazine article to an acclaimed nonfiction book to a streaming series. "In terms of storytelling, I try to write in a way that is as visceral and engaging as possible," Keefe said. "But the toolkit that you have when you make a series is so much more visceral. It's almost fissile in its power." Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

The works of John le Carré, who died in 2020, are among the most beloved thrillers of all time. For some, books like "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy," "A Perfect Spy" and "The Spy Who Came in From the Cold" are simply among their favorite works of literature ever.So it was a perilous task that author Nick Harkaway, one of le Carré sons, set out for himself. The author of multiple well-received science fiction novels, Harkaway picked up the torch from his father to write a new tale starring George Smiley, the Cold War spy who has appeared in more than a half dozen novels. According to Harkaway, it took some work to figure out the right period to set the book in."Smiley's career is a little bit tricky in terms of the continuity because my dad, when he was writing these books, wasn't writing a franchise," Harkaway said. "He was writing one book after another, and each one was the only truth that he cared about." Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Sally Rooney is a writer people talk about. Since her first novel, “Conversations With Friends,” was published in 2017, Rooney has been hailed as a defining voice of the millennial generation because of her ability to capture the particular angst and confusion of young love, friendship and coming-of-age in our fraught digital era.“Intermezzo,” her fourth and latest novel, centers on two brothers separated by 10 years and periods of estrangement, who are grieving the recent death of their father. Peter Koubek is a 32-year-old lawyer with a younger girlfriend, Naomi, and an unextinguished flame for his ex, Sylvia; his brother, Ivan, is a 22-year-old chess prodigy who falls into a relationship with a 36-year-old divorcée, Margaret.In this week's episode, the Book Review's MJ Franklin discusses the book with fellow editors Joumana Khatib, Sadie Stein and Dave Kim.  Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Halloween is just around the corner, so we turned to two great horror authors — Joe Hill and Stephen Graham Jones — for their recommendations of books to read this season.Books discussed:"Mean Spirited," by Nick Roberts"Maeve Fly," by CJ Leede"Come Closer," by Sara Gran"It," by Stephen King"Experimental Film," by Gemma Files"A Head Full of Ghosts," by Paul Tremblay"Lost Man's Lane," by Scott Carson"Fever House," by Keith Rosson"The Devil by Name," by Keith Rosson"The Reformatory," by Tananarive Due Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Salman Rushdie's "Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder," has been nominated in the nonfiction category as part of this year's National Book Awards, which will take place in mid-November. This week, we are running Rushdie's conversation with Ezra Klein from earlier this year. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

The actor-director-producer Stanley Tucci is also, famously, an avid eater, who has explored his enthusiasm for food through his travel show “Searching for Italy” and through two books: “Taste,” in 2021, and now a food diary, “What I Ate in One Year." In this week's episode, Tucci discusses his new book with host Gilbert Cruz and talks about bad meals, his food idol and his path to tracking a year's worth of eating.“The people at Simon & Schuster wanted me to write another book after ‘Taste,' and I really didn't know what to write,” Tucci says. “My wife said, Just write what you eat. So I did, because I do everything she says. And it actually ended up being such a pleasure to write. It just flowed very easily. As you start to write about the mundane, you start to mine all this stuff that you didn't know you were thinking about, or that was happening. And that's what the book is. It's, in essence, the passage of time through the prism of food.”Also on this week's episode, Gilbert chats with Joumana Khatib about the National Book Award finalists in fiction and nonfiction. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

In 2021, the novelist Jean Hanff Korelitz had a hit with “The Plot,” a book that was partly a mystery, partly a thriller and entirely a delicious sendup of the publishing industry. It told the tale of a once-promising writer, Jacob, who steals somebody else's story idea and reaches undreamed-of levels of success before things go very badly for him.Korelitz's new novel, “The Sequel,” is — yes — a sequel to “The Plot.” It follows Jacob's widow, Anna, who has unexpectedly become a writer herself, only to be confronted with her own dark secrets. On this week's episode, Korelitz talks with the host Gilbert Cruz about the writing life, the shape of her career and her decision to write a sequel to “The Plot.”We would love to hear your thoughts about this episode, and about the Book Review's podcast in general. You can send them to books@nytimes.com. Soon, you'll need a subscription to keep full access to this show, and to other New York Times podcasts, on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Don't miss out on exploring all of our shows, featuring everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts.

Jo Hamya's novel “The Hypocrite” follows a famous English novelist as he watches a new play by his daughter, Sophia, in London. The lights go down in the theater, and immediately the novelist realizes: The play is about him, the vacation he took with Sophia a decade earlier and the sins he committed while they were away.The novel is an art monster story and a dysfunctional family saga that explores the ethics of creating work inspired by real life. In this week's episode, the Book Review's MJ Franklin discusses the book with editors Joumana Khatib and Lauren Christensen.

This weekend marks the official start of autumn, so what better time to take a peek at the fall books we're most excited to read? On this week's episode, Gilbert Cruz chats with Joumana Khatib and Anna Dubenko about the upcoming season of reading and the books on the horizon that they're looking forward to most eagerly.Books mentioned in this week's episode:“Intermezzo,” by Sally Rooney“Playground,” by Richard Powers“Sonny Boy: A Memoir,” by Al Pacino“Cher: The Memoir, Part One,” by Cher“The Sequel,” by Jean Hanff Korelitz“Be Ready When the Luck Happens,” by Ina Garten“We Solve Murders,” by Richard Osman“Creation Lake,” by Rachel Kushner“V13: Chronicle of a Trial,” by Emmanuel Carrère“Absolution,” by Jeff VanderMeer“Lazarus Man,” by Richard Price“Rejection,” by Tony Tulathimutte“Colored Television,” by Danzy Senna“Health and Safety,” by Emily Witt“Patriot: A Memoir,” by Alexei Navalny“The Message,” by Ta-Nehisi Coates“The Serviceberry,” by Robin Wall Kimmerer“Revenge of the Tipping Point,” by Malcolm Gladwell“From Here to the Great Unknown,” by Lisa Marie Presley“The City and Its Uncertain Walls,” by Haruki Murakami

Robert Caro's 1974 biography “The Power Broker” is a book befitting its subject, Robert Moses — the unelected parochial technocrat who used a series of appointed positions to entirely reshape New York City and its surrounding environment for generations to come. Like Moses, Caro's book has exerted an enduring and outsize influence. This week, Caro joins the podcast and tells the host Gilbert Cruz how he accounts for its enduring legacy.“People are interested in power,” Caro says. “This is a particular kind of power. Robert Moses' power was unchecked power. We all live in a democracy where we think that power comes from our votes at the ballot box. He was a man who was never elected to anything and he held on to power for 44 years, almost half a century. And with the power, this man who wasn't elected to anything shaped New York and its surrounding suburbs. So I think, if you're interested in government, you have to say, as I said maybe 55 years ago when I started this, How did he do it? What happened here?”

The British writer Kate Atkinson has had a rich and varied career since her debut novel, “Behind the Scenes at the Museum,” won the Whitbread Book of the Year award in 1996; her 14 subsequent books have included story collections, historical fiction and an inventive speculative novel, “Life After Life,” that landed on the Book Review's recent survey of the 100 Best Books of the 21st Century.But she may be best known for her Jackson Brodie series of crime novels, which began with “Case Histories” in 2004 and was later adapted into a British television show. The sixth book in the series, “Death at the Sign of the Rook,” has just been released, and from the title to the plot to the cast of characters it pays winking homage to the golden age of English cozy mysteries. Atkinson visits the podcast this week to discuss her new novel, and tells The Times's Sarah Lyall how she approached her tribute to an earlier era.

As part of its recent "100 Best Books of the 21st Century" project, The New York Times Book Review is interviewing some of the authors whose books appeared on the list. This week, Isabel Wilkerson joins host Gilbert Cruz to discuss "The Warmth of Other Suns," her sweeping history of the movement of Black Americans from the south to points north over the course of the 20th century.

This July, The New York Times Book Review published a list of The 100 Best Books of the 21st Century. The top choice was “My Brilliant Friend,” by Elena Ferrante, translated by Ann Goldstein.The book is the first novel in Ferrante's so-called Neapolitan quartet, which tracks the lifelong friendship between Lenù and Lila, two women from a rough neighborhood in Naples, Italy, even as family, relationships and work pull their lives in different directions.In this week's episode, MJ Franklin discusses the book with fellow editors Joumana Khatib, Emily Eakin and Gregory Cowles. 

As part of its recent 100 Best Books of the 21st Century project, The New York Times Book Review is interviewing some of the authors whose books appeared on the list. This week, Jennifer Egan joins host Gilbert Cruz to discuss her Pulitzer-winning novel about the music industry, “A Visit From the Goon Squad,” and talks, among other things, about the early challenges it faced in finding an audience, the meaning of its title and her initial reluctance to decide whether the book was a novel or a story collection.

A summer camp in the Adirondacks. A rich girl gone missing, 14 years after her older brother also disappeared. A prominent local family harboring dark secrets. Liz Moore's new novel, “The God in the Woods,” turns these elements into a complex and suspenseful meditation on parenting and social class and the rituals of summer friendship.On this week's podcast, Liz Moore chats with Gilbert Cruz about her new novel. (Spoiler alert: the last 10 or so minutes address the book's ending.)

It's August, which means that Labor Day and back-to-school are just around the corner. The vacation that seemed so leisurely a month ago suddenly feels a little more frantic. But there's still time to squeeze in a last batch of summer reading. On this week's episode, host Gilbert Cruz chats with his colleagues Joumana Khatib and Anna Dubenko about the books that have been occupying their attention this season.Books mentioned on this episode:"Talk," by Linda Rosencrantz"Crossroads," by Jonathan Franzen"You Like It Darker," by Stephen King"Transactions in a Foreign Currency," by Deborah Eisenberg"Veronica," by Mary Gaitskill"The Bright Sword," by Lev Grossman"Asymmetry," by Lisa Halliday"Out," by Natsuo Kirino"The God of the Woods," by Liz Moore"The Devil's Grip," by Lina Wolff"Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay," by Elena Ferrante"Spy Hook," by Len Deighton"All Fours," by Miranda July