What to Read Now
Nathalie Dion for the Boston Globe
As we enter a summer of uncertainty, the books we read can offer solace or solutions, understanding or escape. Our critics suggest some of the best in literary fiction, mystery, nonfiction, sports, and young adult books, from brand new titles to classics worth rediscovering.
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literary fiction
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Assumption
Like everything by Everett, America’s best literary chameleon, “Assumption” is many things at once: three discrete novellas braided together into a single story; an old-fashioned murder mystery and a metafictional brain teaser; an existentially bleak story that absolutely delights.
— Anthony Domestico
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Beadworkers
What Piatote made evident in her debut story collection is that stories are not to be merely read, but experienced. These words from the Native Northwest form an indelible primer in how we understand the people who told and tell them.
— Yahdon Israel
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The Evening of the Holiday
Hazzard, who died in 2016, wrote beautifully about beautiful things (Italy, romance, painting, poetry), nowhere better than in her slim debut — a psychologically precise novel about a love affair in the Tuscan countryside.
— Anthony Domestico
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F*ckface: And Other Stories
The prose in every story in this collection is as punchy as the plots. Hampton’s ability to render her characters with complex desires demonstrates her love for Appalachia and the people who live there.
— Yahdon Israel
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Gringos
No American writer has a higher pleasure-to-page ratio than Portis, and this picaresque novel, set south of the border and featuring religious esoterica, UFOs, and lots of hippies, pleases on every page.
— Anthony Domestico
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Hitting a Straight Lick With a Crooked Stick
A short story collection operating in the framework of the oral tradition. Stories long enough to captivate a room, but short enough for the listeners to remember what was read and repeat to another.
— Yahdon Israel
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Inheritors
Serizawa’s ability to weave complex histories into the personal experiences of her characters proves that life is anything but linear.
— Yahdon Israel
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The Last Samurai
A book so formally ambitious shouldn’t be so much fun, but DeWitt’s story of a highly intelligent single mother and her even more brilliant young son simultaneously offers the most traditional of readerly pleasures — laughter, pathos, and emotional intimacy — and, through its experimentation, makes it new.
— Anthony Domestico
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The Lightness
Set during a feverish summer at what the teenage narrator calls a “Buddhist Camp for Bad Girls,” Temple’s debut is suspenseful and stylish, opening with one mysterious death and an even more mysterious disappearance, taking on the nature of religious belief and female embodiment, doing it all with wit and intelligence.
— Anthony Domestico
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The Little Sister
“It was one of those clear, bright summer mornings we get in the early spring in California before the high fog sets in”: so opens Chandler’s noir classic, a Hollywood novel that cuts the clear Los Angeles sky with the fog of moral corruption.
— Anthony Domestico
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Lolly Willowes
The first half is a superb Jane Austen novel, with an unmarried young female heroine negotiating the demands of an overbearing family; the second half unexpectedly turns into a witchy Shirley Jackson story, complete with a feline familiar and Satan come-a-courting.
— Anthony Domestico
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The Lost Dog
A scholar of Henry James and a lost dog, an avant-garde artist and a house in the Australian bush: de Kretser brings these unlikely elements together in a story about aesthetics, ghosts, and epistemology that would make James proud.
— Anthony Domestico
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Lot
Washington’s Nicolás is as important to American fiction as Junot Diaz’s Yunior. Like Yunior, Nicolás embodies the history and culture of people and a place (in this case, Houston); he’s a compelling and unforgettable character.
— Yahdon Israel
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A Lucky Man
A short story collection about the price Black men are willing to pay to connect with each other — and how expensive the price can often be.
— Yahdon Israel
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The Night Watchman
Erdrich’s latest, more straightforward in style and plot than many of her previous novels, tells a powerful story — the successful battle of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa against government termination in the 1950s — that makes us reconsider American history and the possibilities of political heroism.
— Anthony Domestico
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Sabrina & Corina
What you’ll find in each of these stories are many ways histories make themselves present in the lives and relationships of the women who inherit them.
— Yahdon Israel
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Versailles
Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell trilogy is great; so too is this gem of the historical imagination, which brings to life the soul of Marie Antoinette as well as the mirror-, chandelier-, and ghost-filled palace in which she lived.
— Anthony Domestico
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We Had No Rules
Fiction told from the perspective of first person queer protagonists where being queer is treated as the rule and an exception, and the characters understand that they, in the words of James Baldwin, need not battle for their humanity, but “accept it.”
— Yahdon Israel
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The World Doesn’t Require You
It takes unique talent and intentional skill to imagine new possibilities for lores that serve as the foundation for how a people have survived. With Scott’s imagination, his stories challenge us to question if there’s more to life than surviving.
— Yahdon Israel
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You Will Never Be Forgotten
For lovers of speculative fiction, this is a collection in which South wields humor as a tool to reckon with what her near future, and technological advances, were supposed to protect us from: being alone. Ironically, reading about other people who find themselves alone can help readers feel less alone themselves.
— Yahdon Israel
mystery
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Afterland
Several years after the Manfall pandemic, a plague that kills only men, Cole, a widowed mom, and, Miles, her 12-year-old son and one of the few surviving males, undertake a thrill-a-minute trip across a riven US landscape inhabited by anarchists, evangelicals, and nefarious no-gooders.
— Daneet Steffens
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Between Two Evils
The brutal killing of a doctor connected to an immigration-detention center and the release of a convicted serial rapist due to a forensic foul-up are two of the cases driving detectives DI Dushan Zigic and DS Mel Ferreira in the latest in Dolan’s terrific police-procedural series.
— Daneet Steffens
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Blacktop Wasteland
Violence-tinged heists, muscle cars, and dead-end poverty in America generate the full-on action and evocative atmosphere in this beautifully wrought tale of one Beauregard Montage, a man who, convinced he can’t escape his past, revs directly into his uncertain future.
— Daneet Steffens
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Broken
Characters new and familiar — a bail-bondsman with a penchant for West Coast jazz, a cop with a heart of gold, an English professor with a love of crime fiction, a young lady with a gift for agile wordplay — populate Winslow’s six novellas, bringing California surf culture, drug-running businesses, and our current political crisis to vivid, heart-breaking life.
— Daneet Steffens
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The City We Became
This pitch-perfect speculative-fiction thriller in which New York City’s boroughs’ souls are literally personified by cannily matched avatars hits all the right notes, from its deeply felt senses of history and humor to a truly chilling villain.
— Daneet Steffens
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Clean Hands
The pickpocketing of a lawyer’s smartphone loaded with sensitive documents sets off an intriguing string of events, which hits critical mass when the victim’s law firm hires an ex-CIA fixer to solve the high-stakes problem.
— Daneet Steffens
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Hamnet
Taking as one of its pivotal points the death of Shakespeare’s son Hamnet during the black plague, O’Farrell’s novel is a luminous and detail-infused imagining of the little-known life of Shakespeare’s wife, Agnes, the farmer’s daughter, herbalist, and fiercely independent woman who captured the Bard’s heart.
— Daneet Steffens
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Never Ask Me
No one exposes the dark, fraught underbelly of suburban America quite like Abbott, and his propulsive latest, depicting the relationships between families tied together via an overseas-adoption process, is a proper humdinger.
— Daneet Steffens
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The Question of Max
Eloquent academic Kate Fansler once again finds herself pursuing a literary conundrum after discovering the body of one of her students lodged among sea-beaten rocks along the coastline of Maine.
— Daneet Steffens
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The Secret Adversary
This early Christie mystery marks the first appearance of Tommy and Tuppence Beresford as the delightful and dynamic amateur detectives investigate the whereabouts of a potentially politically explosive document as well as the disappearance of a mysterious lady.
— Daneet Steffens
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The White Plague
Perhaps the ultimate revenge novel: After a scientist’s family is killed by terrorists, he devises a plague fatal to women, a combustible starting point that allows for Herbert to explore the ensuing political, social, and psychological fallout.
— Daneet Steffens
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These Women
This taut, terrific thriller, which captures the various stories of multiple women impacted by a serial killer in LA — including a determined detective, a performance artist, emotionally fraught mothers, and a community of sex workers — manages to be both devastating and incredibly uplifting.
— Daneet Steffens
nonfiction
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American Poison: How Racial Hostility Destroyed Our Promise
How can we ever be the country we say we want to be when we are so beset by racism? Porter argues both passionately and convincingly that it is racism that keeps America from being great — and that has us falling behind our former peers in nearly every imaginable measure.
— Kate Tuttle
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Child of Light: A Biography of Robert Stone
The terrain where the personal and the political converged was Robert Stone’s piece of literary real estate, explored in a host of ferociously smart, tough-minded novels (among them “Dog Soldiers,’’ “A Hall of Mirrors,’’ “A Flag for Sunrise,’’ and my favorite, “Outerbridge Reach’’). This perceptive biography traces another kind of convergence: between the restless intensity of Stone’s life and that of his books.
— Don Aucoin
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Essays One
Whether she’s analyzing the traditional narrative approach Thomas Pynchon employed before changing course with “The Crying of Lot 49’’ or anatomizing Gustave Flaubert’s endless revisions to “Madame Bovary,” Davis sheds useful light on the writing process. A highlight of this collection, which gathers four decades worth of essays and lectures, is her pragmatic advice in “Thirty Recommendations for Good Writing Habits,’’ No. 13: “If you want to be original, don’t labor to be original.’’
— Don Aucoin
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Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations
Jacob’s account, told in graphic form, of her ongoing dialogue with her son about race, identity, and family. Deceptively simple, the book is funny and fierce.
— Kate Tuttle
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Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family
OK, it’s not exactly beach fare, but this gorgeously written book blends medical mystery and family drama with an overarching sense of empathy. Truly like nothing else you’ll read this year.
— Kate Tuttle
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How to Be an Antiracist
If there’s one book to read right now, this is it. Kendi addresses us all, but especially white readers, in this brilliant, accessible guide to thinking about life, society, and race differently. Essential.
— Kate Tuttle
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The Late Shift: Letterman, Leno, & the Network Battle for the Night
David Letterman and Jay Leno had very different comic sensibilities, but in the early 1990s they shared a common goal: to succeed the legendary Johnny Carson as host of NBC’s “The Tonight Show.’’ Carter packs juicy insider detail into his absorbing, behind-the-scenes account of the Letterman-Leno competition: part chess match, part scorched-earth combat.
— Don Aucoin
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The Light of the World: A Memoir
An achingly beautiful memoir by the acclaimed poet about her 15-year marriage to painter-chef Ficre Ghebreyesus, who died at age 50. While a sense of unappeasable loss pervades its pages, Alexander’s portrait of her late husband is so richly detailed, so profoundly vivid and loving, that “The Light of the World’’ is ultimately not a book about absence, but presence.
— Don Aucoin
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Notes of a Native Son
In his prologue to this brilliant collection of essays, first published in 1955, the young author wrote that it is “because the world looks on his talent with such a frightening indifference that the artist is compelled to make his talent important.’’ Reread today, “Notes of a Native Son’’ illustrates why more than three decades after his death, Baldwin’s voice remains vital, even indispensable.
— Don Aucoin
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Race Man: Selected Works, 1960-2015
Five weeks before he died at age 75 in 2015, civil rights leader Julian Bond wrote: “There is no burden that weighs on an individual like discrimination.’’ This collection of essays, interviews, and opinion columns captures the many ways Bond fought to lift that weight from American society.
— Don Aucoin
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The Rascal King: The Life and Times of James Michael Curley, 1874-1958
Boston loves its myths, and no political figure has been more mythologized than James Michael Curley. In this exemplary, clear-eyed biography, Beatty excavates the layers of folklore that have accumulated around Curley to reveal the ruthless opportunist beneath the colorful, quotable rogue.
— Don Aucoin
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Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland
A mysterious kidnapping and murder, a generation of idealism dashed against the realities of politics, the bitter, intimate repercussions of violence: In “Say Nothing,” Keefe digs into the story’s complexity and its pain.
— Kate Tuttle
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Slouching Towards Bethlehem
This reputation-making 1968 collection of magazine pieces represents Didion at her lucid, penetrating best. With her trademark stiletto-sharp insight, she writes about Haight-Ashbury, Howard Hughes, the hold John Wayne exerted over Didion’s young imagination, the oddities of Las Vegas wedding chapels, and the darkness beneath all that California sunshine.
— Don Aucoin
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Still Here: The Madcap, Nervy, Singular Life of Elaine Stritch
If you only know Stritch from her performance on “30 Rock,’’ this briskly enjoyable and incisive biography is your chance to immerse yourself in the fascinating life that came before it. Stritch contained multitudes, and she embodied them all with headlong verve.
— Don Aucoin
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Surviving Autocracy
I can’t think of a better guide to these strange political times than Gessen, a National Book Award winner whose childhood in the Soviet Union and relentless research into totalitarianism provide the perfect tools with which to describe the dangers we face now.
— Kate Tuttle
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A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump’s Testing of America
Washington Post reporters Rucker and Leonnig pull no punches in their scrupulously reported chronicle of the first three years-plus of Donald Trump’s presidency. A work of modern political history, the book reads like a true-crime narrative — one of those where you’re left with the sour, dispiriting feeling that the bad guy got away with it.
— Don Aucoin
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The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration
A modern classic in which Wilkerson employs the tools of journalism and a novelist’s eye for character to tell the story of the thousands of African-Americans who left the south for what they hoped would be a better life up north.
— Kate Tuttle
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Wild Game: My Mother, Her Lover, and Me
A ravishing memoir about family secrets, love, sex, and food, all set amid a backdrop of Cape Cod in the 1970s and ’80s. Fascinating and often painful, Brodeur’s story emerges as one in which family ties are tested but never quite broken.
— Kate Tuttle
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Wow, No Thank You: Essays
Stunning, often hilarious essays from a master at mining the absurdities of modern life; Irby shares what’s inside her brain and it’s as raw, honest, and occasionally cringe-worthy as her readers have come to expect.
— Kate Tuttle
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The Yellow House: A Memoir
A lyrical yet tough-minded book that follows multiple generations as they inhabit one small house in New Orleans. This National Book Award winner tells a century’s worth of stories about family, survival, and home.
— Kate Tuttle
sports
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The Art of Fielding
A literate and deep dive into a small college and its baseball team, with a focus on the fragile psyche of a star player.
— Michael Silverman
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Beautiful on the Outside: A Memoir
The American figure skater's memoir written after he captured the world's attention at the 2018 Olympics is a fascinating look at an athlete's physical and emotional journey to his sport's grandest stage.
— Matt Pepin
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Homegrown: How the Red Sox Built a Champion From the Ground Up
The Globe Red Sox reporter is one of the hardest-working scribes in the biz, and his deep sourcing and relentless research are evident in this backstory to a championship.
— Matt Pepin
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The Inside Game: Bad Calls, Strange Moves, and What Baseball Behavior Teaches Us About Ourselves
Law expertly uses baseball as the vehicle through which to explore the much larger topic of how we make decisions — and particularly the biases that tend to corrupt our decision-making processes.
— Alex Speier
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Joe DiMaggio: The Hero’s Life
Yikes! Do not read this if you prefer to keep Joltin' Joe on a sports pedestal. But if you want to read a bracing account that takes down a myth, here you go.
— Michael Silverman
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The Mighty Walzer
The best (the only?) and definitely the funniest novel on ping-pong, a mid-20th-century coming-of-age tale of paddles and hormones.
— Michael Silverman
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Noodling for Flatheads: Moonshine, Monster Catfish, and other Southern Comforts
If you liked "Tiger King” … a few of these essays deal with oddball Southern traditions like bare-handed catfish fishing, cockfighting, and coon-hunting hounds.
— Michael Silverman
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Open: An Autobiography
One of the more outspoken and complicated tennis superstars bares his demons in a well-above-grade sports memoir.
— Michael Silverman
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Prophet of the Sandlots: Journeys With a Major League Scout
Tenderhearted nonfiction glimpse into the underappreciated art and science of scouting, through an aging scout’s eyes. The epilogue might break your heart.
— Michael Silverman
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Sandy Koufax: A Lefty’s Legacy
The reclusive Koufax barely cooperated but he also didn't stop the author from speaking to most who know him. The result is a revealing and cleverly structured biography.
— Michael Silverman
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Swing Kings: The Inside Story of Baseball’s Home Run Revolution
Baseball's hitting philosophies have undergone enormous challenges in the last handful of years, largely due to the influence of coaches outside the game who weren't afraid to challenge long-held precepts and training methods. Diamond traces those challenges in a way that illuminates why change often is driven by innovators who are outside the mainstream of their fields.
— Alex Speier
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The Victory Machine: The Making and Unmaking of the Warriors Dynasty
Maybe it’s too soon to contextualize the Golden State Warriors’ run to five straight NBA Finals, including three titles, just a year removed from its end. But as an observation on the fragility of success in an era when ambition, empowerment, technology, creativity, identity, and money are as much a part of the fabric of the NBA as society at large, Strauss's debut couldn’t be more timely.
— Julian Benbow
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The Wax Pack: On the Open Road in Search of Baseball’s Afterlife
In a time of confinement and isolation, a roadtrip across America to connect with strangers (who happened to play baseball) somehow makes the world seem a bit larger and more interesting.
— Alex Speier
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When Nothing Else Matters: Michael Jordan’s Last Comeback
If “The Last Dance” painted a picture of Michael Jordan in his prime using tactics that blur the lines between leadership and bullying to win six titles, Leahy captures the polar opposite: Jordan pushing 40, making his second comeback with the Wizards and only creating dysfunction with the ways that once reaped the game's greatest rewards.
— Julian Benbow
