NYT Books

Set around World War I, the romantic drama in H.S. Cross’s new novel, “Amanda,” comes with a contemporary kink (or two).

The nominees for the prestigious award also include novels by David Szalay, Benjamin Markovits and Andrew Miller.

In his first book, John J. Lennon, who is serving a 28-year sentence, brings nuance and complexity to his own and other prisoners’ stories.

Ilana Masad’s new novel, “Beings,” weaves together three separate story lines to explore how we process and narrate our lives.

In Emmelie Prophète’s “Cécé,” a young woman is determined to survive the slums — first by doing sex work, then by posting her gruesome reality for the world to see.

In a new book, the Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker argues that an awareness that everyone knows what you know is a powerful driver of human social life.

In “What’s With Baum?,” an anxious, jealous and thrice-married writer finds himself stranded in a culture that wants more “schmaltz,” less “wisdom.”

In the new memoir “Awake,” the evangelical star Jen Hatmaker explores how the implosion of her 26-year marriage helped lead to a spiritual reckoning.

In “The Waterbearers,” Sasha Bonét weaves her matrilineal history into a larger struggle for survival and self-knowledge.

In “McNamara at War,” the brothers William and Philip Taubman probe the mind of a Harvard Business School technocrat who tried to overhaul the American military.