NYT Books

In his beautiful memoir, “Do Something,” Guy Trebay paints a picture of a vanished, pre-AIDS Gotham that’s both gritty and dazzling.

In “A Gentleman and a Thief,” Dean Jobb vividly recounts the life and times of the notorious criminal — and tabloid fixture — Arthur Barry.

A massive, mysterious grizzly takes on symbolic weight in Julia Phillips’s moody and affecting second novel.

“The New Breadline,” by Jean-Martin Bauer, a veteran food aid worker, chronicles a growing problem that should not exist — along with the harmful policies that have exacerbated it.

In “Frostbite,” Nicola Twilley travels the cold chain that preserves what we eat and helps it get around the world.

Tracy O’Neill’s memoir, “Woman of Interest,” recounts her yearlong quest, which culminates in a trip to Korea.

Starring an undergraduate student at Oxford, Rosalind Brown’s debut novel is exquisitely attuned to the thrill and boredom of academic life.

Santiago Jose Sanchez’ debut novel, “Hombrecito,” follows a young immigrant as he grows up in the United States, struggling to identify with a masculinity he’s never felt and a country he never knew.

In her new novel, “Sandwich,” Catherine Newman explores the aches and joys of midlife via one family’s summer week at the beach.

In her latest book, Olivia Laing makes an impassioned case for the garden — as repository of natural beauty, as democratic ideal, as writerly inspiration.