NYT Books

In Halle Butler’s new book, “Banal Nightmare,” a 30-something woman returns to her hometown to get out of a rut and reassess her life after a bad breakup.

Set among the fevered residents of a remote Australian town, Ruby Todd’s debut novel considers how grief can draw people to extreme beliefs.

In “Rat City,” Jon Adams and Edmund Ramsden explore the life, times and influence of the scientific Pied Piper, John Bumpass Calhoun.

In a new telling of the Macedonian leader’s final years, Rachel Kousser shows what happened when dreams of conquest met reality.

Alisa Alering’s debut novel, “Smothermoss,” is an Appalachian mystery tangled with wild magic, queer coming-of-age and sisterly bonds.

In Stephen Graham Jones’s new novel, a young outcast is forced to become a murderer fated to enact gory revenge.

In his picaresque memoir, “My Glorious Defeats,” the Anonymous-movement activist Barrett Brown takes us on a journey of pure, joyous solipsism.

In Yasmin Zaher’s “The Coin,” a rich, chic Palestinian schoolteacher in New York City grapples with displacement and American consumerism.

Stacey D’Erasmo’s exploration of sustained creativity, “The Long Run,” is poignant, exhilarating and full of wise advice from lives well lived.

In “The Anthropologists,” Aysegul Savas celebrates the “unremarkable grace” of a couple’s ordinary days. It’s enchanting.