NYT Books

Mary Jane never “sat right” with the award-winning scientist and memoirist Hope Jahren, so she wrote a novel about “the real redheaded one.”

In “Making the Presidency,” Lindsay M. Chervinsky argues that John Adams established what it means to be America’s commander in chief.

In “Empresses of Seventh Avenue,” the fashion writer Nancy MacDonell tells the story of the New York women who created modern style.

The Weimar Republic was a hotbed of cultural experimentation. A new history argues that its demise was not inevitable.

In Coco Mellors’s second novel, “Blue Sisters,” three adult siblings reunite on the first anniversary of their sister’s death.

In Hiromi Kawakami’s new science fiction novel, Earth is a place of surveillance, isolation and dread. The characters (and clones) are doing their best to stay alive.

Already longlisted for the Booker Prize, Rachel Kushner’s “Creation Lake” — set in rural France — stars a ruthless American secret agent.

In “The Life Impossible,” a 72-year-old widow tries to figure out what happened to a friend who disappeared in Ibiza.

The itinerant man in Gayl Jones’s “The Unicorn Woman” discovers his beloved as a sideshow carnival attraction.

In “Never Saw Me Coming,” Tanya Smith tells of her life as a young financial criminal — and the harsh prison sentence that changed everything.