NYT Books

An adaptation of Denis Johnson’s novella arrives at the same time as a new biography, unlocking one of his best-loved and least-understood books.

The staff of The New York Times Book Review choose the year’s top fiction and nonfiction.

We made a list! Now we explain why we love the books we chose.

In works like “Travesties” and “Arcadia,” the playwright embraced the really big questions and wrestled words into coherent, exhilarating shape.

She wrote two popular memoirs: the first about the joys of married life, the second about her husband serving her divorce papers on their 40th anniversary.

Rabih Alameddine’s “The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother)” won in fiction, while Omar El Akkad’s reckoning with Gaza took the nonfiction prize.

A New Zealand book competition dropped two of a publisher’s books because they had A.I.-generated covers. The publisher and the designer pushed back.

Learning is painful, pleasant and, above all, communal.

A visit to the English manor that inspired “A Secret Garden” or a stroll through Tintin’s Brussels can turn stories into treasured memories.

In Britain, he sought to be “free not to have to puff some prince’s wedding / free to say up yours to Tony Blair.”