NYT Books

The milestones of an undergrad friend group give shape and color to Grant Ginder’s latest novel, “So Old, So Young.”

How hard-boiled language lessons from Adrienne, the motorcycle-riding author of a series of 1970s language books, turned a homebody into an explorer.

In “Why I Am Not an Atheist,” Christopher Beha makes the case for faith.

Mohammed Hanif’s “Rebel English Academy” follows three characters in the politically fraught Pakistan of the late 1970s.

In “Emilio Pucci,” the subject’s niece and her husband explore the early life of the Italian designer who dressed the jet set.

A new study by the novelist and scholar Namwali Serpell subjects the Nobel laureate’s work to rigorous inspection — with thrilling results.

In “Leaving Home,” the writer and illustrator Mark Haddon recasts a painful childhood in kaleidoscopic color.

With matter-of-fact precision, “A Hymn to Life” powerfully chronicles the shock of discovering her husband’s sex crimes, and the rallying cry that followed.

A young telephone company operator finds herself in the dark underbelly of the Me Decade in Claire Oshetsky’s “Evil Genius.”

His score of books and hundreds of essays documented Stalinist executions, Communist repressions and censorship, and the transition to post-Soviet Russia.