NYT Books

He made the uncanny cool for a kid like me, whose dollhouse contained a miniature Ouija board in the child’s room and a ghost made of Kleenex and cotton balls in the attic.

A real estate developer, he was instrumental in revitalizing the New York Public Library and transforming Bryant Park from a dangerous dead zone into a glorious sanctuary.

Todd Almond wrote an oral history on Conor McPherson’s “Girl From the North Country” and its passage through Broadway’s pandemic shutdown.

The august scholar has two Pulitzer Prizes and a National Humanities Medal. In “The Stained Glass Window,” he seeks to explain “macro-history as family history.”

Books by Casey McQuiston, Alexis Daria and more offer emotional tales of love and forgiveness with plenty of heat.

“The Years,” running in London, dramatizes a woman’s life from teenage thrills to later-life sex. One intense scene is causing audience members to pass out.

“Ceasefire,” his most famous poem, invoked the “Iliad” in exploring his country’s sectarian strife. But his work wasn’t Homeric in length: “Michael was a miniaturist.”

Her bubbly video diaries about her gender transition were once a study in oversharing. Now on the other side of a nationwide boycott, she sees the value in keeping some things to herself.

Plenty of classics made the list, as did books that capture particular, personal slices of New York.

Set in a rapidly warming valley, “Dream State” spans 50 years of a rocky friendship.