NYT Books

In “The Miraculous From the Material,” the best-selling author Alan Lightman examines the science behind the wonder.

“The New India,” by Rahul Bhatia, combines personal history and investigative journalism to account for his country’s turn to militant Hindu nationalism.

A Hitchcockian thriller, an off-the-grid memoir, novels by Weike Wang and Lily Tuck, and more.

He displayed some 10,000 cat-themed artifacts at the American Museum of the House Cat in North Carolina, which welcomed several thousand people a year.

The first two episodes will be shown at a film festival in Havana that was long championed by Gabriel García Márquez, the Colombian novelist who wrote the book.

In “The White Ladder,” the British writer Daniel Light explores the heroes, villains and dramas of early mountaineering.

In an eye-opening collection, Emily Mester considers why she, and we, seek satisfaction by obsessively choosing, buying and rating the objects we desire.

A Japanese tale of “frustrated love and revenge,” and a visual history of bathrooms.

How Americans learned to root for the dark side — from the Joker and “Wicked” to Elon Musk.

Henri Bergson enjoyed a cult following on both sides of the Atlantic in the early 20th century. A new biography explains what the fuss was about.