NYT Books

For the holidays, T asked readers to write in about their hardest-to-shop-for loved ones. Here, our editors respond with their suggestions.

For his latest book, the French writer Emmanuel Carrère sat in a Parisian courthouse, absorbing grueling testimony about the 2015 massacre at the concert hall and other venues in the city.

This month’s offerings include a collection of warped horror stories, an apocalyptic flood narrative and a hero doing battle with a super-being who sees humankind as a race of pests to eliminate.

Jean Strouse’s brisk, wise “Family Romance” takes on the painter’s relationship to the Wertheimers, a vast Jewish clan he immortalized on canvas.

Her own is called “Gather Me: A Memoir in Praise of the Books That Saved Me,” which follows anthologies that grew out of founding the Well-Read Black Girl book club.

Jason De León received the nonfiction award for “Soldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling.”

After publishing “Europe on 5 Dollars a Day” in 1957, he went on to build an empire of guidebooks, package tours, hotels and other services.

We want to know what stuck with you this year. What were the best things you watched, read and heard?

Tove Jansson’s illustrations for a rare 1966 edition of “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” are melancholy, complex and occasionally scary.

Chefs, writers, editors and a bookseller gathered to debate — and decide — which titles have most changed the way we cook and eat.