NYT Books

The watercolor cover art for the first edition of “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” was painted in 1996 by a recent art school graduate from Britain who was working at a bookstore.

“It doesn’t make me esteem Wharton less. If anything, I take comfort in it, as a novelist.” Her own smash book “Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow” is out in paperback.

The watercolor was painted in 1996 by a recent art school graduate from Britain who was working at a bookstore. He was paid $650.

The author of “Funny Story” churned out five consecutive No. 1 best-sellers without leaving her comfort zone. How did she pull it off?

He elevated many of France’s most provocative writers through his publishing house, La Fabrique, but he made his greatest mark as a politically engaged, and strolling, historian of Paris.

A brisk new biography by the National Book Award-winning historian Tiya Miles aims to restore the iconic freedom fighter to human scale.

In “The Singularity Is Nearer,” the futurist Ray Kurzweil reckons with a world dominated by artificial intelligence (good) and his own mortality (bad).

Frederick Seidel’s 19th book, “So What,” is filled with politics, disease, luxury and provocation. At almost 90, he’s one of our best contemporary poets.

Rather than bemoan pop culture’s most divisive genre, Emily Nussbaum spends time with the creators, the stars and the victims of the decades-long effort to generate buzz.

He turned “an insignificant trade house” into a powerhouse, publishing best sellers like “The Silence of the Lambs” and “All Creatures Great and Small.”