NYT Books

Two new books grapple with the questions of who we are, what we are, whether we are — and what we can do for one another.

In “What Fell From the Sky,” by Adrianna Cuevas, and “Oasis,” by Guojing, the best examples of humanity aren’t necessarily human.

Our columnist on the month’s best new releases.

These steamy reads bring the emotion and the heat.

Eighteen books in (the latest is “Every Tom, Dick & Harry”), she still recalls an editor’s note urging more action: “Could someone here please pass the potatoes?”

The notes, taken after meetings with her psychiatrist, will be published in April as a book, “Notes to John.” They provide a raw account of her life, her work and her complex relationship with her daughter.

In “How the World Eats,” the philosopher Julian Baggini grapples with “everything that affects and is affected by” our comestibles.

“Rogues and Scholars,” James Stourton’s erudite and authoritative history, doesn’t spare the color.

Scarlett Pavlovich, who accused Mr. Gaiman of rape and assault in a report last month, said in the suit that his wife had played a role in “procuring and presenting” her.

A fellow survivor, she was a literary and political adviser who helped her husband gain recognition as a singular moral authority on the Holocaust.