NYT Books

Our columnist on the month’s best new books.

Benjamin Hale’s book “Cave Mountain” connects the brief disappearance of his cousin in 2001 to a grisly true-crime story in 1978.

The translator Daniel Hahn makes the case that Shakespeare can be appreciated “even if we don’t hear a single one of his words.”

In “Prophecy,” Carissa Véliz explores how generative A.I. relies on prediction, enriching Big Tech while making the rest of us less safe.

The worldly men of the cloth in Héctor Abad’s new novel find divinity both inside and outside the church.

In “Japanese Gothic,” a 21st-century college student and a 19th-century samurai find themselves occupying the same house.

What the rise of A.I. and the gutting of books coverage across U.S. media will mean for literature.

In “Project Maven,” Katrina Manson shows us how close we are to artificial intelligence picking targets and dropping bombs without human input.

The German writer Wolfgang Koeppen’s postwar trilogy crackles with life and unsparing details of a broken society.

Declared a national living treasure in 1997, he wrote poetry and short stories but was best known for his nine novels, including “The Great World.”