NYT Books

Beginning the 1930s in San Francisco, she transformed the image of her native Mexican cuisine in the United States with a restaurant and popular cookbooks, all while overcoming a loss of sight.

In “Longstreet,” Elizabeth R. Varon dissects the life and legacy of a Confederate general who became a devoted supporter of Reconstruction.

In “Flight of the WASP,” the inveterate dirt-digger Michael Gross gives America’s elite families the white-glove treatment.

Mathias Énard’s new novel, “The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers’ Guild,” considers the jumble of life in a variety of stories and styles.

Ray Isle’s “The World in a Wineglass” is a broad survey of vintners with a focus on sustainability and organic methods.

In “November 1942,” Peter Englund pieces together a month in the Second World War with the diaries and memoirs of the people who survived it.

Kristen Arnett, k.d. lang, Myriam Gurba and 10 more on Rita Mae Brown’s breakthrough novel about lesbian identity, published 50 years ago this fall.

One of Britain’s most ambitious and intellectual novelists, she won the Booker Prize with “Possession,” her 1990 tale of illicit love spanning two centuries.

He emerged after World War II as a promising young writer exploring the emotional lives of ordinary men and women and the complexities of Jewish identity in America.

Our crime columnist recommends four newly published books.