NYT Books

In a chronicle laced with memoir, Nancy A. Nichols explores how the automobile has provided both freedom and dangers for female motorists.

Chronicling the high-heeled path to drag-queen superstardom, the new memoir also reveals a celebrity infatuated with his sense of a special destiny.

Rachel Lyon’s novel “Fruit of the Dead” updates the Greek myth with a pharma tycoon who lures an aimless slacker to his private island.

A devastating diagnosis prompted a reporter to revisit his past — and repair his mistakes.

“Your Absence Is Darkness,” a novel by the Icelandic writer Jon Kalman Stefansson, is a complex history prompted by one man’s quest.

The star, whose show “RuPaul’s Drag Race” has an international following, is one of the founders of a new online bookstore promoting underrepresented authors. The giveaways are part of its outreach.

After a career of framing the country’s past through the myths that inspire Americans to fight, kill and make money, Richard Slotkin wants to find a gentler story.

In her novel “Say Hello to My Little Friend,” Jennine Capó Crucet explores existential questions of isolation and belonging through two unlikely figures.

In Helen Oyeyemi’s “Parasol Against the Axe,” a woman’s trip to Prague becomes a meta-narrative about connection with art, people and more.

In his thoroughly researched “Radiant,” Brad Gooch considers the short, blazing life of the ’80s artist, activist and man about downtown.