NYT Books

“Ruth,” by Kate Riley, is an absorbing novel about a woman torn between curiosity and purity.

The authors of two savvy new books offer hope that there’s more to being terminally online than sore thumbs and brain rot.

Tochi Eze’s novel, “This Kind of Trouble,” circles between the 1900s and the 2000s, and between Atlanta and Nigeria, in a sweeping story of colonialism and its aftershocks.

In her second essay collection, “Sloppy,” the writer and social media personality Rax King embraces the mess of living imperfectly.

In “Friends Until the End,” James Grant explores the political passions and inspiring oratory of the British parliamentarians Edmund Burke and Charles Fox.

In C. Mallon’s novel, a teenager’s night out with friends dissolves into a collision of catastrophes.

In Emily Adrian’s “Seduction Theory,” two married creative writing professors have parallel affairs, with very different outcomes.

“It’s very liberating to take off that psychological corset,” the actress said of portraying the rambunctious Hollywood star Ava Gardner onstage.

In “The Hounding,” by Xenobe Purvis, the atmosphere of paranoia and bloodthirsty groupthink in 18th-century England might feel uncomfortably familiar.

A founding editor of Rolling Stone and a seasoned music journalist, he spent time with the Beatles and toured with the Grateful Dead and the Rolling Stones.