Lauren Groff
Recommends the jewels among her preferred novels and short stories
Bowie’s Top 100
Before he died, David Bowie published a list of books that changed his life. A new volume parses through all 100 titles, including a little-remembered 1842 novel
People-Mapping
A new book offers fascinating stats—from Viking raids to the countries living sans McDonald’s—through the lens of the world map
Natasha Stagg
The young author who has her finger on the pulse of the new New York
Murder, They Wrote
Three new mysteries
Jenny Slate
On the sharpest female voices, from the 1940s
to the present
How to Serve Man
In 1921, the Lenin-led Soviet Union faced one of the worst famines in history. A new book details its horrors and the American effort to combat cannibalism
Piece of Her Heart
Janis Joplin’s biographer reveals the staunch seriousness behind the singer’s free-spirited front
When Hawthorne Met Melville
Reliving the walk in the Berkshires that changed literary history—and perhaps kindled a great romance
Neil deGrasse Tyson
The astrophysicist and author on the last books he picked up, and the one he couldn’t finish
Genius Loves Company
The author of the first account of Einstein’s British entanglement unveils the physicist’s unlikely
English-countryside hosts
Medieval Plastic
Robert Harris’s new novel is set after modern civilization collapses and the world reverts to the Dark Ages
Anthony Horowitz
On the most intriguing—and enduring—fiction
