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COMEDY BOOK

“This is a love story,” writes Vulture senior editor Fox, invoking the famous quote from Season 2 of Fleabag. The author is a proud “member of the Seinfeld generation, a term I just made up to refer to the sort of millennial who grew up watching Seinfeld and, in turn, always knowing and caring about what goes into a stand-up’s comedy.” That passion for comedy led to this book, which “focuses on comedy made from 1990 through the early 2020s. This is the period in which millennials, and then Gen

DON'T ASK CAT!

Cat’s blunt comments result in hurt feelings and confusion among his animal friends. He deems a friend’s bathing suit “ridiculous,” leaves a baseball game because he’s bored, and even mocks the gift another pal presents to him. Cat also says that a baby bunny “stinks like POOP!” and rudely refuses sprinkles on his ice cream. When Cat realizes that his friends think that he’s mean, a bluebird offers to help him learn some better manners. It’s hard, but with a little effort, Cat manages to find s

THE LITTLE LOST LIBRARY

As the owner of Miracle Books, Nora Pennington occasionally offers shop-at-home services to her customers. In Lucille Wynter’s case, she takes it a step further, bringing books to the reclusive woman and sitting with her in her sparsely furnished “boot room,” where they share tea and Lorna Doones. When Lucille fails to appear one day, a worried Nora calls her, only to hear a faint “Help me. Please!” from Lucille’s landline. Following the instructions her boyfriend, Sheriff Grant McCabe, once ga

THE LOVE ELIXIR OF AUGUSTA STERN

Growing up in 1920s Brooklyn, Augusta Stern had two heroes. First, her father, Solomon Stern, a well-respected pharmacist. Second, her great-aunt Esther, who moved in with the Sterns after Augusta’s mother died and deals in medicinals in a less conventional way. Watching her great-aunt brewing healing concoctions in the kitchen in the middle of the night after seeing her father measuring out dosages and counseling patients in the back of his drugstore during the day, Augusta dreams of becoming

HOW TO THINK IMPOSSIBLY

Kripal holds the J. Newton Rayzor Chair in Philosophy and Religious Thought at Rice University, so it is his job to think outside the conventional box. In his latest book, following The Flip and The Superhumanities, the author interrogates the nature of consciousness, belief, even reality itself. His thesis is that the body of things considered impossible by the norms of rational thought and scientific inquiry is so large, when taken as a whole, that it should be placed at the center of discour

I'LL STOP THE WORLD

Justin Warren, a disaffected student waiting for high school to end, finds himself enmeshed in hard-to-explain (and understand) circumstances in this mystery saga of time travel, adolescent heartache, and coming-of-age angst. Finding himself transported after an accident from 2023 to the year 1985, Justin is confronted with perplexing details about his complicated family history. Among the pre-millennial teens Justin meets is Rose Yin, a do-gooder and diligent student who becomes one of his few

THE WEIGHT OF NATURE

In his second book, neuroscientist and environmental journalist Aldern examines the palpable effects of climate change on our brain chemistry, including not just increased anxiety, stress, and depression, but also detrimental changes in decision-making abilities and judgment. Paraphrasing a climate advocate in California’s Central Valley, the author writes, “planetary empathy is rooted in pain: the aches and grimaces of a world grieving not just the loss of species and an unspoiled troposphere,

SQUIRE & KNIGHT

Sir Kelton, Squire, and Shadow are escorting Cade to wizard school, but they keep returning to the same marked cairn. They encounter Sir Reynholm the Bold of Upper Claxtonbury, but the group is separated when a swarm of giant mosquitoes attack. Squire relies on his wits, survival skills, and flashback memories of a conversation with Queen Marley about his duties to Sir Kelton, but he is captured by gnolls, large, doglike monsters that intend to eat him and Cade. Fortunately, the gnolls are lost

PLUNDER

It’s no small irony that the typeface in which federal antitrust investigator and prosecutor Ballou’s book is set is “owned and licensed by a private equity portfolio company.” So is much of the retail and service sector. In one case, the Carlyle Group bought the ManorCare company for $6 billion, which, by the magic of creative accounting, ManorCare had to pay back. Carlyle then sold much of ManorCare’s real estate and forced it to pay rent. In the end, Ballou writes, the resulting insolvency s

THE MYTH OF THE MEDALLION

Thalia Eichel awakens somewhere unfamiliar with only fleeting memories. She soon runs into Alistair, the God of Protection, who reluctantly tells her she’s dead. He doesn’t know how it happened, and Thalia doesn’t remember. With help from Alistair, Thalia returns home to Druin, a labor town in a medieval-like fantasy realm, only to discover that her parents and twin brother are likely dead as well. Signs point to her family’s probable murderer: King Vitalis of the royal city of Varedon. In fact

THE PERILS OF LADY CATHERINE DE BOURGH

This time, the bull’s-eye is trained on Lady Catherine de Bourgh, whom Elizabeth Bennet fans may have occasionally wanted to take a potshot at themselves. Gray makes the entitled heiress more sympathetic than Austen does. She’s still vain and preening, but genuinely frightened by the escalating attempts on her life. Some of the sympathy is generated by the protagonists, young Jonathan Darcy, the shy, introverted son of Elizabeth and Fitzwilliam Darcy, and Juliet Tilney, the daughter of a countr

CLEAN

On the first page of Trabucco Zerán’s novel, the narrator, Estela García, offers a deal to the people who may or may not be on the other side of a mirrored glass pane: “I’m going to tell you a story, and when I get to the end, when I stop talking, you’re going to let me out of here.” Estela, it seems, is waiting to be interrogated in connection with the death of a girl, Julia, the daughter of a couple for whom Estela has worked as a housemaid for seven years. What follows is Estela’s account of

WOODROW WILSON

Historian, lawyer, and former Congressman Cox writes that Wilson was the first Southern Democrat to occupy the White House since Andrew Johnson. Scholars have long considered him a giant among presidents for his progressive reforms and leadership in World War I. They have not ignored his flaws, emphasizing the censorship, suppression of civil rights, and persecution of war opponents. Cox will have none of that. Sticking to the historical record but keeping Wilson’s achievements in the backgroun

RADICAL EMPATHY

The book opens with the O. Henry Prize–winning “Marital Problems.” An unnamed narrator and her husband, Victor, search for a dead bird their daughter has entombed within Victor’s estranged late father’s binocular case, while Victor rages over the incompetence of their contractor and the narrator distracts herself with sexual fantasies (both about the contractor and about her friend, a single mom). This story is a knockout—its characters are brilliant, their relationships meticulously muddled by

THE REVENGE PARADOX

Revenge may be a dish best served cold, but in this tense novel, the temper of 25-year-old Rudy Hodgens is red-hot as he seeks payback from his stepparents for evicting him from the house where he lived for two decades. When Rudy was in kindergarten, his mom died in a car crash; she had been married at the time to Iraq War veteran Mitchell, who was not Rudy’s biological father. A year after the accident, Mitchell married Debra, who became an instant mother to Rudy. Now Debra sobs as her deadbea

FORTUNATE SON

Ben Danvers grew up in rural Vermont with cold, overprotective parents, and now he and his girlfriend live together in Boston, where he struggles to make a name for himself at Cambridge Hill Holdings. Then federal investigators tell him that he was a kidnapping victim in his youth, and that he’s actually the son of one of the most powerful people in the world: Vice President-elect Kimberly Hancock, “a descendant of American royalty. Wealthy beyond measure.”. Together with two FBI agents—one, a

MELVILL

“Call me Herman.” Such a commandment could come from only one writer, Herman Melville, who stands at the center of Fresán’s narrative. Occupying much of that space, too, albeit in sometimes spectral form, is Melville’s father, Allan Melvill (the -e a typo that his son, the victim of a bureaucrat’s pen, stuck with, even as, later in the novel, he notes ruefully that his obituary in Harper’s Monthly Magazine, where several of his stories appeared, will render his name as Henry). Allan, born to a

WESTFALLEN

It all starts with a ham radio that Alice, Lawrence, and Artie fool around with in 1944 and Henry, Frances, and Lukas find in 2023. It’s late April, and the 1944 kids worry about loved ones in combat, while the 2023 kids study the war in school. When, impossibly, the radio allows the kids to communicate across time, it doesn’t take long before they share information that changes history. Can the two sets of kids work across a 79-year divide to prevent the U.S.A. from becoming the Nazi-controlle

AN AMERICAN BEAUTY

Arabella Yarrington is helping to support her family in post–Civil War Richmond when Collis Potter Huntington, an industrialist and railroad tycoon, happens to visit the gambling saloon where she serves champagne to patrons. Immediately attracted to the woman 30 years his junior, Collis begins visiting the boardinghouse Belle’s mother owns. Quick to spot an opportunity to help her family escape the grinding struggle to make ends meet, Belle sets about using Collis’ affection to secure financial

SEARCHING FOR JOHN DEWITT

On the front lines of World War I, there was no job as important—and as thankless—as that of the trench runner. Young soldiers were chosen for their athleticism and quick thinking to deliver messages on foot, a mission so dangerous that the life expectancy of a trench runner was normally mere days. “They understood their deaths would not be a matter of bad luck but the expected outcome of soldiers delivering messages through the muck and mazes of deeply dug trenches and the open spaces between