Heller McAlpin

Rachel Cusk follows her acclaimed Outline trilogy with this story about a woman whose lifelong obsession with a truculent painter is tested when he comes to stay at a cottage on her property.

Jhumpa Lahiri's new novel — which she wrote in Italian, then translated back to English herself — centers on a middle-aged Italian woman trying to figure out her place in the world.

Elizabeth McCracken's new story collection dazzles with verbal flexibility, insight and feeling, capturing the oddities and mixed bags, the loves and losses that make up most people's lives.

Haruki Murakami's plain-spoken new story collection features narrators a lot like him — male, middle-aged, recounting inexplicably strange things that have happened to them,

Patricia Lockwood's first novel follows an Extremely Online woman whose life changes forever when her niece is born with a serious illness — which sounds Hallmark-ready, but Lockwood pulls it off.

A new book by Suleika Jaouad, author of the column "Life, Interrupted," encompasses a less familiar tale of what it's like to survive cancer and have to figure out how to live again in its aftermath.

What's particularly salient in this book of previously uncollected essays is Didion's trademark farsightedness — especially striking decades later. But it does leave one wishing to hear from her now.

Eley Williamsdid her doctoral dissertation on "mountweazels," fake words inserted into dictionaries as copyright traps — and she builds on that in her charming debut novel, about an epic dictionary.

Fans of Jane Smiley's previous books will be pleased to see that talking horses make a return in her latest — plus a dog, a raven and a couple of ducks, all making lives for themselves in Paris.

The avant-garde theater director and actor pairs up with writer-director Todd London to present the story of his multi-faceted life, full of dramatic ups and downs — and celebrities.

The British author writes beautifully of her own recent bout with a personal winter, a period when she felt low and overwhelmed — and aims to help others to embrace their winters.

David Leavitt's new novel Shelter in Place aims for sparkling social comedy — but it's let down by a cast of privileged, shallow characters you wouldn't want to spend your lockdown with.

Graham Smith's new novel seems at first to be a light little story about a seaside love triangle in Brighton, England in the 1950s — but it turns out to be about something far deeper.

Sigrid Nunez's new novel follows an unnamed narrator who agrees to keep a dying friend company until the end — but despite encompassing all kinds of sadness, the story is never grim.

In Ali Smith's new novel, she reveals the overarching connections between the characters and themes of her previous three. Critic Heller McAlpin says connection is the great theme of these works.

Maggie O'Farrell's new novel confronts a parent's worst nightmare: The loss of a child. In this case, it's Hamnet, the real-life son of William Shakespeare, whose death may have inspired Hamlet.

Like most good memoirs, Gail Caldwell's latest is a reassessment of life choices, roads taken and others foregone. "At some point you shuffle the cards and call the deck a life," she writes.

Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir's atmospheric novel, about a young writer and her outcast friends in 1963 Iceland, will transport you to another time and place, though not necessarily a rosier time and place.

Brit Bennett's triumphant new novel follows two light-skinned black sisters whose lives take very different paths; you'll keep turning pages not to find out what happens, but who these women are.

Now's the time for cheerful reads, so we've picked three — including Emma Straub's latest and two lively culinary memoirs — that'll help transport you to a happier place for a few hours.