Books briefing: May books

April 28, 2020

Hi readers,

Here’s your weekly catch-up on everything you need to know going on in the book world.

The news:

A prequel to “The Hunger Games,” a love letter to French cooking, a novel by Curtis Sittenfeld that reimagines Hillary Clinton’s life and much more — here are 11 books our editors are watching for.
A new novel by Simone de Beauvoir is coming. “The Inseparables,” which Beauvoir abandoned and dismissed in 1954, tells the story of a doomed friendship based on one from her own childhood. Scholars hope it may offer insight into her political and feminist leanings.
Fractured attention span? We can help. Here’s a list of short books you can read in a day.
This week on “Sugar Calling,” Cheryl Strayed spoke to the author Amy Tan about family, grief and quarantine reading lists.

Fiction out today: “The End of October,” by Lawrence Wright; “Our Riches,” by Kaouther Adimi; “Camino Winds,” by John Grisham; “No-Signal Area,” by Robert Perisic; “Little Family,” by Ismael Beah.

Nonfiction out today: “The Inevitability of Tragedy,” by Barry Gewen; “Empires of the Sky,” by Alexander Rose; “Warhol,” by Blake Gopnik; “The Celestial Hunter,” by Roberto Calasso; “This Is All I Got,” by Lauren Sandler.

The critics:

Dwight Garner has high praise for Lawrence Wright’s new pandemic novel, “The End of October,” calling it a “sweeping, authoritative and genuinely intelligent thriller.”
Parul Sehgal reviews “On Vanishing,” by Lynn Casteel Harper, which argues that society needs a better approach to understand and care for people who are suffering cognitive decline.
In “Camino Winds,” John Grisham’s latest novel, a bookstore owner and two other characters team up to solve a murder and the mystery behind it. If the book “is breezy,” Janet Maslin writes in her review, “that’s mostly because its plot involves a ferocious hurricane.”
And Sarah Lyall writes about “No Man’s Land,” in which Wendy Moore chronicles the remarkable story of two physicians who founded and ran a military hospital in London.

That’s all for now. Please stay in touch and let me know what you think — whether it’s about this newsletter, our reviews, our podcast, our literary calendar, our Instagram or what you’re reading. We on the Books desk read all of it, and I’ll make every effort to write back. You can reach me at books@nytimes.com.

All my best,

Joumana Khatib

Books at The New York Times

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