The Book Review

Patrick Radden Keefe joins “The Book Review” to discuss his new book, “London Falling,” which begins when a family loses a 19-year-old son, Zac Brettler, under mysterious circumstances. His parents eventually discover he had been living a secret life, posing as the son of a Russian oligarch. Speaking with the host Gilbert Cruz, Keefe describes the moment he first heard the story and how he immediately knew it would become his next major project. He talks about gaining the trust of the young man’s parents, Matthew and Rachelle Brettler, and following the threads of their son’s life into a world of wealth, influence and deception in London. The conversation also explores how the book moves beyond the night of Zac’s death and into a broader story about ambition, reinvention and the uneasy question at its center: How well can we ever know the people closest to us? Books discussed on this episode: “Say Nothing,” by Patrick Radden Keefe “Seasons of Fury,” by Rozina Ali “The Emperor’s Children,” by Claire Messud “Out of Sheer Rage,” by Geoff Dyer “Middlemarch,” by George Eliot “In Cold Blood,” by Truman Capote “The Power Broker,” by Robert A. Caro “Far From the Tree,” by Andrew Solomon “Chatter,” by Patrick Radden Keefe “The Last Samurai,” by Helen DeWitt Listen to and Follow ‘The Book Review’ Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTube | iHeartRadio Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. We Want to Hear From You We would love to hear your thoughts about this episode, and about the Book Review’s podcast in general. You can send them to thebookreview@nytimes.com. Credits “The Book Review” podcast is hosted by Gilbert Cruz and produced by Amy Pearl and Sarah Diamond. The show is edited by Larissa Anderson and mixed by Pedro Rosado. Special thanks to MJ Franklin, Dahlia Haddad and Brooke Minters. Illustration by The New York Times; Photo: Erik Tanner for The New York Times Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

We have made it to April. We survived the snowstorms and the cold, and now that the days are getting longer, there’s more time to read. So this week, if you are looking for some books to tide you over until summer, our Book Review editors Gilbert Cruz and Joumana Khatib have got you covered. Also on this week’s episode, the former United States poet laureate Ada Limón joins us to talk about her new book, “Against Breaking: On the Power of Poetry.” And she reads two of her poems. Books discussed on this episode: “Transcription,” by Ben Lerner “This Land Is Your Land,” by Beverly Gage “The Witch,” by Marie NDiaye “London Falling,” by Patrick Radden Keefe “Prophecy,” by Carissa Véliz “Ghost Town,” by Tom Perrotta “From Life Itself,” by Suzy Hansen “The Calamity Club,” by Kathryn Stockett “Dog Days,” by Emily LaBarge “The Midnight Train,” by Matt Haig “The Land and Its People,” by David Sedaris “On the Calculation of Volume (Book 4),” by Solvej Balle “Famesick,” by Lena Dunham “The Sane One,” by Anna Konkle “On Witness and Respair,” by Jesmyn Ward “John of John,” by Douglas Stuart “The Things We Never Say,” by Elizabeth Strout “Yesteryear,” by Caro Claire Burke “Arsenio,” by Arsenio Hall “Five Weeks in the Country,” by Francine Prose “The Ending Writes Itself,” by Evelyn Clark (V.E. Schwab and Cat Clark) “Go Gentle,” by Maria Semple “True Crime,” by Patricia Cornwell “Against Breaking,” by Ada Limón Listen to and Follow ‘The Book Review’ Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTube | iHeartRadio Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. We Want to Hear From You We would love to hear your thoughts about this episode, and about the Book Review’s podcast in general. You can send them to thebookreview@nytimes.com. Credits “The Book Review Podcast” is hosted by Gilbert Cruz and produced by Amy Pearl and Sarah Diamond. The show is edited by Larissa Anderson and mixed by Pedro Rosado. Special thanks to MJ Franklin, Dahlia Haddad and Brooke Minters. Illustration by The New York Times; Inset photos: Scribner; Viking; Spiegel & Grau Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Tayari Jones’s new novel, “Kin,” follows two orphaned girls, Annie and Niecy, who grow up together in Louisiana in the 1950s. Annie was abandoned as a baby when her mother ran away to Memphis, while Niecy was orphaned when her father murdered her mother. The girls grow up under the shadow of loss, but at the very least they have each other, two “cradle friends” so close they’re practically sisters. After high school, though, they take different paths: Niecy sets out for Spelman College to try to make a name for herself, while Annie flees to Memphis to seek the mother she never knew. Along the way, each must confront major questions about love and family, including what sacrifices are acceptable to achieve them. On this week’s episode, host MJ Franklin talks about “Kin” with his colleagues Lauren Christensen and Elisabeth Egan. Other books mentioned in this episode: “An American Marriage,” “The Untelling” and “Silver Sparrow,” by Tayari Jones “Clutch,” by Emily Nemens “This Is Not About Us,” by Allegra Goodman “Lonely Crowds,” by Stephanie Wambugu “The Vanishing Half,” by Brit Bennett “The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois,” by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers “Sula,” by Toni Morrison “Beaches,” by Iris R. Dart “Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?,” by Lorrie Moore “Cat’s Eye,” by Margaret Atwood “The Calamity Club,” by Kathryn Stockett “South to America,” by Imani Perry “Witness and Respair,” by Jesmyn Ward Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Andy Weir’s first time at the Hollywood rodeo was a singular trip. His debut novel, “The Martian,” went from self-published project to blockbuster, best picture-nominated film starring Matt Damon. His most recent book, “Project Hail Mary,” was also a sensation, and its adaptation, starring Ryan Gosling as a middle school science teacher tasked with saving humanity from slow extinction, charts warmly familiar territory: a lone man, stuck in space far from Earth, solving science problem after science problem with many a humorous aside. Weir joined the Book Review’s podcast and spoke to the host, Gilbert Cruz, about the similarities and differences between Mark Watney and Ryland Grace (the main characters of “The Martian” and “Project Hail Mary”), his second novel, “Artemis,” and the alien character that readers have fallen in love with. We would love to hear your thoughts about this episode, and about the Book Review’s podcast in general. You can send them to thebookreview@nytimes.com. “The Book Review Podcast” is hosted by Gilbert Cruz and produced by Sarah Diamond and Amy Pearl. The show is edited by Larissa Anderson and mixed by Pedro Rosado. Special thanks to MJ Franklin, Dahlia Haddad, and Paula Szuchman. Illustration by The New York Times; Photo: Taylor Glascock for The New York Times Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Since the publication of her first novel, “Love Medicine,” in 1984, Louise Erdrich has written fiction, nonfiction, poetry and children’s books. Her work has earned multiple awards, including the National Book Award (“The Round House”) and the Pulitzer Prize (“The Night Watchman”). On this week’s episode, Erdrich talks with Gilbert Cruz, the editor of The New York Times Book Review, about her new short story collection, “Python’s Kiss.” She reflects on some of the formative experiences that shaped her as a writer, including watching “Planet of the Apes” and growing up in North Dakota, a state that housed hundreds of intercontinental ballistic missiles. She says that writing has been her “only real way of processing” her experiences and that her creative process is full of mystery. “There’s really no way to control everything that happens in a piece of art. Some of these stories — I wasn’t sure that I had written it,” she said, adding: “And yet, obviously, it was in my handwriting.” Plus, Erdrich recommends the one book that always puts her to sleep. Books discussed on this episode: “Animal Farm,” by George Orwell “Brawler,” by Lauren Groff “Winter in the Blood,” by James Welch “The Pillow Book,” by Sei Shōnagon “The Death of the Heart,” by Elizabeth Bowen “Save Me, Stranger,” by Erika Krouse “The Bluest Eye,” by Toni Morrison “Austerlitz,” by W.G. Sebald “The Rings of Saturn,” by W.G. Sebald “Whistler,” by Ann Patchett “Make the Golf Course a Public Sex Forest,” published by Maitland Systems Engineering   Illustration by The New York Times; Photo: Jenn Ackerman for The New York Times Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

For more than two decades, Bob Crawford has toured the country as the bassist for the Avett Brothers. But long before he began his career as a musician, he was obsessed with American history. After turning that obsession into two podcasts, he has now written his first book, “America’s Founding Son: John Quincy Adams, From President to Political Maverick.” On this week’s episode, Crawford talks with Gilbert Cruz, the editor of The New York Times Book Review, about what it was like writing a book for the first time and the authors who have inspired him. In addition to discussing what he loves about John Quincy Adams, the country’s sixth president and the son of John Adams, Crawford also talks about the research he did for the book. That included scouring Adams’s 14,000-page diary. “He’s not a perfect man — he’s far from perfect,” Crawford said of Adams. “But he’s so human. He’s suffered depression, and just the humanness in his diary, not to mention the actual historical narrative, is just incredible.” Illustration by The New York Times; Photo: Jenn Ackerman for The New York Times Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Emily Brontë’s “Wuthering Heights” is a tale of star-crossed lovers: Catherine, the wild daughter of an aristocratic family, and Heathcliff, an orphan whom Catherine’s father brings home unexpectedly. While Catherine’s brother and mother denigrate Heathcliff, depriving him of an education and forcing him into a servant-like role, Catherine forms an intense, almost spiritual bond with her family’s new charge. Despite their deep connection, however, she marries the scion of a nearby wealthy family — a decision that leaves Catherine yearning, Heathcliff bent on revenge and everybody in their orbit on a path to calamity. Brontë’s classic has long been a favorite among readers, and the novel is back in the zeitgeist thanks to Emerald Fennell’s recent film adaptation. On this week’s episode, host MJ Franklin discusses “Wuthering Heights” with colleagues from the New York Times Book Review. Other works discussed: “Wuthering Heights,” the song by Kate Bush “Twilight,” by Stephenie Meyer “But Daddy I Love Him,” by Taylor Swift “Wuthering Heights,” the 2026 film directed by Emerald Fennell “The Safekeep,” by Yael van der Wouden “Mexican Gothic,” by Silvia Moreno-Garcia The “Wuthering Heights” comics in Kate Beaton’s “Hark! A Vagrant” series “Villette,” by Charlotte Brontë “Rebecca,” by Daphne du Maurier “The Idiot,” by Elif Batuman “The Great Gatsby,” by F. Scott Fitzgerald “The Count of Monte Cristo,” by Alexandre Dumas Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The latest film from the writer and director Clint Bentley, “Train Dreams,” is nominated for four Oscars, including best adapted screenplay. The movie is based on Denis Johnson’s 2011 novella of the same name and tells the story of Robert Grainier, a logger in the Pacific Northwest, in stream-of-consciousness, nonlinear prose. This week, Gilbert Cruz talks with Bentley, who wrote the screenplay with Greg Kwedar, his longtime collaborator, about how he went about translating Johnson’s work into a visual medium. Bentley first read “Train Dreams” just after college, long before he ever thought of making it into a movie. When producers with rights to the book approached Bentley, he was suddenly worried. “Going back and reading the book again,” Bentley said, “I was like, Oh, maybe this thing is unadaptable.” Set on capturing the spirit of the book, Bentley and Kwedar focused on “the vastness of this small little life,” he said. “We very rarely have an understanding of our lives in the moment we’re actually living them,” Bentley said. “We only start to understand them when it’s too late.” Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

For decades, the director Guillermo del Toro has built a career blending the grotesque and the beautiful in films like “Pan’s Labyrinth,” “The Shape of Water” and “Pinocchio.” Now he’s earned his latest Academy Award nomination for his adaptation of “Frankenstein,” Mary Shelley’s classic novel. On this week’s episode, he talks with the host Gilbert Cruz about discovering the book as a lonely child, how it shaped his worldview and why this screenplay is the one he’s proudest of. “I always felt the creature is me,” del Toro said of the first time he read the book. “I felt so alone at age 11, and so full of love to give and so full of rage to dispose of. It was a very complicated emotional scope for somebody that young.” Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Julia Quinn published "The Duke and I," the first book in the 'Bridgerton' series, in 2000. Seven books and a quarter century later, its adaptation remains one of the biggest series ever to air on Netflix. Quinn spoke to host Gilbert Cruz about the show, her books and why the heck that family has so many children."I don't even remember why I made eight kids," said Quinn. "I just, I wanted her to have a big family and somehow that's how many kids there were. And if I had planned on eight, I would've plotted things out better. There were a number of places where I really wrote myself into a corner." Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Keza MacDonald, the video games editor at The Guardian and author of the new book “Super Nintendo: The Game-Changing Company That Unlocked the Power of Play,” chose to write her first book about Nintendo because it has been so central for so long to the culture of games. “It was the company that got me into video games,” she says. “I know that’s the same story that millions of other people have had as well." She speaks with host Gilbert Cruz about the iconic Japanese company as well as how the perception of gaming has changed over the decades. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Xenobe Purvis’s slim but powerful debut novel, “The Hounding,” opens with a jolt: “The girls, the infernal heat, a fresh-dead body. Marching up the river path, the villagers.”How did we get here, with five young sisters living in 1700s England being hunted by an angry mob that suspects them not only of murder but also of the demonic ability to transform themselves into a pack of wild dogs? That is the tale “The Hounding” unfolds, in a gothic parable about male ego, cultural misogyny and the dangers of gossip run amok.On this week’s episode, host MJ Franklin discusses “The Hounding” with his fellow Book Review editors Joumana Khatib, Emily Eakin and Gregory Cowles.Other books and works mentioned in this podcast:“The Lottery,” by Shirley Jackson“The Sound of Music,” directed by Robert Wise“The Testament of Yves Gundron,” by Emily Barton“The Scarlet Letter,” by Nathaniel Hawthorne“Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch,” by Rivka Galchen“Delicate Edible Birds,” by Lauren Groff“Paradise,” by Toni MorrisonThe podcast “Normal Gossip”“You Didn’t Hear This From Me,” by Kelsey McKinney Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The journalist, novelist and cultural critic Chuck Klosterman is best known for writing about rock music and pop culture in astute essay collections like “The Nineties,” “X” and “Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs.” But Klosterman got his start in college as a sports journalist, and with his new book, “Football,” he has finally devoted an entire collection to the sport that has fundamentally shaped him alongside American society at large.“I’ve unconsciously been thinking about football for most of my life,” Klosterman tells host Gilbert Cruz on this week’s episode. “I decided at some point, I do want to write a book about sports. You know, I’d always mentioned sports here and there in the culture writing I had done, or the kind of conventional pop culture writing I’d done, but I wanted to do a real sports book. And initially my idea was it would be about basketball — but over time it became very clear to me it had to be about football, for a variety of reasons. … It seemed as though if you’re going to do a sports book, particularly as it relates to society, there is only one choice in the United States.” Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

A new year means new books are on the way! So many new books. On this week’s episode, host Gilbert Cruz talks with fellow Book Review editors Joumana Khatib and MJ Franklin about the upcoming fiction and nonfiction titles they’re most anticipating between now and April.Here are the books discussed in this week’s episode:“Vigil,” by George Saunders“Where the Serpent Lives,” by Daniyal Mueenuddin“Fear and Fury: The Reagan Eighties, the Bernie Goetz Shootings and the Rebirth of White Rage,” by Heather Ann Thompson“Five Bullets,” by Elliot Williams“Lost Lambs,” by Madeline Cash”Half His Age,” by Jennette McCurdy“A World Appears: A Journey Into Consciousness,” by Michael Pollan“On Morrison,” by Namwali Serpell“Language as Liberation: Reflections on the American Canon,” by Toni Morrison“Clutch,” by Emily Nemens“Murder Bimbo,” by Rebecca Novack“Kin,” by Tayari Jones“Cave Mountain: A Disappearance and a Reckoning in the Ozarks,” by Benjamin Hale“Lake Effect,” by Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney“Now I Surrender,” by Alvaro Enrigue“The Keeper,” by Tana French Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

Virginia Evans’s debut novel, “The Correspondent,” was published last April and became one of the publishing industry’s heartwarming champions of 2025: a slow-burn success story that gathered momentum over the summer and fall and finally topped the New York Times hardcover best-seller list in December. For Evans, who had written and failed to sell seven previous novels, the book’s popularity has felt magical, as she explains to host Gilbert Cruz on this week’s podcast.“I went on a kind of a brief book tour in the fall, meeting hundreds of people,” Evans says, “and … different bookstores were starting to say, this is becoming a thing, we can’t keep it in the store. We keep running out of stock. And then they were going back, reprint after reprint. So then I started to think, oh, it’s getting bigger. But I think, I just didn’t have a context. I still don’t understand publishing. So I thought every step of the way was the mountaintop. I keep getting a new mountaintop.” Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

Ian McEwan’s latest novel, “What We Can Know,” is many things at once: It’s a science fiction imagining of a future world devastated by climate catastrophe; it’s a literary mystery about a scholar’s search for a long-lost poem; it’s a deep dive into complicated marriages; and it’s a meditation on how the past lingers and how history morphs with time.“It’s the best thing McEwan has written in ages,” our critic Dwight Garner wrote in his review. “It’s a sophisticated entertainment of a high order.”In this episode of the Book Review Book Club, the host MJ Franklin discusses “What We Can Know” with his colleagues Sarah Lyall (who profiled McEwan for the Book Review this year) and Leah Greenblatt. You can follow along, and add your own comments to the discussion here.Other Books mentioned in this discussion:“Atonement,” “Saturday,” “On Chesil Beach,” “The Comfort of Strangers,” “The Cement Garden” and “Enduring Love,” by Ian McEwan“Fleishman Is in Trouble,” by Taffy Brodesser-Akner“Fates and Furies,” by Lauren Groff“Marston Meadows: A Corona for Prue,” by John Fuller“How the Word Is Passed,” by Clint Smith“The Stranger’s Child,” “The Line of Beauty” and “Our Evenings,” by Alan HollinghurstWe would love to hear your thoughts about this episode, and about the Book Review’s podcast in general. You can send them to books@nytimes.com. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

From political tell-alls to the continued triumph of romantasy novels, it’s been an eventful year in the publishing world. On this week’s episode, host MJ Franklin talks with his Book Review colleagues Alexandra Alter, Tina Jordan and John Maher about the biggest book stories and most significant reading trends of 2025.Correction: An earlier version of this podcast referred incorrectly to an arts grant from the Mellon Foundation. The $50 million initiative, launched by Mellon, is a collaborative effort with six other foundations and is intended to support nonprofit literary organizations across a range of genres and forms; it is not solely intended to support poetry. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

Here we are in mid-December, which means that along with all of the other year-end lists we produce and avidly consume at this time each year, The New York Times Book Review's staff critics are also looking back on everything they read in 2025, and toasting the books that have stayed with them.On this episode, host Gilbert Cruz talks with Dwight Garner, Alexandra Jacobs and Jennifer Szalai about their standout fiction and nonfiction of the past 12 months.Books mentioned:"What We Can Know," by Ian McEwan"Flesh," by David Szalay"The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny," by Kiran Desai"Playworld," by Adam Ross"When the Going Was Good," by Graydon Carter"I Regret Almost Everything," by Keith McNally"When All the Men Wore Hats," by Susan Cheever"Notes to John," by Joan Didion"A Flower Traveled in My Blood," by Haley Cohen Gilliland"38 Londres Street," by Philippe Sands"Wild Thing," by Sue Prideaux"Crumb: A Cartoonist's Life," by Dan Nadel"Class Clown," by Dave Barry"Electric Spark: The Enigma of Dame Muriel," by Frances Wilson"Flagrant, Self-Destructive Gestures: A Biography of Denis Johnson," by Ted Geltner"Shadow Ticket," by Thomas Pynchon"Selected Letters of John Updike," edited by James Schiff"Troublemaker: The Fierce, Unruly Life of Jessica Mitford," by Carla Kaplan"More Everything Forever, AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley's Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity," by Adam Becker Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

All year long, the staff of The New York Times Book Review conducts a running discussion over what belongs on its year-end Top 10 list. In this week’s episode, host Gilbert Cruz gathers a group of fellow Book Review editors to talk about the most exciting fiction and nonfiction of the year. Here are the books discussed in this week’s episode:Fiction“The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny,” by Kiran Desai“Angel Down,” by Daniel Kraus“The Sisters,” by Jonas Hassen Khemiri“The Director,” by Daniel Kehlmann“Stone Yard Devotional,” by Charlotte WoodNonfiction“A Marriage at Sea,” by Sophie Elmhirst“Wild Thing,” by Sue Prideaux“Mother Emanuel,” by Kevin Sack“There Is No Place for Us," by Brian Goldstone“Mother Mary Comes to Me,” by Arundhati Roy Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

History has not graced us with many details about Shakespeare as a person, but we do know that he and his wife had three children, including a son named Hamnet who died at the age of 11 in 1596, four years before Shakespeare went on to write his great tragedy “Hamlet.”Maggie O’Farrell’s novel “Hamnet” — one of the Book Review’s 10 Best Books of 2020, and the source of Chloé Zhao’s new movie of the same name — starts from those scant facts, and spins them into a powerful story of grief, art and family steeped in the textures of late-16th-century life.In this episode of the Book Review Book Club, host MJ Franklin discusses “Hamnet” with his colleagues Leah Greenblatt, Jennifer Harlan and Sarah Lyall. Other works mentioned in this podcast:“Hamlet,” “King Lear,” “Macbeth,” “The Winter’s Tale,” by William Shakespeare“Little Women,” by Louisa May Alcott“Grief Is the Thing With Feathers,” by Max Porter“Lincoln in the Bardo,” by George Saunders“Fi,” by Alexandra Fuller“Things In Nature Merely Grow,” by Yiyun Li“The Accidental Tourist,” by Anne Tyler“Will in the World” and “Dark Renaissance,” by Stephen Greenblatt“Gabriel,” by Edward Hirsch“Once More We Saw Stars,” by Jayson Greene“The Dutch House,” by Ann Patchett Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.