The best new books to read: Top releases, updated weekly
Each week, The Post compiles the buzziest new books. Have a look at our favorite titles in recent weeks.
This week’s best new books
Paula Hawkins (Mariner Books)
The bestselling author of “The Girl on the Train” offers up another page-turner. The remote Scottish island of Eris was once home to a famous artist named Vanessa, whose husband mysteriously vanished decades ago. Now, a solitary woman named Grace is the island’s only inhabitant, but a shocking discovery at a London art show leads people to question all that’s happened on Eris.
André Aciman (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
In his beloved “Call Me By Your Name,” Aciman gave us a fictional coming-of-age story set in Lombardy, Italy. Now he writes of his own adolescence in Rome, after his family was expelled from Egypt.
Susanna Clarke (Bloomsbury Publishing)
In this illustrated, Christmas-y fantasy story from the bestselling author of “Piranesi,” a strange girl who can talk to trees and animals comes across an odd figure in the dark woods.
Hannah Shaw and Andrew Marttila (Plume)
Shaw and Marttila’s “Shop Cats of New York” showed off Gotham’s cutest cats. Now, they’ve turned their lens on kitties around the world, from Turkey to South Africa.
Yuval Noah Harari (Harper Perennial)
The latest illustrated version of Harari’s phenomenally popular “Sapiens” focuses on money, religion and empire.
Matty Matheson (Ten Speed Press)
“The Bear” star/executive producer and chef offers up bold twists on classics such as Cubano sandwiches and chicken soup.
Best new book releases from last week
Jeff VanderMeer (MCD)
Published a decade ago, the Southern Reach trilogy became a cult classic, selling millions of copies and earning Stephen King’s stamp of approval. Now, VanderMeer takes readers back to the mysterious Area X wilderness, where an unknown event has rewritten the laws of nature.
Lee Child and Andrew Child (Delacorte Press)
The latest Jack Reacher thriller finds the ex-military investigator waking up handcuffed to a bed after a car accident. His unwitting captors have plans to make him talk.
Alex Van Halen (Harper)
The rocker worked with New Yorker writer Ariel Levy to pen this memoir and tribute to his late brother and bandmate Edward. He recounts their childhood in the Netherlands and Southern California, their formal Indonesian-born mom and Van Halen’s rise to fame.
Diana R. Chambers (Sourcebooks Landmark)
This work of historical fiction portrays the celebrity chef’s little known life before she taught Americans to make beef bourguignon. Child worked for the Office of Strategic Services, America’s first espionage agency, during World War II.
Shirley MacLaine (Crown)
With over 150 photos from MacLaine’s personal archive, this is a vivid account of the 90-year-old Oscar-winner’s life. She writes of growing up with brother Warren Beatty, moving to New York City as a 16-year-old, her acting career and work as an activist. Along the way, she recalls encounters with everyone from Elvis Presley and Jack Nicholson to the Dalai Lama and Fidel Castro.
New York Nico (Dey Street Books)
The social media personality shares his top 100 spots — from hobby shops to slice joints — in the five boroughs.
Best new book releases from the week of October 13
John Grisham and Jim McCloskey (Doubleday)
For his first nonfiction in nearly two decades, the bestselling author teams up with the founder of Centurion Ministries, a 40-year-old organization that works to exonerate innocents convicted of crimes they didn’t commit. The book highlights 10 outrageous wrongful convictions and issues within the American legal system.
Michael Connelly (Little, Brown and Company)
In the sixth book in the series, LAPD detective Renée Ballard reopens a 20-year-old cold case when a DNA connection is found between the serial rapist/murderer who was never caught and a recently arrested 24-year-old man.
Patricia Cornwell (Grand Central Publishing)
In the 28th book to feature medical examiner Kay Scarpetta, the good doctor is called to a strange murder scene at an abandoned theme park only to discover the victim is a man she once knew and loved. As she investigates, Scarpetta comes to suspect that her old friend deliberately left her a clue.
Stanley Tucci (Gallery Books)
The actor and TV host reflects on 12 months of eating and living, dishing on what he ate in restaurants, at home and on the job.
Susan Minot (Knopf)
A 52-year–old divorced mother embarks on a passionate affair with a handsome, intense musician 20 years her junior in the latest from the acclaimed author of “Evening.” It’s drawing comparisons to Miranda July’s “All Fours.”
Mark Haddon (Doubleday)
Modern situations — genetic engineering, teen bullying — are seen through the prism of Greek mythology in this new short story collection from the author of “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.”
Best new book releases from the week of October 6
Michel Houellebecq (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
The latest from the celebrated French writer is set in a chaotic, troubled France in the year 2027. Paul Raison, an adviser to the country’s financial minister, navigates both personal and professional turbulence. After his dad has a stroke, Raison leaves Paris and returns to his hometown in the country, where he and siblings try to heal their relationships with their ailing patriarch.
Michael Silver (W. W. Norton & Company)
Longtime sports journalist Silver looks at how Kyle Shanahan shook up the football world when, in 2008, he became the NFL’s younger offensive coordinator and developed a bold new approach to coaching.
Dava Sobel (Atlantic Monthly Press)
Sobel was a Pulitzer finalist with “Galileo’s Daughter.” Here she zones in on Curie, looking at not just her famous scientific achievements but also how she blazed a path for women in science by training young women in her lab.
Edited by Zibby Owens (Zibby Books)
Seventy-five writers, including Daphne Merkin, Annabelle Gurwitch and The Post’s David Christopher Kaufman share thoughts on Jewish faith and culture — and how both have been tested and reimagined in the year since the Hamas attack on Israel.
Lisa Marie Presley and Riley Keough (Random House)
The late Lisa Marie teamed up with her daughter to write down the stories of her extraordinary life. Presley recalls her youth at Graceland, the horror of finding Elvis’s dead body, her marriage to Michael Jackson and much, much more.
Oliver Burkeman (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Burkeman’s “Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals” was a bestseller thanks to its streamlined, witty and practical advice. Here he applies the same approach to self-reflection, offering up 28 short chapters to reflect upon.
Best new book releases from the week of September 29
Louise Erdrich (Harper)
The latest from Erdrich, who won a Pulitzer prize for “The Night Watchman,” is set amidst the recession of 2008-2009 and touches on climate change, fracking and toxic pesticides. In a small town in North Dakota, two men are both in love with a goth girl named Kismet Poe. Her mother has strange visions and worries about the future.
Karl Ove Knausgaard (Penguin Press)
The great Scandinavian author returns to the world of “Morning Star” and “The Wolves of Eternity.” Various Norwegians wrestle with the emergence of an ominous star. People start acting strangely, but, stranger still, no one seems to be dying.
Betsy Lerner (Grove Press)
This acclaimed debut follows two sisters across twenty years as they weave in and out of each other’s lives. The eldest, Olivia, is beautiful but troubled, impulsive and mentally ill. Younger sister Amy is serious and hardworking, struggling to keep it together amidst her sister’s chaos.
Ina Garten (Crown)
The beloved cookbook author dishes on her journey to the Hamptons including her horrible childhood and that time she and Jeffrey, gasp, separated.
David M. Rubenstein (Simon & Schuster)
Rubenstein, a businessman and host of his own PBS show, sat down with living presidents and historians for this comprehensive look at the top office.
Alan Moore (Bloomsbury)
This is the first book in a new fantasy series from the author of the hugely popular “Watchmen” and “V for Vendetta” graphic novels. In 1949, an 18-year-old student discovers a book from “the Great When” — a magical version of London where there’s no clear line between and fiction.
