Lifestyle

The best new books to read: Top releases, updated weekly

The Post regularly compiles the best books released in the past month. In the meantime, take a look at our favorite titles released in the last year.

This week’s best new books

The #1 Lawyer: Move over Grisham, Patterson’s Greatest Legal Thriller Ever by James Patterson and Nancy Allen

The #1 Lawyer

James Patterson and Nancy Allen (Little, Brown and Company)
In this highly anticipated legal thriller, the top criminal defense attorney in Biloxi, Mississippi, suddenly becomes a murder suspect himself when his beautiful wife is killed.

The Divorcées: A Novel by Rowan Beaird

The Divorcées: A Novel

Rowan Beaird (Flatiron Books)
In the mid-1900s, unhappy wives flocked to Reno, Nevada for quick and easy divorces. The state’s only requirement was six weeks of residency, which could be easily fulfilled with a stay at a “divorce ranch” resort. This buzzy debut is set on one of the ranches, as a prim midwestern housewife named Lois soaks in her new freedom and mingles with glamorous fellow guests.

Finding Margaret Fuller: A Novel by Allison Pataki

Finding Margaret Fuller: A Novel

Allison Pataki (Ballantine Books)
The bestselling author’s latest work of historical fiction focuses on the pioneering journalist and woman’s rights advocate, charting her relationship with Ralph Waldo Emerson and the transcendentalists and far beyond.

Ghost Town Living: Mining for Purpose and Chasing Dreams at the Edge of Death Valley by Brent Underwood

Ghost Town Living: Mining for Purpose and Chasing Dreams at the Edge of Death Valley

Brent Underwood (Harmony)
The entrepreneur and social media personality — his Ghost Town Living channel has more than 1.6 million followers on YouTube — shares his story of buying an abandoned silver mine and boom town and trying to bring them back to life.

James: A Novel by Percival Everett

James: A Novel

Percival Everett (Doubleday)
Everett’s 2020 novel “Telephone” was a Pulitzer finalist. His latest is a reimagining of “Huckleberry Finn” told from the point of view of Jim the escaped slave. It’s drawing comparisons to Barbara Kingsolver’s “Demon Copperhead.”

The Sniper: The Untold Story of the Marine Corps' Greatest Marksman of All Time by Jim Lindsay

The Sniper: The Untold Story of the Marine Corps’ Greatest Marksman of All Time

Jim Lindsay, with a forward by Chuck Mawhinney (St. Martin’s Press)
Mawhinney hada 103 confirmed kills during the 16 months he served in Vietnam in his late teens, a record for the US Marines. His friend, Lindsay, tells his story, portraying him as both a hero and a man forever burdened by the weight of all the lives he’s taken.

Best new book releases from last week

 

Until August

Gabriel García Márquez (Knopf)
The Nobel Prize–winning Colombian author of “Love in the Time of Cholera” and “One Hundred Years of Solitude” died nearly a decade ago, but his final novel was locked away, unpublished, for years. Now it’s getting its due, with the blessing of Marquez’s son. The book follows a woman who visits an island annually on the anniversary of her mother’s death.

 

Reading Genesis

Marilynne Robinson (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
The acclaimed novelist, who won the Pulitzer Prize for “Gilead,” gives a surprising, thought-provoking analysis of the bible, focusing on it as a piece of literature.

 

The Formula: How Rogues, Geniuses, and Speed Freaks Reengineered F1 into the World’s Fastest-Growing Sport

Joshua Robinson and Jonathan Clegg (Mariner Books)
Two Wall Street Journal reporters look at how Formula One sped past NASCAR and IndyCar in the United States to lead the pack.

 

Soundtrack of Silence: Love, Loss, and a Playlist for Life

Matt Hay (St. Martin’s Press)
Hay was applying to college and falling in love for the first time when he learned he had a rare disease and was rapidly losing his hearing. This moving memoir details how music — one of the things he loved and missed the most — ultimately helped him to find a way to live with his disability.

 

The Deer Adventures of Timothee and Jimothee

Brett Gubitosi and Birdie Sander
This charming coming-of-age tale for readers of all ages follows two young deer brothers exploring the world beyond their hometown of Manitoba, Canada.

 

A Good Bad Boy: Luke Perry and How a Generation Grew Up

Margaret Wappler (Simon & Schuster)
It’s been five years since the actor, who played rebel-with-a-heart-of-gold “Dylan McKay on Beverly Hills 90210,” passed away. Wappler explores what made him a unique figure for Gen X and what his life and death really meant, weaving together anecdotes from those who knew Perry with bits from her own life.

Best book releases from the week of March 10th

After Annie: A Novel

Anna Quindlen (Random House)
The Pulitzer prize winner’s latest focuses on the aftermath of the sudden death of a beloved wife and mother. Her husband, friend and young children are lost without her but find their way by remembering all she taught them.

It’s Hard for Me to Live with Me: A Memoir

Rex Chapman, with Seth Davis (Simon & Schuster)
Chapman was a legend at the University of Kentucky and played 12 years in the NBA, but his life was undone by addiction to painkillers and gambling. He blew through his $40 million basketball fortune and ended up living in his car and feeding his drug habit by shoplifting. It was only when he was arrested that he decided to get clean.

Blank: A Novel

Zibby Owens (Little A)
In this witty, delightful debut, a forty-something mom and former literary “it” girl” struggles with writer’s block and a looming deadline — until she gives her life a plot twist.

The House of Hidden Meaning: A Memoir

RuPaul (Dey Street Books)
The drag icon opens up about growing up poor, black and queer in San Diego; getting sober and finding love with husband Georges LeBar.

The Hunter: A Novel

Tana French (Viking)
In this revenge tale from the bestselling writer of “The Searcher,” a retired Chicago police officer moves to a quiet Irish village and finds love and contentment with a local woman. But, then her daughter’s absentee father returns, disrupting the peace.

Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout

Cal Newport (Portfolio)
The bestselling author of “Digital Minimalism” and “Deep Work” advocates for a more old-fashioned approach to getting things done and looks to the habits and philosophies of Galileo, Isaac Newton, Jane Austen and Georgia O’Keefe.

Best book releases from the week of February 18th

The Freaks Came Out to Write: The Definitive History of the Village Voice, the Radical Paper That Changed American Culture

Tricia Romano (PublicAffairs)
Romano interviewed some 200 people — everyone from gossip columnist Michael Musto and the rock band Blondie to Pulitzer prize winner Colson Whitehead and sportscaster Bob Costas — for this lively history of the pioneering alt-weekly, where she herself worked for 8 years.

Grief Is for People

Sloane Crosley (MCD)
The witty essayist and novelist turns her pen on loss in her latest essay collection. In 2019, Crosley’s apartment was burglarized, robbing her of both prized material items and a sense of safety in New York. Weeks later, one of her closest friends and colleagues committed suicide, and Crosley grieves and looks for answers as the pandemic bears down on the city.

Splinters: Another Kind of Love Story

Leslie Jamison (Little, Brown and Company)
The bestselling memoirist, who wrote “The Recovering” and “The Empathy Exams,” examines the dissolution of her marriage, her bond with her daughter and her parents’ relationship with the searing insight she’s known for.

Three-Inch Teeth

C.J. Box (G.P. Putnam’s Sons)
The latest Joe Pickett novel finds the Wyoming game warden dealing with both a vicious grizzly bear out for blood and a soon-to-be-released prisoner who is out for revenge against those who locked him up.

The Unit: My Life Fighting Terrorists as One of America’s Most Secret Military Operatives

Adam Gamal and Kelly Kennedy (St. Martin’s Press)
We’ve all heard of the Navy SEALs and the Green Berets, but there’s an elite team within the US military that’s so secretive, even its name is classified and tt’s referred to simply as “the Unit” or “the Activity.” Gamal, a pseudonymous author and Muslim American, writes about his time as part of the highly classified group, from the psychologically and physically excruciating entrance test to various secret missions.

Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop: A Novel

Hwang Bo-reum, translated by Shanna Tan (Bloomsbury Publishing)
This heartwarming read was a huge hit in Korea and now it’s been translated into English for the first time. A dissatisfied woman who’s always done what she’s supposed to do quits her high-profile job and opens a bookstore in Seoul. There, various characters collide and reckon with life’s disappointments.

Best book releases from the week of February 11th

An American Dreamer: Life in a Divided Country

David Finkel (Random House)
Pulitzer Prize-winner Finkel spent 14 years following an Iraq war veteran named Brent Cummings to capture this portrait of a man struggling to understand our increasingly polarized nation.

End of Story

A.J. Finn (William Morrow)
This new thriller from the author of “The Woman in the Window” finds an isolated mystery novelist with months to live recruiting a writer to help him tell his life story. But the greatest mystery might be what happened to the novelist’s wife and son, who vanished decades ago.

Normal Women: Nine Hundred Years of Making History

Philippa Gregory (HarperOne)
Nearly a millennium of British history is detailed with women at the forefront in this richly researched non-fiction book. Along the way, Gregory reveals a number of surprising truths, such as the fact that the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 was incited by women who took issue with a tax on women.

Ours: A Novel

Phillip B. Williams (Viking)
In the 1830s, a mystic woman named Saint destroys plantations and frees slaves across Arkansas. She brings the newly freed people to a haven she created near St. Louis called Ours.

Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection

Charles Duhigg (Random House)
Duhigg, a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist, looks at how the most successful people — from the leader in jury deliberations to a CIA agent — are uniquely gifted at communicating and understanding the interactions they’re having. Each conversation can be classified as one of three categories — social, emotional or practical — for maximum effectiveness.

Wandering Stars: A novel

Tommy Orange
This highly anticipated epic from the author of “There, There” — a Pulitzer finalist — looks at the legacy of the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre, in which roughly 700 federal troops killed some 500 Cheyenne and Arapaho without provocation. The novel follows a young survivor of the massacre, and later his son, as they reckon with trauma, abuse and forced assimilation.