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
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 last week
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.
Best new book releases from the week of September 22
Sally Rooney (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
The fourth novel from the literary “it” girl is being hailed as her best yet. Two very different brothers grieve their father’s death. Peter is a successful, thirty-something Dublin lawyer juggling two different women. Ivan is a chess-playing loner in his early twenties who gets wrapped up with an older lady.
Richard Powers (W. W. Norton & Company)
Powers, who won a Pulitzer Prize for 2018’s ”The Overstory,” is back with an ambitious book that explores the ocean, the future of AI, climate change and much more. Four lives come together on a small Polynesian island amidst plans to colonize the sea with massive floating cities.
Emily Witt (Pantheon)
In this buzzy memoir, a New Yorker writer tells of going off antidepressants and falling into Brooklyn’s underground club scene in the years leading up to the pandemic.
Nicholas Sparks (Random House)
In the latest from the romance master, an Army Ranger tries to track down the father he never knew after his beloved grandmother dies. But, first he meets a complicated single mom that he’s immediately drawn to.
Sharon McMahon (Thesis)
McMahon — a high school law and government teacher who has a phenomenally popular Instagram account, @SharonSaysSo — looks at a dozen influential but little known characters in our nation’s history. Among them are Gouverneur Morris, a pal of Alexander Hamilton’s who wrote the preamble to the Constitution, and Clara Brown, a former slave who hopped a wagon train to Colorado where she amassed a small fortune and helped other free slaves move West.
Leanne Morgan (Convergent Books)
The comedian from Tennessee is having a breakout moment — in her late 50s. Her Netflix special was one of the platform’s most streamed comedy specials in 2023. With her new book, she continues to find humor in being a woman in late middle age navigating diet trends, menopause, rock concerts and much more.
Best new book releases from the week of September 15
Rumaan Alam (Riverhead Books)
The author of “Leave the World Behind” — a National Book Award finalist that was made into a film starring Julia Roberts, Ethan Hawke and Mahershala Ali — returns with another tension-filled social critique. Brooke wants to do something meaningful with her life and thinks her job working as an assistant to an 80-something billionaire and helping him donate his money is the ticket. But working so close to so much money changes her.
Cara Giaimo and Joshua Foer (Workman Publishing Company)
The popular “Atlas Obscura” team applies their knack for finding the quirky and unknown to the natural world. Readers will delight to learn about a 44,000-year-old shrub and a tiny shrimp that’s actually one of the strongest animals in the world.
Kelly Bishop (Gallery Books)
Octogenarian Bishop, who played eldest “Gilmore Girl” Emily, dishes on her six seasons on the beloved show as well as starring in “Dirty Dancing” and being a part of the original Broadway cast of “A Chorus Line.”
Laura Dave (Simon & Schuster/Marysue Rucci Books)
After their father dies, two estranged siblings reunite to investigate whether it was really an accident. Along the way, they discover a family secret in the latest from the bestselling author of “The Last Thing He Told Me.”
Marty Makary M.D. (Bloomsbury Publishing)
From exacerbating peanut allergies and opioid addiction to demonizing healthy fats and hormone replacement therapy, a John Hopskins professor looks at instances where the medical establishment has ignored problems or made them worse.
Ben Macintyre (Crown)
This thrilling non-fiction book looks at the other Iranian hostage crisis. In the spring of 1980, armed gunmen burst into the Iranian embassy in London and took 26 people hostage. Margaret Thatcher had been Prime Minister for less that a year but she steadfastly refused to negotiate with the militants, establishing the iron will that would be her legacy
Best new book releases from the week of September 8
Liane Moriarty (Crown)
The highly anticipated release from the author of “Big Little Lies” has an intriguing setup. The passengers on a short flight encounter no turbulence, but they do meet a woman who tells them when and how they will die. At first, they laugh off what the “Death Lady” tells them, but as the months pass, passengers perish exactly as she predicted.
Katherine Rundell, illustrated by Ashley Mackenzie (Knopf Books for Young Readers)
This children’s fantasy book was phenomenally popular and drew raves — it was named Waterstones’ Book of the Year and drew comparisons to C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien — when it was published in the UK last year. Two kids embark on an adventure, hopping between unmapped islands where magical creatures have lived for centuries but are suddenly dying. Dragons, sphinxes and kraken come into play.
Tony Blair (Crown)
Britain’s former prime minister mines his own experiences to offer up tips and insights on effective political leadership.
Don Lemon (Little, Brown & Company)
The fired CNN anchor reflects on religion, the state of America and his own life in the wake of his ousting.
Rachel Kushner (Simon & Schuster)
The newest book from the acclaimed author is longlisted for the Booker Prize. It’s a noir that centers on a beautiful, bold young American woman in rural France who is actually a secret agent on a mission.
Elizabeth Strout (Random House)
Pulitzer Prize winner Strout gives us another story featuring the fictional writer Lucy Barton. This time around, Barton and other quirky characters in their small Maine town grapple with a local murder, the lives that they’ve lived and the search for meaning.
