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There is a particular kind of thriller that only works if its hero feels like he actually belongs to the ground he’s standing on, and “The Country Road Murders” gets that balance right from its opening pages. James Patterson and Mike Lupica, who have made a habit of pairing propulsive

Colson Whitehead has spent two novels teaching readers how to case a room the way his hero Ray Carney does: patiently, hungrily, with an eye for the exact seam where legitimate life gives way to the hustle underneath it. “Cool Machine” is where that education pays off. It is the

A chance sighting across a crowded gallery at the Metropolitan Museum of Art shouldn’t be enough to unravel four and a half decades of carefully arranged memory. But that’s exactly what happens to Daphne Fuller in Ann Patchett’s latest novel, when she and her husband notice an older man trailing

Most self-help books arrive with a system: five habits, seven laws, a morning routine to adopt by Monday. Joseph Nguyen’s “Don’t Believe Everything You Think” arrives instead with a single, almost stubbornly simple claim — that the thinking mind is not the source of wisdom we assume it to be,

A month out of the tower is not nearly enough time to learn a kingdom, let alone a neighboring one that has spent decades quietly shutting its doors to outsiders. That is the tension Margaret Owen leans into in “Rootbound,” her follow-up to “Cottagecore,” which sends Rapunzel and Eugene from

There is a particular kind of quiet that settles over a room when a picture book meant for grown-ups actually lands. Christian Watson’s “How Lucky Am I” produces that quiet. It is a slim, hand-painted volume built around a wandering skeleton named Mr Skelly, and it has no business being

There’s a particular kind of memoir that works because the writer treats you like a friend who just sat down across the table, and Emilee Hackney’s “All That’s Unseen” is exactly that kind of book. It’s warm, funny, and disarmingly candid about a childhood spent trying to be good enough

Few American criminal cases of the last several years have generated as much noise, as many competing narratives, and as little consensus as the death of Boston police officer John O’Keefe. Dave Wedge’s “Blizzard of Lies” wades directly into that noise and tries to do what years of cable news

Most thrillers spend their pages asking “whodunit.” Shari Lapena’s newest asks a colder question: how far will an ordinary, desperate couple go to keep the life they’ve built, and how long can they keep getting away with it? “Getting Away with Murder” drops the guessing game before the story even

A pregnant woman and her husband drive out to a secluded house in the woods to consider buying it, and by the time the snow starts falling in earnest, they both know they should have turned back an hour ago. That’s the setup for Freida McFadden’s “Never Lie,” and it’s