Our recommended books this week include two surveys of modern science: one by an astrophysicist explaining the weirder aspects of her field, the other by a science reporter connecting the dots between natural phenomena and her own life. Also up, the biography of a celebrated war correspondent, a serious look at the business of comedy and a volume of essays that Christopher Hitchens wrote for The London Review of Books over the years. In fiction, we recommend a novel of friendship among exiles and a story collection by a Canadian master of the form, along with a romance novel and a buzzy fiction debut by the poet Kaveh Akbar. Happy reading. — Gregory Cowles
A young Iranian American aspiring poet and recovering addict grieves his parents’ deaths while fantasizing about his own in Akbar’s remarkable first novel, which, haunted by death, also teems with life — in the inventive beauty of its sentences, the vividness of its characters and the surprising twists of its plot.
Lily Ong and Murray O’Connell have long worked together on a reality show, so Murray can’t fathom why Lily suddenly seems determined to destroy everything they’ve built. (Hint: It’s all in service of a secret guilt, and a fiery love she’s been locking away.) This is a full-on villain romance novel, filled with lying, scheming and blazingly tumultuous sex.
Simon & Schuster Australia
This collection includes essays and reviews that Hitchens, who died in 2011, wrote for The London Review of Books. Split between political topics (Margaret Thatcher, Bill Clinton) and cultural ones (Tom Wolfe, the Oscars), they showcase Hitchens’s deep reading and sparkling intelligence.
Whether disputing the cries that cancel culture is stifling humor, or defending an Adam Sandler poop joke, this energetic and wise history of the last three decades is personal, hopeful — and funny.
Farrar, Straus & Giroux | $29
In cheerful prose, James, an astrophysicist, describes how her peers are sketching out the history of the universe by studying everything from fast-spinning pulsars to the ghostly particles known as neutrinos.
Johns Hopkins University Press | $29.95
The Canadian author Jarman may not be a familiar name in the United States just yet, but this anthology aims to fix that. The book gathers a selection of his stories, published over the course of his four-decade career, introducing his lush, searing, impressionistic tales to new readers.
Biblioasis | Paperback, $19.95
With this idiosyncratic and ambitious memoir, Greenfieldboyce — a veteran science reporter for NPR — uses black holes, meteor showers and other subjects to explore facets of her personal history.
Norton | $27.99
Political exiles from Libya weigh whether to return after the Arab Spring in this novel, a masterly literary meditation on the author’s lifelong themes, where the loneliness of forging a new life abroad is compounded, wrenchingly, by a dense fog of fear and secrecy.
The glamorous, accomplished 20th-century war journalist Higgins — a Pulitzer winner with a nose for news and the nerve to chase it at any cost — gets her due in this lively biography.
