1. The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness by Meghan O’Rourke (Riverhead)

“I got sick the way Hemingway says you go broke: ‘gradually and then suddenly,’ ” O’Rourke writes in her profound and elegant memoir that makes sense of her decade enduring and investigating a mysterious torrent of illness. More than an account of conflicting diagnoses or an indictment of the medical establishment, her narrative soars, drawing readers into her anxieties. A poet and editor of The Yale Review, O’Rourke shuns the traditional illness chronicle of a miraculous medical cure and opens her world to ambiguity and the recognition that “we all live in the nexus of radical interconnection.” Her book, she writes, “is about living with, rather than eradicating or defeating, a disease: a story about letting go of the American ethos of overcoming and about confronting our mutual interdependence.”

2. Sandy Hook: An American Tragedy and the Battle for Truth by Elizabeth Williamson (Dutton)

New York Times reporter Williamson convincingly connects the cultural dots on right-wing populist conspiracy theories, specifically between the those stemming from the 2012 bloodshed at Connecticut’s Sandy Hook Elementary School and the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack. Williamson keys into the influence of radio host Alex Jones and his outrageous assertions that the rampage that left 26 dead was faked, legitimized suspicions among Donald Trump supporters and part of the dynamic leading to their “Stop the Steal” riot. Meticulously documented, Williamson’s book explains how mendacious misinformation spread as social media ascended, paranoid theories took root, and grieving parents like Leonard Pozner, father of slain son Noah, and families fought back against the harassment.  

3. A Block in Time: A New York City History at the Corner of Fifth Avenue and Twenty-Third Street by Christiane Bird (Bloomsbury)

Through the prism of a single Manhattan block – bordered by 23rd and 24th streets, and Fifth and Sixth avenues – Bird is an engaging guide through New York’s metamorphosis from a small city to a financial capital, focusing on the stories of characters who were part of the drama. “Wealth and want, greed and generosity, guilt and innocence, extravagance and degradation,” Bird writes, “all have flourished on this one Manhattan block, emblematic of the metropolis as a whole.” 

4. The Prince by Dinitia Smith (Arcade)

In her deliciously satisfying novel, Smith draws inspiration in storyline and structure from Henry James’ 1904 classic, The Golden Bowl, and retains the moral ambiguity that so distinguished his fiction. Smith crosses the Atlantic, setting The Prince in contemporary high society of East Side New York and a private island off Long Island, and delves into a tangle of relationships: the Woodfords, a wealthy widower and his only child, a daughter who marries an Italian prince of status, not wealth; and her friend who marries the widower and who in earlier years was involved romantically with the prince. No scorecard needed, as Smith finely draws each character in this fraught quartet enmeshed in furtive relationships and secrets kept from one another, and themselves.

5. Booth by Karen Joy Fowler (Putnam)

In her brilliant novel, wildly imaginative Pen/Faulkner Award and Booker Prize finalist Fowler reimagines a dark chapter in American history: John Wilkes Booth’s assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Fowler animates the antebellum period in America, roiling with tensions about race and politics, through Booth’s siblings – particularly actor Edwin, poet Asia, and shy family caretaker Rosalie, in a family beset by alcoholism and psychological issues. With nuance, Fowler integrates national politics, such as the Dred Scott case and John Brown’s raid, into this story of the Booth siblings as John’s acting career falters while he grows increasingly fanatical, racist, and identified with the Southern cause, in a novel that echoes today.