Janice Harayda Reviews Fiction, Nonfiction and Poetry for Adults and Children
I stopped watching true-crime shows on TV when they became too formulaic: all that eerie music, that ominous foreshadowing, that insurance bought just before the victim died. And I appreciated Elizabeth Bruening s similar perspective in a new story in The Atlantic, inspired by the hit documentary Maternal Instinct on Netflix. A few thoughts on the [ ]
Is there an author you once enjoyed but can no longer read? In my case one of them is Bob Woodward, the co-author with Carl Bernstein of All the President s Men, which tells how the two of them broke the Watergate story. In my latest Letter from a Reader on Substack, I write about why [ ]
I admire Jalen Hurts a lot as an athlete. But the Philadelphia Eagles quarterback and Super Bowl MVP lacks the skill as writer that he shows on the playing field. The evidence? His deeply flawed new children s picture book, Better Than a Touchdown (Flamingo Books, 2026), which tells the story of a boy of about [ ]
Have you ever read the print or digital edition of the New York Times Book Review wondered, Why can t I find anything I want to to read here? Is it my imagination, or does America s leading book section just keep getting worse? The answers to the two questions are related. You find too little to [ ]
A lot of pundits and late-night comedians have weighed in on Donald Trump s Gatsby-themed Halloween party at Mar-a-Lago. But for my money, Stephen Colbert had the best line about it, which I quote in my latest Letter from a Reader. These Letters are usually paywalled, but this one s free because so much literary news is [ ]
I live just 77 miles south of Harper Lee s hometown of Monroeville, Alabama, so of course I had to pick up her new The Land of Sweet Forever, just published posthumously with an introduction by Casey Cep. The book collects essays and short stories unpublished in her lifetime and a bonus: her recipe for crackling [ ]
I used to think we could never have too many literary prizes. Don t books and writers need need all the help they can get from awards? But in the past week or two, we ve had the Nobel, the National Book Awards shortlist, and more, and the annual year-end cascade is just getting started. And as [ ]
Raynor Winn s The Salt Path has become the latest memoir tainted by scandal after a British newspaper alleged that the author may have made up, distorted, or embellished parts of her bestselling book-turned-movie. Why do so many true stories fail to pass the smell test? An editor says readers are at fault because they keep [ ]
You might think I m the ideal listener for the podcast of New York Times Book Review Book Club. I read books. I subscribe to the New York Times. And I love to find new ways to discover books. But I listened to my first NYTBR Book Club podcast this week, and it was a disappointment. [ ]
Sophie Elmhirst s A Marriage at Sea is turning out to be one of the big nonfiction books of the summer, and with good reason. Elmhirst tells the true story of a married couple who spent 118 days on a raft in the Pacific after a sperm whale rammed their boat and sank it. Their efforts [ ]
What happens when a liberal-media analyst arrives in a redder-than-red state to promote a book? You might be as surprised as I was last week when the law professor and MSNBC commentator Barbara McQuade arrived in my conservative town in the Deep South to promote Attack From Within, her recent book about the growing threat [ ]
You might think there s no drawback to the $40 million that Simon Schuster recently agreed to pay for five books by Taylor Jenkins Reid, author of the No. 1 fiction bestseller, Atmosphere. James Patterson has $150 million contract with the rival firm of Hachette. Isn t Reid s bonanza a sign that female authors are approaching [ ]
It would be an exaggeration to say that Shirley Jackson s The Lottery is a story everybody has read but nobody really understands. But it s an exaggeration of a truth: A lot of us read this classic back in school and still don t quite get it. I first read The Lottery at about the age of [ ]
Critics and fans have deplored the posthumous publication of Joan Didion s new Notes to John, a collection of jottings on her psychotherapy sessions, which she didn t authorize. Some of its detractors argue that Didion wouldn t have wanted the book published. Others call it an invasion of privacy. Still others fear it could leave people with [ ]
Memoirs of life with an animal have boomed ever since John Grogan wrote in Marley Me about an over-the-top dog that chewed furniture and ate part of his wife s pregnancy test. But stories like his can have a drawback: The animal often dies at the end, and if so, they can leave you a [ ]