Atlantic County Library System

The writer, celebrated for his short stories, discusses his 2017 debut novel, and the journalist Patrick Radden Keefe talks about “Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland.”

New books about language, fairy tales and the paths we don’t pursue.

Suggested reading from critics and editors at The New York Times.

As a student, Anand Giridharadas asked V.S. Naipaul to dinner on a lark — and, when Naipaul accepted, carried him up three flights of stairs to his apartment. “It was strange and beautiful,” says Giridharadas, whose new book is “The Persuaders,” “to carry the man who had taught me to write.”