A selection of summaries from The New York Times Book Review:
THE LIGHT AT THE END OF THE WORLD, by Siddhartha Deb >> (Soho Press, 456 pages, $19.) In near-future New Delhi, Bibi must find a man holding valuable documents. In 1984 Bhopal, a hit man targets a factory operator. Amid the turmoil of independence, a student seeks an ancient Vedic aircraft in 1947 Calcutta. In the Himalayas of 1859, a self-titled “White Mughal” collects magical objects. Somehow, these timelines come together seamlessly in Deb’s epic novel.
A LIVING REMEDY: A Memoir, by Nicole Chung >> (Ecco, 256 pages, $19.99.) Chung, a Korean American adopted by working-class parents, chronicles the brutality of a health care system that enabled the preventable deaths of her father, mother and grandmother. Her memoir thrums with “aching and transcendent longing,” a New York Times reviewer wrote.
THE SECRET DIARIES OF CHARLES IGNATIUS SANCHO, by Paterson Joseph >> (Holt, 432 pages, $18.99.) Based on the true-life story of Sancho, who escaped slavery to become a composer, abolitionist and the first Black British voter, and on a one-man play the author wrote and starred in, Joseph’s book puts forth a fictionalized memoir-through-diaries “with the gumption of prose fiction’s earliest heroes,” according to a Times reviewer.
HIS NAME IS GEORGE FLOYD: One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice, by Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa >> (Penguin, 448 pages, $20.) This Pulitzer Prize-winning biography is an “intimate, unvarnished and scrupulous account” of the life of George Floyd, who before he was murdered by a police officer in May 2020 grew up in Houston’s Third Ward and dreamed of life as an athlete.
MURDER YOUR EMPLOYER: The McMasters Guide to Homicide, by Rupert Holmes >> (Avid Reader, 416 pages, $18.99.) This wry thriller by the celebrated crime novelist, composer and dramatist inaugurates a new series set at a conservatory for the art of homicide. “While there may be madness in McMasters methodology,” one narrator says, “our curriculum has proven itself to be of sound mind and student body.”
BLACK SNOW: Curtis LeMay, the Firebombing of Tokyo, and the Road to the Atomic Bomb, by James M. Scott >> (Norton, 448 pages, $21.99.) Five months before the atomic bombs, there was the bombing of Tokyo. Scott tells the harrowing story of the March 10, 1945, operation that set Japan’s capital city aflame and killed over 100,000 people, and its enduring legacy for America’s approach to war.