THE NICKEL BOYS, by Colson Whitehead. (Doubleday, $24.95.) Whitehead, a Pulitzer winner for "The Underground Railroad," continues to explore America's racist legacy in this powerful novel about a serious student who dreams that college might lead him out of the Jim Crow South. Instead, he's wrongly arrested and sent to a brutal reform school modeled on a real institution. MY PARENTS: An Introduction/THIS DOES NOT BELONG TO YOU, by Aleksandar Hemon. (MCD/Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $28.) In a two-part memoir, Hemon shows how Bosnia and its wartime strife have shaped a life of exile for his family in Canada. APPEASEMENT: Chamberlain, Hitler, Churchill, and the Road to War, by Tim Bouverie. (Tim Duggan, $30.) This book about Neville Chamberlain's appeasement policy in the 1930s is most valuable as an examination of the often catastrophic consequences of failing to stand up to threats to freedom, whether at home or abroad. THE CROWDED HOUR: Theodore Roosevelt, the Rough Riders, and the Dawn of the American Century, by Clay Risen. (Scribner, $30.) This fast-paced narrative traces the rise of Roosevelt into a national figure and something of a legend against the backdrop of the emergence of the United States as a world power. THE ICE AT THE END OF THE WORLD: An Epic Journey Into Greenland's Buried Past and Our Perilous Future, by Jon Gertner. (Random House, $28.) Gertner approaches Greenland via the explorers and scientists obsessed with it, then uses the country to illuminate the evidence for climate change. GRACE WILL LEAD US HOME: The Charleston Church Massacre and the Hard, Inspiring Journey to Forgiveness, by Jennifer Berry Hawes. (St. Martin's, $28.99.) This magisterial account of the 2015 hate crime and its aftermath, by a Pulitzer-winning local reporter, delivers a heart-rending portrait of life for the survivors and a powerful meditation on the meaning of mercy. MOSTLY DEAD THINGS, by Kristen Arnett. (Tin House, $25.) The "red mess" that Arnett's narrator finds in the family's taxidermy workshop early in this debut novel is not the inside of a deer - it's her dad, who has committed suicide. The book balances grief with humor and lush, visceral details. LANNY, by Max Porter. (Graywolf, $24.) In this rich, cacophonous novel of English village life - equal parts fairy tale, domestic drama and fable - a mischievous boy goes missing. NOUNS & VERBS: New and Selected Poems, by Campbell McGrath. (Ecco/HarperCollins, $24.99.) McGrath, who has spent decades exploring America and its appetites, is an especially exuberant poet; his work celebrates chain restaurants, rock music and the joyful raucous stupidity of pop culture. The full reviews of these and other recent books are on the web: nytimes.com/books |