New York Review Books: 531 books

Great Granny Webster is Caroline Blackwood’s masterpiece. Heiress to the Guinness fortune, Blackwood was celebrated as a great beauty and dazzling raconteur long before she made her name as a strikingly original writer. This macabre, mordantly funny, partly auto-biographical novel reveals the gothic...

Pedigree is Georges Simenon’s longest, most unlikely, and most adventurous novel, the book that is increasingly seen to lie at the heart of his outsize achievement as a chronicler of modern self and society. In the early 1940s, Simenon began work on a memoir of his Belgian childhood. He showed...

Cassandra Edwards is a graduate student at Berkeley: gay, brilliant, nerve-racked, miserable. At the beginning of this novel, she drives back to her family ranch in the foothills of the Sierras to attend the wedding of her identical twin, Judith, to a nice young doctor from Connecticut. Cassandra,...

Even if she has lived ten terrible years, terrible, horrible Edie really isn’t terrible and horrible at all, but rather one of the most charming and engaging and gutsy children in American children’s fiction. It’s true of course that Edie does get into—and not always without it being at least...

Miss Bianca is a white mouse of great beauty and supreme self-confidence, who, courtesy of her excellent young friend, the ambassador’s son, resides luxuriously in a porcelain pagoda painted with violets, primroses, and lilies of the valley. Miss Bianca would seem to be a pampered creature, and...

By the Winner of the Hans Christian Andersen Medal for Lifetime Achievement in Children’s Literature Albert the Glassblower and Sofia are the loving parents of little Klas and Klara. Albert makes the most beautiful glass bowls and vases (unfortunately they are so impractical that no one will...

Strange things begin to happen the minute young Kay Harker boards the train to go home for Christmas and finds himself under observation by two very shifty-looking characters. Arriving at his destination, the boy is immediately accosted by a bright-eyed old man with a mysterious message: “The wolves...

Night falls and Cat Country comes to life: town walls turn into roads, roof and treetop become mountain and field. The black cat Carbonel and his consort, Queen Blandamour, have long reigned over this magical place, where humans are scarce, cats roam freely, and the rivers flow with cream. But the...

By the author of the bestselling picture book Petunia, The House of Four Seasons is a bright and lively family picture book about colors, imagination, and compromise When Father, Mother, Billy, and Suzy go house hunting in the country, they fall in love with a grand old house nestled among...

A sweet tale about kindness, jealousy, and fairness perfect for reading when a child is sick or well. Edward is sick and Elizabeth is well, and nothing could be more unfair! Edward gets to stay in bed and everyone treats him like a prince. Elizabeth has to get out of bed, get dressed, go to...

Donkey-donkey has a problem. Despite his many friends and his good master, he is sad because his ears are so long and ridiculous. If only Donkey-donkey could have short sensible ears like his friend Pat the horse, he would be content. So he seeks the advice of his fellow farm animals who suggest he...

Max the dog-poet is back, this time in Paris and falling in love, in Maira Kalman's delightful picture book. It's happened. Before you can say "Pepe le Pew," Max the millionaire poet dog has landed in Paris, the city of lights. The city of dreams. Everyone is in a froufrou...

“There are many kinds of magic…and once magic is in your blood it attracts more magic,” says the royal cat Carbonel at the start of Carbonel and Calidor. Sure enough, Carbonel’s human friends Rosemary and John soon encounter magic in the form of a ring set with a fiery red stone that grants...

Baguette, a seemingly ordinary house cat, is a descendant of the magic Catlanteans who lived long ago in peace and happiness on the island of Catlantis. When he falls in love with the seductive alley cat Purriana, she insists Baguette accomplish a heroic feat before she’ll agree to marriage. They...