The Book Review

Imagine, if you will, that for unknown reasons North Korea has just launched a nuclear bomb at the United States. What happens next?

The journalist Annie Jacobsen has imagined exactly that, and spent more than a decade interviewing dozens of experts while mastering the voluminous literature on the subject — some of it declassified only in recent years — for her 2024 book “Nuclear War: A Scenario,” which walks readers through the 72 minutes from launch to global annihilation. In the Book Review, Barry Gewen said the book was “gripping” and declared it essential reading “if you want to understand the complex and disturbing details that go into a civilization-destroying decision.”

Jacobsen now has another book out: “Biological War: A Scenario.” Our critic Dwight Garner wrote in his review that it “moves like a meteor.”

For this week’s episode, we revisit the conversation the host Gilbert Cruz had with Jacobsen last year, in which she discussed why she wrote “Nuclear War,” and how she managed to compile so many details about topics that are among the most secret in the world.

Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What are the best thrillers published since 2000?

That was the question that the team at The New York Times’s Book Review posed to hundreds of writers of every kind of crime fiction, from legal thrillers to spy novels to cozy mysteries, as well as librarians, editors, critics and bookstagrammers. We counted up all those votes and came up with a list of the 50 best thrillers of the 21st century, available here.

In this episode, the host Gilbert Cruz is joined by Tina Jordan, the editor of the Book Review, and Sarah Lyall, a longtime columnist who writes the Book Review’s monthly thrillers column, to revisit the books that changed the genre, discuss overlooked favorites and recommend the thrillers that everyone should read next.

Books discussed on this episode:

“Cat Among the Pigeons,” by Agatha Christie

“Rebecca,” by Daphne du Maurier

“The Turn of the Screw,” by Henry James

“The Firm,” by John Grisham

“A Time to Kill,” by John Grisham

“The Client,” by John Grisham

“The Pelican Brief,” by John Grisham

“Presumed Innocent,” by Scott Turow

“And Then There Were None,” by Agatha Christie

“Murder on the Orient Express,” by Agatha Christie

“Peril at End House,” by Agatha Christie

“Crooked House,” by Agatha Christie

“Time and Again,” by Jack Finney

“Gone Girl,” by Gillian Flynn

“Sharp Objects,” by Gillian Flynn

“The Likeness,” by Tana French

“In the Woods,” by Tana French

“Broken Harbor,” by Tana French

“Mystic River,” by Dennis Lehane

“All the Sinners Bleed,” by S. A. Cosby

“Defending Jacob,” by William Landay

“We Need to Talk About Kevin,” by Lionel Shriver

“The Push,” by Ashley Audrain

“The God of the Woods,” by Liz Moore

“The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,” by Stieg Larsson

“No Country for Old Men,” by Cormac McCarthy

“Slow Horses,” by Mick Herron

“Shutter Island,” by Dennis Lehane

“The Constant Gardener,” by John le Carré

“The Secret History,” by Donna Tartt

“My Sister, the Serial Killer,” by Oyinkan Braithwaite

“Butter,” by Asako Yuzuki

“Case Histories,” by Kate Atkinson

“Life After Life,” by Kate Atkinson

“Our Noble Selves,” by Kate Atkinson

“The Expats,” by Chris Pavone

“The Anomaly,” by Hervé Le Tellier

Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Early in Douglas Stuart’s new novel, “John of John,” the Booker Prize-winning author describes a peculiar irony: “What skinned him was that the closer he got to home, the more lost he felt.”

It’s a passing line, but it captures the tension at the heart of this magnificent book: Here is a story of two men, each profoundly isolated, trying to figure out how to exist in a small, claustrophobic world.

The traveler heading home and dreading it is Cal, a young gay man who has recently graduated from college in Edinburgh and has been floundering ever since. At the start of the novel, he is summoned back to the small village where he grew up to care for his sick grandmother. He obliges, but he’s not happy about the move — a rakish dreamer, Cal doesn’t fit into the provincial life of his village. His chief antagonist is his father, John. Traditional, religious and stoic, John hates Cal’s flamboyance and inertia, and he’s determined to mold Cal into an upstanding citizen of this tiny community. But John is hiding secrets of his own that, if they were to get out, could upend his life.

Bouncing between John’s and Cal’s stories, “John of John” asks: What does it mean to fit in, what’s the risk of standing out, and what’s the price of both?

On this episode of the Book Review Book Club, the host MJ Franklin discusses the book with his colleagues Leah Greenblatt and Scott Heller.

Other books (and a movie) mentioned in this episode:

“Shuggie Bain” and “Young Mungo,” by Douglas Stuart

“What We Can Know,” by Ian McEwan

“The Banshees of Inisherin,” directed by Martin McDonagh

“The Keeper,” by Tana French

“A Natural,” by Ross Raisin

“The Spell,” by Alan Hollinghurst

“Seascraper,” by Benjamin Wood

“Whale Fall,” by Elizabeth O’Connor

“Clear,” by Carys Davies

“Wuthering Heights,” by Emily Brontë

“Persuasion,” by Jane Austen

“Washington Square,” by Henry James

“The Town of Babylon,” by Alejandro Varela

“Memorial,” by Bryan Washington

Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The editors at The New York Times Book Review spend almost the entire year discussing, debating and sometimes arguing about the year’s best books. We’re halfway through 2026, which means it’s time for the host Gilbert Cruz and the Book Review editors Joumana Khatib and MJ Franklin to talk about some of the best releases of the year as well as a few hidden gems that captured their attention and affection.

Fiction

“Whistler,” by Ann Patchett

“The Calamity Club,” by Kathryn Stockett

“Transcription,” by Ben Lerner

“The Keeper,” by Tana French

“Kin,” by Tayari Jones

“This Is Where the Serpent Lives,” by Daniyal Mueenuddin

Nonfiction

“Fear and Fury: The Reagan Eighties, the Bernie Goetz Shootings, and the Rebirth of White Rage,” by Heather Ann Thompson

“Dangerous, Dirty, Violent, and Young: My Fugitive Family in the Revolutionary Underground,” by Zayd Ayers Dohrn

“Trash!,” by Simon Paré-Poupart

“London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family’s Search for Truth,” by Patrick Radden Keefe

“Days of Love and Rage: A Story of Ordinary People Forging a Revolution,” by Anand Gopal

Hidden Gems

“Lost Lambs,” by Madeline Cash

“A Sudden Flicker of Light: A Revisionist History of Movies,” by David Thomson

“American Han,” by Lisa Lee

Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Today we want to bring back an episode from our archives. 

It’s about a book that has real beach read vibes. There’s a lot of water. It’s a relationship drama. And it’s also a daring story of survival. 

“Marriage at Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession and Shipwreck" made it onto the Book Review Top 10 Books of 2025 and the paperback edition just came out a few weeks ago. It tells the unbelievable story of a British couple in the 1970s who try to sail around the world. They’re trying to reach New Zealand and they almost make it. But their boat gets capsized by a whale in the middle of the vast Pacific Ocean and they’re forced to survive there for quite a while. 

Here is our conversation from last year with the author, Sophie Elmhirst. 

Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.