Fall in love with 6 of this season’s new paperbacks | Books

by Brit Bennett (Penguin, $16.99)

No ill luck for Brit Bennett, who followed her widely acclaimed debut novel ‘The Mothers’ with one of the most acclaimed books of 2020, about a pair of estranged twins leading very different lives. After reading it breathlessly that year, I wrote, “‘The Vanishing Half’ has a lot to say about race and identity, about family and kinship (there are many layers of sisters here), about performance, about a woman realizing that she could become ‘whatever woman she chose, whatever side of her face she tilted towards the light.’ And he says these things with a voice of quiet wisdom, a voice you miss when you realize the story is over.

by Erik Larson (Crown, $15.99)

Larson, a former Seattle resident now based in New York, has a weird way of making history read like fiction (“In the Beast Garden,” “The Devil in the White City”). New York Times reviewer Candice Millard wrote of her new World War II saga: “Through remarkably skillful use of diaries as well as public records, some recently released, Larson has turned the record well-known 12 turbulent months, spanning May 1940 to May 1941, in a fresh, fast-paced and deeply moving book.