We take the weekend to highlight recent books coverage from The Times:

A tour of the Book Review:

Colson Whitehead’s “The Nickel Boys” is his follow-up to “The Underground Railroad,” which won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, among other accolades. Reviewing the new novel, Frank Rich says that Whitehead “applies a master storyteller’s muscle not just to excavating a grievous past but to examining the process by which Americans undermine, distort, hide or ‘neatly erase’ the stories he is driven to tell.”

Whitehead discusses his work on our podcast this week, and Jon Gertner also joins us, to discuss his new book, “The Ice at the End of the World: An Epic Journey Into Greenland’s Buried Past and Our Perilous Future.”

Chuck Klosterman answers our questions in By the Book.

Does anyone write creepier villains than Jo Nesbo? “No,” says Marilyn Stasio, “I can’t think of anyone who makes my skin crawl like Nesbo.”

Reviews from the staff critics:

Jennifer Szalai says that Tim Alberta’s “American Carnage” “isn’t just another drop in the deluge of Trump books; in fact, it isn’t really a Trump book at all. Instead it’s a fascinating look at a Republican Party that initially scoffed at the incursion of a philandering reality-TV star with zero political experience and now readily accommodates him.”