Margo Price’s fourth studio album, Strays, billows with pop sensibility, rock guitar, and country lyricism. Here, she shares some inspirations.

Just Kids by Patti Smith
“I’ve read a lot of music memoirs,” says Price; this one is “hands down my favorite. Patti has influenced my work as an author and a musician.” Price’s own memoir, Maybe We’ll Make It, came out last year.

Ladies of the Canyon by Joni Mitchell
Because of Mitchell, says Price, “I finally started playing more outside of standard tunings on my forthcoming album.” She calls this record “a blueprint for how to create pure, bone-cutting songwriting.”

Christina’s World by Andrew Wyeth
“I read that the title, courtesy of Wyeth’s wife, indicates that the painting is more a psychological landscape than a portrait, a portrayal of a state of mind rather than a place.”

Tending seeds is a time-honored metaphor, from the fruits of Eden to the flowers at Manderley. This month, take a more literal—though no less enticing—look at living with plants: From Vendome, Jennifer Ash Rudick’s Palm Beach Living (1) presents lush images of tropical homes, while Toby Musgrave’s reissued The Garden (2), from Phaidon, surveys more than 200 styles, from bonsai to Frida Kahlo’s Mexican courtyard. In The Garden Politic (4), out from NYU Press, Mary Kuhn views politics through the lens of 19th-century thinkers–cum–amateur gardeners including Emily Dickinson and Frederick Douglass, and Lucy Mora’s The Kitchen Garden (3), from Thames & Hudson, highlights the growing and preparing of edible plants: food and thought.

Round Trip

Works of nonfiction that go deep on the climate, music, and media.

THE CLIMATE BOOK: THE FACTS AND THE SOLUTIONS

This collection, created by Greta Thunberg and out from Penguin Press, features essays from luminaries like David Wallace-Wells and Robin Wall Kimmerer to provide a varied look at the climate crisis.

THE DEFINITIVE DESERT ISLAND DISCS

Celebrating the beloved BBC Radio 4 show, which showcases guests through their music choices, this best-of collection includes excerpts of interviews with Jimmy Stewart, Dame Judi Dench, Dizzy Gillespie, Sir David Attenborough, and others.

UNSCRIPTED: THE EPIC BATTLE FOR A MEDIA EMPIRE AND THE REDSTONE FAMILY LEGACY

In this riveting, Succession-esque tale of the fight for control of Paramount Global, James B. Stewart and Rachel Abrams weave together a lawsuit, familial conflict, and the lurking Les Moonves. (It’s also from Penguin Press.) —KW

Six-Pack

Thrillers, friendship dramas, and more new novels

This Other Eden

Rendered by Paul Harding with meticulous precision, at the turn of the 20th century a so-called well-intentioned white missionary wreaks devastation on the integrated community living on an island off Maine’s coast. (W.W. Norton & Company)

Age of Vice

The lives of a playboy heir to a dubiously obtained New Delhi fortune, his servant, and the journalist reporting on his family tangle in Deepti Kapoor’s page-turner, which unfolds from a fatal car accident. (Riverhead)

I Have Some Questions For You

A film professor returns to her New England boarding school—and reluctantly dredges up memories of a decades-old murder—in Rebecca Makkai’s bewitching new book. (Viking)

Vintage Contemporaries

In Slate editor Dan Kois’s big-hearted debut novel, a pair of unlikely friends grow up and apart in ’90s New York, amid protests and the publishing industry. (Harper)

Victory City

Spanning 250 years, Salman Rushdie’s epic follows the intertwined fates of a young woman who becomes a vessel for a goddess and the attempted feminist empire she creates. (Random House)

Central Places

From VF senior Vanities correspondent Delia Cai, a story of the push and pull of home: When Audrey Zhou visits her parents for the holidays, her past clashes with the person she thought she’d become. (Ballantine)