You’ve heard of folks who are so close that they finish each other’s sentences? Meet the Duluth, Minnesota, writers who even speak collaboratively.

“We realized pretty quickly my strengths are in code and plot — ” began Andy Bennett, on a phone call last month.

“— and I’m definitely more character-driven. I was always looking ...Read more

An old literary friend — Sherlock Holmes — is back in August. Perhaps you’d like him to join you in an air-conditioned setting?

Holmes returns to solving cases in Nicholas Meyer’s “Sherlock Holmes and the Real Thing,” the latest in his series of supposedly newly discovered adventures of the great detective. But if you’re looking ...Read more

You might call Ivy Pochoda the bard of bad women, an auteur of feminine fierceness.

For proof, look no further than the bestselling, LA Times Book Prize-winning “Sing Her Down,” her stunning 2023 noir thriller about two women prisoners. After you read it, you might never see a fork again without thinking of a bloody weapon.

Pochoda has ...Read more

Reading Nigerian writer Eloghosa Osunde’s sophomore novel, “Necessary Fiction,” is an immersive experience.

Inventively bold and affecting, its obsessions go deep but are crystal clear. What does it mean, Osunde asks again and again, to love and be loved, especially as a queer person living in Lagos, Nigeria — where homosexuality is ...Read more

Katie Yee accomplishes something quite impressive with her debut novel, “Maggie; or, A Man and a Woman Walk Into a Bar.” And I’m not talking about the fact that she convinced her publisher to go with an 11-word title that includes a semicolon and a comma. (Though I’m not not talking about that.)

No, I’m referring to this first time ...Read more

“The Gilded Age,” HBO’s popular series, just premiered its third season, dramatizing antagonisms between old-money Manhattan gentry and the nouveau riche who strive to join their velvet-draped parlors during an epoch of immense wealth, rife with robber barons and Fifth Avenue doyennes.

In France, this period is known as “La Belle É...Read more

Here are the bestsellers for the week that ended Saturday, July 19, compiled from data from independent and chain bookstores, book wholesalers and independent distributors nationwide, powered by Circana BookScan © 2025 Circana.

(Reprinted from Publishers Weekly, published by PWxyz LLC. © 2025, PWxyz LLC.)

HARDCOVER FICTION

1. "An Inside Job...Read more

Tasha Coryell has thought a lot about psychopaths.

“They are walking around in regular life. They’re married, they have kids, they have prestigious careers,” said Coryell, whose debut novel, “Love Letters to a Serial Killer,” came out last year and whose latest is “Matchmaking for Psychopaths.” “Presidents. Surgeons. Pilots. ...Read more

Times like these demand great comic novels and thank God we have Gary Shteyngart to provide. His shortest, sweetest and most perfectly constructed novel ever, “Vera, or Faith” is here to save the day. Or at least the day that you read it.

Vera Bradford-Shmulkin is a 10-year-old girl, living in New York City with her family in the near ...Read more

Tim Weiner likens the Central Intelligence Agency to a fortified medieval city, where locked castles contain vast libraries. “If you had the keys,” he writes, “a billion secrets were at your fingertips.”

Nobody has unlocked more CIA secrets than Weiner, whose National Book Award winner, “Legacy of Ashes,” remains a vital text on the...Read more

Is someone talking smack about you behind your back? Don’t fret. Do as a character suggests in Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s “The Bewitching”:

“It’s very easy to cast a spell to prevent people from gossiping about you … You take the tongue of a small animal and drive a nail through it into the ground. Sprinkle a smidgen of graveyard ...Read more

“Can’t repeat the past? Why, of course you can!” is a line famously spoken by the title character in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby.” This year, writers are repeating the past — a lot — with new takes on the St. Paul native’s classic novel.

Perhaps because it’s the 100th anniversary of the novel and perhaps because ...Read more

Steve Ryfle remembers scouring the TV Guide each week to find the monster movies and Universal horror films he loved.

“You had to make an appointment with yourself to be by the TV, so it was really special,” recalls Ryfle, an author and co-writer of the Emmy-winning documentary “Miracle on 42nd Street” (and, I’ll note, a friend since ...Read more

Here are the bestsellers for the week that ended Saturday, July 12, compiled from data from independent and chain bookstores, book wholesalers and independent distributors nationwide, powered by Circana BookScan © 2025 Circana.

(Reprinted from Publishers Weekly, published by PWxyz LLC. © 2025, PWxyz LLC.)

HARDCOVER FICTION

1. "Rose in ...Read more

As a passionate fan of the Band, Stephen T. Lewis had watched the concert film “The Last Waltz” numerous times and devoured autobiographies on Levon Helm and Robbie Robertson, the Band’s best-known members.

Despite those acclaimed accounts of the influential group’s story – the early days as the Hawks backing Ronnie Hawkins, their ...Read more

Sure, you can survive a shipwreck, but have you ever tried surviving a marriage?

That’s what Sophie Elmhirst contemplates in her riveting, feisty “A Marriage at Sea.” It’s a narrative nonfiction look at Maurice and Maralyn Bailey, an English couple who embarked on an oceanic life in 1972, were rammed into by a whale on their way to the ...Read more

CHICAGO -- Robert Wolf, more commonly and affectionately known as Bob, is no longer a kid, and hasn’t been for some time. He has long had white hair and a white beard, and his eyesight isn’t what it used to be. But he is still filled with the coltish enthusiasm that fuels his desire to create what he calls an “autobiography of America.” ...Read more

On “CBS Sunday Morning” recently, novelist Anne Tyler said she’s working on a book but she may never publish again. She might have been joking but, if she wasn’t, a new novel could make fans of the wry, observant author mighty happy.

Even the title of Kathy Wang’s “The Satisfaction Café” sounds like a Tyler title, specifically �...Read more