Lydia Millet has published more than a dozen novels and two collections of stories; her latest, “Atavists,” is a bit of both — a novel in stories, a deliciously digestible and of-the-moment read.

Each chapter of the collection from the “Dinosaurs” novelist gives us a look into the lives of a group of neighbors in Southern California. ...Read more

Rare’s the author who invents her own literary language, but Jo Harkin has accomplished just that.

Her dazzling, jocular novel “The Pretender” recounts the journey of one John Collan, from his anonymous boyhood in a rural village to a claim, as Edward Plantagenet, on the English monarchy. Never has a peasant risen so far, so fast.

Set in...Read more

Seeking succor when the world seems to be closing in on you is a quintessentially human habit. Some people do it by gorging on comfort food like macaroni and cheese, others choose drink, or drugs, or gardening, or the warmth of a puppy.

I always know when I'm feeling blue, because I feel the gravitational pull of my long shelf of P.G. Wodehouse...Read more

Like a modern-day Henry David Thoreau, writer and self-reliance guru Tamara Dean set out early in this century to make a home in the country and to live simply there.

The acres of choice for her enviable homestead (strangers would pull over at random and ask to take a look around) were in the Driftless Area of southwest Wisconsin. There lies a ...Read more

May is seeming more like October, and that’s not about the drizzle or the chill.

The month is packed with potentially huge books, in a way we’d expect peak fall to be. That peak didn’t materialize last autumn because publishers were holding off on releasing promising titles in the heat of the election cycle. Apparently, they saved them ...Read more

A 400-year-old Shakespeare mystery has gotten a major shake-up.

In a paper published in the journal Shakespeare on April 24 — the day after the Bard’s 461st birthday, if you happened to have candles and an extremely large cake on hand — Professor Matthew Steggle, Chair in Early Modern English Literature at University of Bristol, presented...Read more

Here are the bestsellers for the week that ended Saturday, April 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. "The Perfect ...Read more

At 8:24 p.m. on Nov. 2, 2020, Caroline Darian was a happily married 42-year-old working mother, close to her parents and two brothers, David and Florian, content with a life so ordinary that she would later characterize it as “banal.”

Then, one minute later, she became someone very different. The phone rang and her life was split in two.

...Read more

For almost four decades now, Jonathan Coe has employed wit, insight and scalpel-sharp satire to deliver compulsive, incisive novels that chronicle British lives and explore facets of Britishness.

Coe’s 1994 breakthrough, “The Winshaw Legacy,” laid bare the rapacious appetites and other grotesque qualities of “the meanest, greediest, ...Read more

The subject of Ron de Beaulieu’s new book is a notorious bootlegger with a talent for misdirection.

After one of Isadore Blumenfeld’s arrests, authorities said he used seven aliases. The author’s research unearths a few more. But history doesn’t remember him as “Joe Miller” or “Dr. Ferguson.” Instead, writes de Beaulieu — a ...Read more

Dana Perino, co-host of the popular Fox News panel show "The Five," has never taken her success for granted.

Throughout her career that started with stints as a local TV reporter and a staff assistant in Congress, she's acknowledged the guidance she's received from people along the way, including former President George W. Bush, who asked her ...Read more

While on vacation a few years ago, I enjoyed listening to the audiobook of “The Maid,” first in the Molly the Maid series. The book sold more than a million copies worldwide, earned a couple of mystery awards and led to a movie slated for release next year, starring Florence Pugh as the protagonist, so I’m not alone. But reading the latest...Read more

Graphic novel “The Flip Side” grew out of Jason Walz’s grief and he hopes it will help other grieving people deal.

What was he sad about? A lot.

“I had a friend, a best friend, whose name was Kris [Erickson]. He and I made tons of movies together. We wrote scripts, worked on comics, tons of stuff. Mostly it was garbage but we had a ...Read more

Here are the bestsellers for the week that ended Saturday, April 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. "Say You’ll...Read more

There’s a pocket of the literary world where the name “Lidia Yuknavitch” is spoken in reverent tones, as if invoking a sort of high priestess. You might think I exaggerate; I don’t.

It all started in March 2011 with the publication of her first book, a memoir titled “The Chronology of Water.” Among lovers of the memoir genre, poetry...Read more

To enter a Katie Kitamura book is to get lost in an ice palace. We marvel at its crystalline mazes, chills tingling our spines, wisps of breath twirling from the page. Nobody writes like her, those lissome lines and abundance of commas. She’s one of the few who can pull off tell-don’t-show.

“Audition,” her new mousetrap of a novel, ...Read more

Jon Hickey is enrolled in the Lac du Flambeau Band of the Anishinaabe Indians and follows tribal politics fairly closely. And yet he has this question: How authentic of an Indian is he?

“That debate is a sort of sport among Indians, I find,” said Hickey, 44, whose novel “Big Chief” is out now. “I think a lot of people who are enrolled...Read more