My big takeaway from “Heartbreak Is the National Anthem” was: Is it even possible for the most famous person in the world to get famouser?

Rock critic Rob Sheffield’s essays about Taylor Swift’s music mostly argue how thoroughly, and deservedly, the singer (who turns 35 this month) has conquered pop music over the course of the past 16 ...Read more

WASHINGTON -- The Yuletide used to be a lot scarier. In some Germanic regions, while Saint Nicholas delivered gifts for nice boys and girls, the demonic Krampus whipped the naughty. It was a time to recall spooky tales; that’s why Andy Williams croons about “scary ghost stories” in “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year.”

Of ...Read more

Edwin Frank, the editorial director of the iconic New York Review Books and founder of its NYRB Classics series, is the author of a new book, “Stranger Than Fiction: Lives of the Twentieth-Century Novel.”

Here, Frank answers questions for the Book Pages Q&A.

Q. Please tell readers about your new book, “Stranger Than Fiction.”

My ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — My home office looks like a Jenga game of nonfiction books I read about Southern California Latino life this past year — and almost none were duds.

They ranged from a history of gangs in East L.A. to a gorgeous coffee table tome about the cult classic "Blood In Blood Out" to a delightful children's tale on the late Los Angeles...Read more

It takes only a few pages for red flags to mount in Christopher Bollen’s latest thriller, “Havoc.”

When we meet Maggie Burkhardt, the pandemic is raging and, for the previous three months, the 81-year-old has lived at the Royal Karnak Palace Hotel in Luxor, Egypt.

The Wisconsinite has been traveling ever since her husband died six years ...Read more

This fall’s book-to-movie adaptations cover a wide spectrum, from rarities that are just as good as, maybe even better than, the books that inspired them (”The Wild Robot,” “Conclave”) to let’s-pretend-that-movie-never-happened (”Here”).

Although “Here” — which reunites writer/director Robert Zemeckis with “Forrest Gump�...Read more

While real-world catastrophes have arrived with distressing regularity this century, fictional stories set after the seemingly inevitable apocalypse have grown more popular than ever.

There’s surely an element of privilege to this trend, but you can’t fault anyone seeking a bit of escape in post-apocalyptic TV shows, video games or novels. ...Read more

When Emergence magazine asked “Braiding Sweetgrass” author Robin Wall Kimmererto write a story about economics, she was not an obvious choice.

“I think I said, ‘I don’t know anything about economics. I’m a botanist,” said Kimmerer. “But, in conversation, I realized I know a great deal about the economies of nature. And to think ...Read more

In the afterword to his latest novel, “The City and Its Uncertain Walls,” Haruki Murakami writes that authors spend their careers rearranging a “limited pallet of motifs” to tell a “limited number of stories.”

It’s a provocative claim for a prolific author, but particularly apt for this new work that revisits — and improves upon...Read more

PHILADELPHIA — Nikki Giovanni, the legendary poet and leader of the Black Arts Movement, died at 81 on Monday, Dec. 9, in Blacksburg, Virginia, after receiving a third diagnosis of cancer, according to news reports. Her longtime partner, Virginia Fowler, was by her side.

The revolutionary writer who penned verses about Black life, feminism, ...Read more

Here are the bestsellers for the week that ended Saturday, Nov. 30, compiled from data from independent and chain bookstores, book wholesalers and independent distributors nationwide, powered by Circana BookScan © 2024 Circana.

(Reprinted from Publishers Weekly, published by PWxyz LLC. © 2024, PWxyz LLC.)

HARDCOVER FICTION

1. "The House of ...Read more

Hey, writer-director-producer Ryan Murphy, if you’re looking for subjects for future installments of TV’s “Feud” franchise, look no further: The clash between turn-of-the-last-century birth control activists Margaret Sanger and Mary Ware Dennett may be just the ticket.

Not interesting enough, you say? Au contraire, Ryan Murphy. ...Read more

A gay writer in Manhattan wakes up after a steamy night spent with a “gorgeous stranger” to find his hunky trick next to him in bed, dead as a doornail.

Hijinks ensue.

If this setup sounds like your cup of skinny no-foam latté, dive in to Daniel Aleman’s “I Might Be in Trouble.” You’ll find outlandish situations, a few twisty ...Read more

James

By Percival Everett

It was a big year for the writer whose publisher used to be Minnesota-based Graywolf Press. “Erasure,” which Graywolf released before Everett’s move to Doubleday, was adapted for the movie “American Fiction,” winning an Oscar for screenwriter Cord Jefferson. And then came “James,” a spin on “...Read more

When I think back on what I read his year, on what stuck, and stuck, refusing to unstick, the common denominator was my surprise at my own surprise. A fresh take! A subject I’d assumed I knew! An antidote to heard-it-all-before-ism, that cynicism we develop from having access to every story ever told, every opinion ever voiced and every song ...Read more

Percival Everett has won the National Book Award for fiction for his novel “James,” a reimagining of Mark Twain’s “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” from the point of view of the enslaved character Jim.

With Everett, the evening’s winners included Jason De León, who won the nonfiction prize for his book, “Soldiers and Kings: ...Read more

Hesse Phillips is the author of the debut novel, “Lightborne,” about the final days of Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe.

Raised in Pennsylvania and now living in Spain, they have an undergraduate degree in theater history from Marlboro and a Ph.D. in drama from Tufts. Here, Phillips takes the Q&A and shares the origins of their ...Read more