A black-and-white photograph of a young girl. Her hair has been roughly shaved. She has a bruise under her lower lip. She is wearing a striped concentration camp uniform. On the shirt, her number is discernible: 26947. Photographer Wilhelm Brasse’s camera doesn’t lie: His subject stares straight ahead, not with indifference or defiance but ...Read more

LAS VEGAS — Light reading takes a vacation this holiday season with “The Vegas Book.”

Written by historian, frequent Las Vegas visitor and accomplished poker player Joris Dekkers, this chronicle of several of Las Vegas’ founding legends weighs in at 18 pounds. Its 450 pages are dedicated to nearly 30 extensive interviews of Las Vegas ...Read more

In “Didion & Babitz,” author Lili Anolik opens with some advice: “Reader, Don’t be a baby.”

It’s an apt warning for readers who might consider themselves Joan Didion and/or Eve Babitz aficionados. While their most ardent fans — Sixties counterculture devotees and literary It-girl wannabes (of which I am both) — know the lore, ...Read more

Sonja Trom Eayrs, a Twin Cities attorney, grew up on a farm outside Blooming Prairie, Minnesota. A decade ago, Eayrs started waging a litigation campaign in Dodge County to compel local governments to enforce the rules against the growth of massive hog operations.

While small victories in court were ultimately swallowed on appeal, Eayrs has now...Read more

The problem with Richard Schoch’s “How Sondheim Can Change Your Life” is its title. Other than that, it is a valuable addition to the library of any fan of musical theater and certainly every Stephen Sondheim fanatic.

The book’s premise is that “a prolonged encounter with [his work] will reveal predicaments — and the paths out of ...Read more

Why are the holidays such a popular time to bump someone off?

Fictionally speaking, December may be the most murder-y time of the year. Eventually, most popular mystery writers — from classic practitioners such as Agatha Christie (”Hercule Poirot’s Christmas”) to contemporary writers such as Peter Swanson (”The Christmas Guest”) —...Read more

Here are the bestsellers for the week that ended Saturday, Dec. 14, 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. "James: A ...Read more

When his daughter and son-in-law visited Ken Rohlf on his birthday in September 2023 to tell him they were expecting a child, two words came to mind for the soon-to-be-grandfather: “joyful” and “tough.”

The first adjective is obvious, and proved to be true when Oliver was born this summer. The other, though, is because Rohlf knew ...Read more

When I was a teenager in Tennessee during the 1980s, Christmas officially launched the day after Thanksgiving: holly wreaths hung on front doors, shoppers thronging local malls. My father busied himself in the kitchen, assembling tins of Chex mix and pecan-freckled cheeseballs, gifts for friends in our Baptist congregation. On Christmas Eve, we ...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS -- Look, we get it. Ann Patchett is reliably great. Her books are always best sellers. We know she’s busy running a book store and campaigning against censorship and also that finished novels don’t just appear out of thin air. We’re not asking for her to be as prolific as, say, Mr. Nine-Books-a-Year James Patterson. But it sure...Read more

Ella Baxter’s novel “Woo Woo” wasn’t supposed to be published.

It wasn’t even meant to be a novel, Baxter says. She’d sat down to feverishly pen a letter to the stalker who’d been driving her mad for a year and a half. Twenty-thousand words later, the catharsis was too potent, the energy that kept the words flowing was too ...Read more

Daniel Aleman and the protagonist of his new novel share the same profession, the same initials, and the same plot points in their third novel. But there’s one key difference, Aleman insists.

“I promise you, I have not woken up next to a dead body.”

The protagonist in “I Might Be In Trouble,” David, wrote a debut book that was a ...Read more

Here are the bestsellers for the week that ended Saturday, Dec. 7, 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. "Wind and Truth...Read more

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