Latest Books and literature News
Book Review: Paula Spencer is back amid the pandemic lockdown in Roddy Doyle’s brilliant new novel
Paula Spencer is back for an encore performance in Roddy Doyle’s latest miracle of a novel, “The Women Behind the Door.” In this installment, the 66-year-old mother, grandmother, recovering alcoholic and domestic violence survivor, has weathered the first year of the Covid lockdown in...
Book Review: ‘Category Five’ examines superstorms amid compelling personal memoir
I graduated from Middlebury College with Porter Fox just over 30 years ago. We weren’t friends, but it was a small campus and everyone knew something about everybody else. I knew he sailed and wore L.L. Bean like a native Mainer. I didn’t know that he’d spend a good chunk of his career as a...
Jessica Hagedorn, R.F. Kuang among winners of American Book Awards, which celebrate multiculturalism
NEW YORK (AP) — Author-playwright Jessica Hagedorn, “Yellowface” novelist R.F. Kuang and poet Monica Youn are among this year's recipients of the 45th annual American Book Awards, which honor “outstanding literary achievement from the entire spectrum" of the country's artistic and cultural...
Book Review: Elizabeth Strout brings all her favorite Mainers together in 'Tell Me Everything'
Full disclosure: Other than a few clips of Frances McDormand as the titular Olive Kitteridge in the 2014 HBO show, “Tell Me Everything” was this reviewer’s first trip to Crosby, Maine. It’s unlikely to be my last. “Tell Me Everything” reads like the stories that Lucy...
Book Review: Ragnar Jonasson channels Agatha Christie in his latest puzzle mystery
Law professor and investment banker Ragnar Jonasson loves Agatha Christie’s puzzle mysteries so much that, starting at the age of 17, he translated more than a dozen of them into his native Icelandic. It should come as no surprise, then, that most of his own mysteries, 13 in all,...
Book Review: Hiroshima bomb saga revisited with witness accounts
An atomic bombing is so horrific all accounts tend to be quintessential. M.G. Sheftall’s “Hiroshima: The Last Witnesses,” a carefully and respectfully researched oral history, is no different. Although the individuals who recount their tales vary, from engineers to schoolgirls,...
'Demon Copperhead' author Barbara Kingsolver to receive National Book Award for lifetime achievement
NEW YORK (AP) — Barbara Kingsolver, this year's recipient of a National Book Award medal for literary achievement, remembers well the years she couldn't imagine receiving such honors. “I just felt this continuous skepticism, not from readers but from critics and the gatekeepers....
Fictional sleuth Sam Spade will be back on the job in upcoming novel by Max Allan Collins
NEW YORK (AP) — The story of one of the great fictional sleuths, Dashiell Hammett 's Sam Spade, will be continued by prize-winning crime writer Max Allan Collins. The publisher Hard Case Crime announced Thursday that Collins' “The Return of the Maltese Falcon” will be released...
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HARDCOVER FICTION 1. “The Women” by Kristin Hannah (St. Martin’s) 2. “By Any Other Name” by Jodi Picoult (Ballantine) 3. “The Book of Bill” by Alex Hirsch (Hyperion Avenue) 4. “Iron Flame” by Rebecca Yarros (Red Tower) ...
Salman Rushdie's memoir of his attack is among 12 books up for a top nonfiction prize
LONDON (AP) — Salman Rushdie’s account of a stabbing attack that blinded him in one eye is among contenders announced Thursday for a prestigious nonfiction book prize. Rushdie’s memoir “ Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder ” is among 12 books on the long list for...
