Books

I’ll never forget the moment in Colson Whitehead’s novel “The Underground Railroad” when subterranean train tracks first appear stretching off into a dark tunnel. That 19th-century metaphor pounded into iron in the forge of Colson’s mind powers one of the best novels of the 21st century.

Small publishing houses have known for years there’s an audience for young people’s books by and about Indigenous people. The Minnesota Historical Society, for example, published “How the Birds Got Their Songs” recently. But, if this spring is any indication, larger publishers are reaching out to that market, too.

Fourteen years ago, Stephanie Regalado stood in front of a packed city hall chamber to receive an award for the contributions of her nonprofit in the community.

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For all the ballyhoo about the total solar eclipse this past April, the event didn’t stir up much in the way of conspiracy thinking. The same cannot be said of the comet that flies across Ruby Todd’s debut novel, “Bright Objects.” Todd’s comet, named St. John, is a fictionalized version of Comet Hale-Bopp, which visited our solar system in 1997 and played a role in the mass suicide of the Heaven’s Gate cult members outside San Diego. “Bright Objects” takes place on the other side of the world, in a mining outpost turned exurb north of Todd’s current home in Melbourne, Australia.

My favorite saying about my fellow Jews emphasizes not our tenacity or our piety but something much more important: our passion for disagreement. “Two Jews, three opinions,” a rabbi once told me during one of my periodic bouts of religiosity. The rabbi’s maxim often wafted into my mind in a slightly revised form while I was in graduate school, pursuing a PhD in the most querulous discipline in the academy. “Two philosophers, 10 opinions,” I thought when I witnessed my peers exchanging spirited arguments in seminars, or when my adviser returned my papers with a Talmudic barrage of comments in the margins. I was flattered by his strenuous opposition, of course. To a philosopher, as to a Jew, there is no insult as grave as placating assent, no tribute as great as a detailed rebuttal.

Here are the bestsellers for the week that ended Saturday, June 22, 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. "Red Sky Mourning: A Thriller" by Jack Carr (Atria) Last week: — 2. ...

NEW YORK – It was a banner day in the history of American libraries – and in Black history. On May 25, 1926, the New York Public Library announced that it had acquired celebrated Afro-Latino bibliophile Arturo Schomburg’s collection of more than 4,000 books, manuscripts and other artifacts.

Here are the bestsellers for the week that ended Saturday, June 15, 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. "Swan Song" by Elin Hilderbrand (Little, Brown) Last week: — 2. ...

Women have never had to look far for condescending advice about why they should embrace the joys of child-rearing, but lately the guidance has sounded unusually suspect.

It was during the COVID pandemic. George Floyd had just been murdered. Bestselling author Nicola Yoon was hurting. So she wrote.

From the opening sentences of her new collection, “I Just Keep Talking: A Life in Essays,” historian Nell Irvin Painter addresses readers in a voice brimming with knowledge, clarity and, most delightfully, confidence. As she writes, it would have been a terrible thing had she died young, “during the full-blown era of White-male-default segregation, discrimination, and disappearance that wound down only yesterday. I would have disappeared from memory, just another forgotten Black woman scholar, invisible to history and to histography.” And poor readers would have been deprived of her droll wit and self-assured wisdom.

If you haven’t bought a gift for Dad yet, Adriano Ferraro has you covered.

Crime fiction thrives all year, but summer is an ideal time to plunge into the genre when you’re not in the pool. (Or maybe even when you are.) Here are some of the thrillers we’re most looking forward to this season.

In a letter to T.W. Higginson, poet Emily Dickinson wrote “If I read a book (and) it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.”

Author Craig Johnson has made the journey to the Lilac City from his Wyoming ranch before.

These novels are from various genres, time periods and viewpoints, but they all share compelling characters, intriguing narratives and enough surprises to engage readers.

At his current pace, Craig Johnson is five years away from publishing as many novels in his Walt Longmire mystery series as the population of the Wyoming town where he lives.

By A Martinez