If you’re confronting an endless string of unread emails after a long weekend or summer vacation, try thinking of responding as a game. A status game.

Since reading the 2012 book "Games Primates Play," by University of Chicago behavioral scientist Dario Maestripieri, I’ve never looked at my inbox the same way. Email, writes Maestripieri, is...Read more

Here are the bestsellers for the week that ended Saturday, Aug. 31, 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 Women: A ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — Franklin Leonard's the Black List, a platform that highlights the best unproduced scripts for film, television and theater, is expanding into the world of fiction.

Established in 2005 as an annual list of the most-liked screenplays that hadn't found homes, the Black List has since expanded from its humble beginnings into a ...Read more

Reading a novel sometimes gives us a sense of not only the characters’ emotions but the author’s.

There are novels that feel like they were written in anger, others that grow out of grief or passion. And sometimes it feels like the author is just fulfilling a contract.

Kate Atkinson’s “Death at the Sign of the Rook” feels like joy.

...Read more

In August, late-night talk show host and podcaster Seth Meyers talked to me about the Emmys, “Saturday Night Live” and other topics. Meyers, who is the author of the children’s book, “I’m Not Scared, You’re Scared,” is known to be a reader. He’s not only interviewed authors such as George Saunders, Nicola Yoon and Colson ...Read more

“The Other Black Girl,” “Midsommar,” “Lovecraft Country” and Jordan Peele are all trotted out on the back cover of “We Came to Welcome You” as inducements to read Vincent Tirado’s new book, subtitled “A Novel of Suburban Horror.”

As enticing as those comparisons are (and perhaps erroneous — I mean, “Midsommar”?), I ...Read more

The plan was to read a few pages, maybe the first chapter, and then put “The House Hunt” down and read an earlier book by its author, British crime and mystery writer C.M. Ewan (also know as Chris Ewan, creator of the “Good Thief” series).

Turns out Ewan’s latest thriller didn’t want to be put down.

If I’d been wearing something ...Read more

After a five-year absence, Jackson Brodie returns in “Death at the Sign of the Rook.” Readers of the mega-selling mystery series will be thrilled, but is Kate Atkinson?

The writer, who has expressed ambivalence about returning to the character and who also had huge success with non-Brodie books including“Life After Life” and“Shrines ...Read more

While working as a flight attendant, T.J. Newman got the idea for her first thriller after asking pilots to describe the scary thoughts that kept them awake at night.

Her first book, "Falling," which famously was partially written on cocktail napkins while working long-haul flights, is the story of a pilot faced with an impossible choice from ...Read more

BALTIMORE -- When Richard Chizmar was 10 years old, he wrote a story about a snowman who couldn’t melt. The thermometer climbed, and the sun blazed, but the snowman remained standing, watching his once hard-packed buddies dissolve into slush.

“He was so lonely,” Chizmar recalled and grinned. “I always saw the world differently than the ...Read more

For many, this is back to school time and it reminds me of a story a friend told about the long-ago day he moved into his dorm room at an Illinois university.

It took him a while to put clothes in drawers and books on shelves and finally, his roommate arrived. The two had never met but shook hands and made some small talk until the roommate ...Read more

Here are the bestsellers for the week that ended Saturday, Aug. 24, 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. "By Any Other ...Read more

During the last 150 years, Americans have built thousands of structures designed to allow large numbers of people to watch amateur and professional athletes, entertainers, circuses and rodeos. These places also have served as public squares, showcasing politicians and protesters.

In “The Stadium,” Frank Andre Guridy, a professor of history ...Read more

Summer is a slow time in the publishing business. With fewer big, buzzy books coming out and reviewers in the doldrums, come July you’re likely to see exercises like the New York Times’ recent “The 100 Best Books of the 21st Century.”

Catnip for book lovers, it’s a list the Times created after they “sent a survey to hundreds of ...Read more

On first glance it might seem that Minnesota authors William Kent Krueger and Mindy Mejia’s latest novels have little in common.

Krueger’s “Spirit Crossing” is a stellar example of eco-literature, where place transcends plot to explore social and environmental themes. On the other hand, Mejia’s “A World of Hurt” is muscular ...Read more

Summer is the season for blockbuster movies, but autumn is when the publishing world unleashes one title after another from some of the biggest, and biggest selling, authors.

We’ll see new books from “The Overstory” writer Richard Powers and “Leave the World Behind” novelist Rumaan Alam, for instance. Here are five others we can’t ...Read more

August is a lot of things: it’s uncomfortably hot, it’s National Panini Month and it’s somehow already time for your kids to go back to school.

But August is also Women in Translation Month, a yearly celebration of books by women written in languages other than English. And any celebration that involves the reading of books is one I ...Read more

LOS ANGELES -- Albert M. Camarillo is as old school Compton as they come.

His father migrated from the Mexican state of Michoacán as a teenager in 1914, when the Hub City was mostly farmland.

Camarillo remembers when the first Black families moved into once-segregated neighborhoods in the 1950s. He served as student body president at ...Read more