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

Yoko Ogawa’s novel “Mina’s Matchbox,” in a magnificent translation by Stephen B. Snyder, demonstrates the abiding comfort of fiction that envisions childhood as a time of discovery — without the elevated stakes of being a grown-up.

Originally published serially in Japan in 2005, the story sees 12-year-old Tomoko spend a year with her ...Read more

Here are the bestsellers for the week that ended Saturday, Aug. 17, 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 Book of ...Read more

“Group Living and Other Recipes,” Lola Milholland’s unusual memoir-with-recipes is a delight to read, her descriptions full of flavor and spice, more umami than bitter, a little salty and never too sweet.

The author states in her prologue that she originally set out to write a commune cookbook, but the book that resulted, “Group Living,...Read more

By the time she was a 13-year-old in 1973, Tanya Smith had procured a plane ticket, flown to Michael Jackson’s childhood home and begged to meet him. By the time she was 20, she accrued millions by breaking into banks’ computer systems. By 30, she was spending what would be more than 13 years in prison for wire fraud, bank fraud, conspiracy ...Read more

Peter Heller’s string of gripping adventures gets darker and a bit more political in his latest, “Burn.”

Fans of Leif Enger’s“I Cheerfully Refuse,” released last spring, will recognize the territory.

Unspecified events, springing from the political divide in the U.S., have the country breaking down, on the edge of apocalypse. A ...Read more

There are two kinds of Aaron Rodgers fans: those who can’t stand him anymore and those who will soon realize they can’t stand him anymore.

Writing as a Racine, Wisconsin, native and frequent attendee at Lambeau Field during the Rodgers years, I can tell you it is no surprise to read the petulant former Green Bay Packers quarterback ...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — You’ve undoubtedly cleared things you’ve outgrown out of a closet. You’ve closed the door for the last time on a great house that’s no longer a great house for you. But what happens when a book club member no longer seems like the right fit?

It’s bound to happen.

More than 5 million Americans belong to book clubs — ...Read more

In 1954, James “Cornbread” Harris Jr. joined the Augie Garcia Quintet, which performed almost every night at the River Road Club in Mendota. A year later, the band released a 45, featuring “Hi Ho Silver,” their biggest hit, and “Going to Chicago” on the B-side. The disc is viewed as Minnesota’s first rock ‘n’ roll record.

In �...Read more

Halfway through “Highway Thirteen,” her ingenious, scalp-tingling collection of linked stories, Fiona McFarlane serves up “Democracy Sausage,” composed of an eight-page sentence, narrated by Chris Biga, an Australian politician standing for election in 1998.

Just days before, another Biga, named Paul, was arrested for a series of ...Read more

Here are the bestsellers for the week that ended Saturday, Aug. 10, 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 Book of ...Read more

I’ve heard of people serving wine at book clubs but “The Cheesemaker’s Daughter” could be the first novel that inspires cheese pairings.

Written by Kristin Vukovic, who grew up in St. Paul, Minnesota, “Daughter”'s title character is Marina, who lives in Manhattan but heads to her native Croatia when her marriage crumbles.

In her ...Read more

Books like “Beautiful Ruins” or “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” make you long to explore Cinque Terre, Italy or Savannah, Georgia. but “The Devil Behind the Badge” might have the opposite impact on tourism: It could make you never want to go anywhere near the Texas/Mexico border.

Like “Midnight,” “Devil” is a work ...Read more

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Kirsten Mickelwait had to wait until her ex-husband was dead to feel comfortable writing “The Ghost Marriage,” her memoir about surviving their catastrophic, 22-year marriage.

Writing a memoir can be grueling enough, as an author excavates painful memories and exposes secrets, character flaws or regrettable choices. It�...Read more

Five years ago, as Peter Houlahan finished work on his debut true-crime book, a fellow writer sent him an old newspaper article and with it a note asking if he knew the story of a man named Sagon Penn, the San Diego Police Department and the criminal trial that captivated that city in the mid-’80s.

Houlahan, author of “Norco ’80,” did ...Read more

The least interesting thing about Minnesota author Ellie Palmer’s romance novel “Four Weekends and a Funeral” may be the romance.

That’s not to say it’s uninteresting, but it does tick a lot of tropes: the heroine’s love of Hallmark Christmas movies; the standoffish love interest who doesn’t just smile but “smirks” or allows ...Read more

From Suzanne Simard to Ed Yong, science journalists and researchers have probed the myriad ways plants and animals communicate: chemical signals amid old-growth redwoods, interplay between insects and their gut bacteria. But intra-species speech remains a discipline still unsure of itself. Are dolphin whistles a form of verbal exchange? Do hyrax...Read more