MINNEAPOLIS -- Early word on Paula Hawkins’ latest, “The Blue Hour,” compares it to Agatha Christie. But when the “The Girl on the Train” novelist hears it likened to Daphne Du Maurier, instead, she immediately concurs.

“I certainly had those stories in my head,” said Hawkins of Du Maurier, whose novels include “The Birds,” �...Read more

Here are the bestsellers for the week that ended Saturday, Oct. 12, 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. "Counting ...Read more

CHESTERTOWN, Md. -- There’s hope that the era of American idiocy will end soon, and while a lot of that rides on the outcome of the presidential election, you can feel some real optimism from this trend: Bookstores have been making a comeback.

Amazon put a bunch of them out of business, of course, but while e-commerce exploded, new stores ...Read more

French economist Thomas Piketty has long argued that the richest figures and their heirs will only grow exponentially wealthier in the coming decades, concealing fortunes in offshore tax havens and influencing politicians to keep government tentacles away from their yachts, private jets and Mediterranean estates.

In her stellar work of literary...Read more

Andrew Davis, Chicago to his core, was telling me a couple of days ago, “I am a visualist, not a wordsmith,’’ but he was selling himself short.

Though he is rightly acclaimed for his “visual” accomplishments, which include directing a bunch of successful movies, especially “The Fugitive,” I was holding in my hands a book “...Read more

It's publication day for Kenny G when we speak via phone, and the jazz saxophonist is in a car on the way to a bookstore in New Jersey to celebrate the release of his memoir "Life in the Key of G."

In the book, the musician born Kenneth Gorelick writes often about how he practices his instrument at least three hours every day. So it's fair to ...Read more

Nicholas Sparks can’t always remember the way a book idea comes to him, but for the bestselling author’s newest novel, “Counting Miracles,” Sparks knows exactly how it happened.

“Not all my books are so clear,” Sparks says by phone in mid-September from his home in New Bern, North Carolina (which, unlike western North Carolina, ...Read more

One minute Tegan is cycling through a beautiful, sunlit forest, the next she is cartwheeling over her handlebars and tumbling down a steep slope.

She ends up in a ravine, her arm broken, and she lies there for a few days, slipping in and out of consciousness. Eventually, she is spotted by a stranger and taken to a strange facility, one that is ...Read more

Each month, a wealth of interesting new books hit the shelves.

Here are some standout novels, nonfiction, YA, children’s and more to put them on your reading radar.

Oct. 1

“I Will Do Better,” Charles Bock

Widowed novelist Bock writes in this memoir about raising his young daughter on his own after the death of his wife from leukemia....Read more

John Edgar Wideman, acclaimed author of more than 25 books, has written yet another full-hearted volume. It’s called “Slaveroad,” a genre-defying and clear-eyed meditation on the roiling effects of transatlantic slavery on past and present lives, including his own.

But why now in this century? How much more needs to be said about that ...Read more

Here are the bestsellers for the week that ended Saturday, Oct. 5, 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. "Counting ...Read more

Louise Erdrich’s 19th work of fiction — “The Mighty Red,” named for the river that shapes the North Dakota valley where the book is set — opens with a five-page scene titled “The Night Driver, 2008.”

While her husband and daughter are home sleeping, Crystal Poe works overnight at the sugar beet facility owned by the richest family...Read more

Painter Jacob Lawrence (1917-2000) chronicled the Black Migration out of the South in a series of 60 panels whose tempera colors and spiked diagonals depict fear and resolve. Aaron Robertson revisits that demographic surge in his elegant, vigorous debut, “The Black Utopians.”

Tackling the challenges of racial empowerment from the angle of ...Read more

If you like stories, I’d bet money you’ll enjoy Kate DiCamillo’s “The Hotel Balzaar.” It’s a book about storytelling.

As I was reading, I kept making mental notes about other stories it reminded me of: Many readers will join me in going to the classic “A Little Princess,” in which another girl longs for a father who is at war. ...Read more

Sea snails offer the first clue that something is going terribly wrong in the fictional town of Baywood, California. But not they’re your average sea snails — these attack whatever they cling to. Then, a mysterious infection creeps into the wildlife, leaving nothing safe — least of all the townspeople.

Nicholas Belardes of San Luis Obispo...Read more

“They asked me to describe the pain but the pain defied description, on a scale from one to ten it demanded a different scale.”

So begins “Small Rain,” the new novel by literary sensation Garth Greenwell. It begins with a nameless narrator having a medical emergency and ends up exploring no less than the nature of love itself and the ...Read more

“The Mighty Red,” the title of Louise Erdrich’s rambunctious new novel, definitely refers to North Dakota’s Red River, around which much of it is set, and probably refers to a large, red-headed character named Hugo.

A central event in “Mighty Red” is the marriage of a young woman named Kismet, but will she end up with brash Gary or...Read more

Here are the bestsellers for the week that ended Saturday, Sept. 28, 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. "Counting ...Read more