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In search of Harriet the Spy’s creator in ‘Sometimes You Have to Lie’

In this engrossing and carefully researched biography of Louise Fitzhugh, Leslie Brody vibrantly tells the story of the complicated, brief, and ultimately triumphant life of the author of “Harriet the Spy.”

What to buy for the readers on your shopping list

Books are always the perfect gift but perhaps especially this year, as we make our way forward in a winter more solitary than most.

Horsing around in the City of Lights in ‘Perestroika in Paris’

In her new novel, Jane Smiley's main characters are animals, whose thoughts and feelings are described with matter-of-factness that gives the book a fable-like quality.

An unfiltered perspective into the grueling work of one essential front-line worker in ‘Rest and Be Thankful’

Author — and a nurse herself — Emma Glass strives to tap into the psychic underbelly of trauma.

Revisiting a breakthrough novel on the Asian-American high-school experience
Marie Myung-Ok Lee drew from her Minnesota childhood for 1992's "Finding My Voice."

BOOKS
New work by Anaïs Duplan, Loren Ghiglione, and the late Peter D. Vickery
Literary news from around the region including new books coming out and our bookseller's pick of the week.

Latest Headlines in Books

Virtual author readings Nov. 30 - Dec. 3

All events take place online; visit the venue website for more information.

Local bestsellers for the week ending November 22

Based on reporting from the independent booksellers of the New England Independent Booksellers Association and IndieBound.

BOOKS

A stubborn optimist

As the country endures a record wave of infection and death in the ongoing pandemic, while the aspiring autocrat of an incumbent refuses to concede the Presidency, and with the promise of a polity further divided in anger and resentment, it seems like the perfect time to remember why we miss President Barack Obama.

BOOKS

A mother’s choice in Christa Parravani’s ‘Loved and Wanted’

This is a story Christa Parravani never thought she’d tell. By forty, she’d lived through her twin sister’s death, a failed marriage, and psychiatric hospitalization, all movingly detailed in her 2013 memoir, “Her.” Now that she was remarried with two small daughters and a job she loved teaching writing at West Virginia University, she hoped to find emotional and financial stability. Then she found out she was accidentally pregnant.

BOOKS

Fiction set in a near-waterless future in Cynan Jones’s ‘Stillicide’

Sometimes real-world problems are best explained through fiction. BBC Radio Four must have had this in mind when they gave Cynan Jones the green light to write these tense, stark, and beautifully paced connecting stories.

Reading for humor, company during insomnia

Jerald Walker spent years trying to publish his short stories, to no avail. When his wife suggested he write essays, he wrote one. Now his essay collection, “How to Make a Slave and Other Essays,” was named a finalist for this year’s National Book Award in nonfiction.

A debut novel set in Maine, an electrifying catalog of the MFA’s postponed Cy Twombly show, and a book of animal rhymes

Literary news from around the region.

Northeastern philosophy professor calls for ‘moral leadership’ on the refugee crisis

Serena Parekh filters the issue through "a broad consensus about human rights."