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Local histories, rewritten

The guide to Massachusetts produced by the New Deal’s Federal Writers Project is full of forgotten facts. Now Scott Borchert has written a guide of his own. “Republic of Detours: How the New Deal Paid Broke Writers to Rediscover America” is as inviting, compelling, comprehensive, and endearingly quirky as the volumes it celebrates and explains.

Poet Michael Robbins on reading while walking

Robbins suddenly became a name in the literary world in 2009 when The New Yorker’s then poetry editor Paul Muldoon plucked his “Alien vs. Predator” from the magazine’s voluminous slush pile and published it. Since then Robbins has written three collections, including the just published “Walkman,” the title poem of which was chosen for Best American Poetry in 2018.

Writerly delusions in ‘Dream Girl’

Positively humming with the vibrancy of a slew of crime-fiction authors during a high-energy drinking session, Laura Lippman’s novel shimmers with suspense, surprises, wry humor, and an ever-present stream of appreciations for the pleasures, frustrations, and oddities inherent in the life of a writer.

A family saga with Alzheimer’s at its center in ‘Morningside Heights’

Joshua Henkin is an emotionally generous, deft, witty, and deeply intelligent writer, and his new novel displays these qualities in spades. The story begins in the 1970s, when Pru Steiner leaves the Midwest to attend Yale and then Columbia’s English Literature Ph.D. program.

NEW ENGLAND LITERARY NEWS
Arrowsmith Press has published a collection of the work of 90-year-old Venezuelan poet Rafael Cadenas.
A new book on raising boys, a poetry project in Boston via Venezuela, and a hybrid memoir of immigration
Literary news of note from around the region.

STORY BEHIND THE BOOK
Quinta Brunson on going with the flow
Quinta Brunson was born around the same time as one of her favorite things: the Internet. And like the Internet, she has kept evolving. Brunson has now added a new chapter with the publication of “She Memes Well,” a book of comedic essays drawn from her own life.

Latest Headlines in Books

BOOKS

Local bestsellers for the week ending June 13

Based on reporting from the independent booksellers of the New England Independent Booksellers Association and IndieBound. For an independent bookstore near you, visit IndieBound.org.

BOOKINGS

Virtual author readings for June 20-26

All author appearances are virtual unless otherwise noted.

Here’s your official summer reading list

These are the 70 best books of the season to pop into your travel bag.

STORY BEHIND THE BOOK
Aaron Lecklider

Aaron Lecklider on the queer activists who came before

"Love's Next Meeting" tells the stories of those who sought both sexual freedom and political revolution.

NEW ENGLAND LITERARY NEWS
Dariel Suarez's new novel takes place in current-day Havana.

A novel set in Havana, a new set of poets laureate for Massachusetts, and the return of the Nantucket Literary Festival — with a virtual Juneteenth panel

Literary news of note from around the region.

BOOKS

Local bestsellers for the week ending June 6

Based on reporting from the independent booksellers of the New England Independent Booksellers Association and IndieBound. For an independent bookstore near you, visit IndieBound.org.

BOOKINGS

Virtual author readings for June 13-19

All author appearances are virtual unless otherwise noted.

BOOK REVIEW
Illustration for review of Lawrence Wright's "THE PLAGUE YEAR," an up-to-the-moment history of the pandemic. BOOKS; 6-6-21

How the pandemic knocked us out

Here we are — blurred-eyed, exhausted, Zoom-ed out and all-too-often even clueless what month it is, let alone day of the week. And yet the narrative now is that we are turning a corner, with officials in America optimistically pushing out the concept that we’re largely moving past COVID-19. In “The Plague Year: America in the Time of Covid,” Lawrence Wright looks at how our institutions failed us, and at a future that may may always include the disease.