Growing up in Studio City, Daphne Woolsoncroft wanted to be one of two things: a detective or an author.

And you could argue she’s done both: As co-host of the true crime podcast “Going West,” which just celebrated its 500-episode milestone in May, she’s been doing plenty of detective work, albeit in more of an armchair-style capacity. ...Read more

1. Someone helped put murderers behind bars, solved the mystery of why jets kept crashing and contributed mightily to the rebound of the nearly-extinct whooping crane. But you probably haven’t heard of this person. One guess why.

2. Yup, she’s a woman.

3. Roxie Laybourne is the fascinating subject of magazine journalist Chris Sweeney’s �...Read more

You think books have covered everything there is to write about World War II skullduggery, and then you stumble upon the book about how spies used Monopoly to pull the wool over Nazis’ eyes.

The endlessly popular and sometimes just plain endless game figured into the war in several ways, according to “Monopoly X,” by game designer and ...Read more

In light of recent tensions between India and Pakistan, two newly reissued novels from the subcontinent chillingly resonate, decades after their original publication.

Taking distinct narrative approaches, “Tamas” (1973) by Bhisham Sahni and “The Women’s Courtyard” (1962) by Khadija Mastur revisit the messy emergence of the two ...Read more

A family of five happily embarks on a trip to a sporting event as “Culpability” opens. The vibe of fun and innocence lasts for precisely four pages.

That’s when their self-driving automobile, with teenager Charlie Cassidy-Shaw in the pilot seat, smashes into a car, killing its two elderly occupants and injuring all of the Cassidy-Shaws. ...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS -- I cut myself shaving right before I met Mary E. Roach. No big deal, but it’s worth mentioning because it’s so on-brand: I lost track of the number of times a character in her “We Are the Match” holds a knife to another character’s throat.

It’s a violent book. In the recent past, Paris is bent on avenging a tragedy she...Read more

Here are the bestsellers for the week that ended Saturday, July 26, compiled from data from independent and chain bookstores, book wholesalers and independent distributors nationwide, powered by Circana BookScan © 2025 Circana.

(Reprinted from Publishers Weekly, published by PWxyz LLC. © 2025, PWxyz LLC.)

HARDCOVER FICTION

1. "Not Quite ...Read more

You’ve heard of folks who are so close that they finish each other’s sentences? Meet the Duluth, Minnesota, writers who even speak collaboratively.

“We realized pretty quickly my strengths are in code and plot — ” began Andy Bennett, on a phone call last month.

“— and I’m definitely more character-driven. I was always looking ...Read more

An old literary friend — Sherlock Holmes — is back in August. Perhaps you’d like him to join you in an air-conditioned setting?

Holmes returns to solving cases in Nicholas Meyer’s “Sherlock Holmes and the Real Thing,” the latest in his series of supposedly newly discovered adventures of the great detective. But if you’re looking ...Read more

You might call Ivy Pochoda the bard of bad women, an auteur of feminine fierceness.

For proof, look no further than the bestselling, LA Times Book Prize-winning “Sing Her Down,” her stunning 2023 noir thriller about two women prisoners. After you read it, you might never see a fork again without thinking of a bloody weapon.

Pochoda has ...Read more

Reading Nigerian writer Eloghosa Osunde’s sophomore novel, “Necessary Fiction,” is an immersive experience.

Inventively bold and affecting, its obsessions go deep but are crystal clear. What does it mean, Osunde asks again and again, to love and be loved, especially as a queer person living in Lagos, Nigeria — where homosexuality is ...Read more

Katie Yee accomplishes something quite impressive with her debut novel, “Maggie; or, A Man and a Woman Walk Into a Bar.” And I’m not talking about the fact that she convinced her publisher to go with an 11-word title that includes a semicolon and a comma. (Though I’m not not talking about that.)

No, I’m referring to this first time ...Read more

“The Gilded Age,” HBO’s popular series, just premiered its third season, dramatizing antagonisms between old-money Manhattan gentry and the nouveau riche who strive to join their velvet-draped parlors during an epoch of immense wealth, rife with robber barons and Fifth Avenue doyennes.

In France, this period is known as “La Belle É...Read more

Here are the bestsellers for the week that ended Saturday, July 19, compiled from data from independent and chain bookstores, book wholesalers and independent distributors nationwide, powered by Circana BookScan © 2025 Circana.

(Reprinted from Publishers Weekly, published by PWxyz LLC. © 2025, PWxyz LLC.)

HARDCOVER FICTION

1. "An Inside Job...Read more

Tasha Coryell has thought a lot about psychopaths.

“They are walking around in regular life. They’re married, they have kids, they have prestigious careers,” said Coryell, whose debut novel, “Love Letters to a Serial Killer,” came out last year and whose latest is “Matchmaking for Psychopaths.” “Presidents. Surgeons. Pilots. ...Read more

Times like these demand great comic novels and thank God we have Gary Shteyngart to provide. His shortest, sweetest and most perfectly constructed novel ever, “Vera, or Faith” is here to save the day. Or at least the day that you read it.

Vera Bradford-Shmulkin is a 10-year-old girl, living in New York City with her family in the near ...Read more

Tim Weiner likens the Central Intelligence Agency to a fortified medieval city, where locked castles contain vast libraries. “If you had the keys,” he writes, “a billion secrets were at your fingertips.”

Nobody has unlocked more CIA secrets than Weiner, whose National Book Award winner, “Legacy of Ashes,” remains a vital text on the...Read more