Bookstores and libraries will undergo big changes in November.

There are always new books hitting shelves, of course, but the first couple weeks of November are unusually jammed with big-name authors such as Patti Smith (the “Just Kids” writer has another memoir, “Bread of Angels”), Nate Berkus (the designer wrote “Foundations,” ...Read more

On a Friday evening in July 1925, about 30 people crowded into a basement on West 88th Street in Manhattan for a presentation by Mrs. Cecil Cook, a spirit medium.

A pan of water and two silver trumpets were placed on a table beside her. After collecting a $1 donation from each member of the audience and leading them in a hymn, Cook turned off ...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — Don’t even think about calling Ghostbusters.

Consumers have rarely been so eager to hang with supernatural spirits, as well as monsters, psychopaths, zombies and demons. Local experts think people turn to fake fears as an escape from mounting nightmares in real life.

“Horror is super hot right now,” said St. Paul-based ...Read more

How does one respond to grief? In Jade Chang’s sophomore novel, “What a Time to Be Alive,” the answer is, at least, creative: become an influencer and start paying off your student loans.

Lola Treasure Gold, Chang’s spirited protagonist, leads an unremarkable life. In her early 30s, Lola is saddled with debt and unresolved questions ...Read more

Would the “Golden Bachelor” who dumped Minneapolis fitness instructor Leslie Fhima on national TV do things differently, if he could do them over again? In a word: Yes.

“I have a couple regrets and, you being in Minneapolis, Leslie is top of mind in the things I regret, things I’d have done differently,” said Turner by phone in mid-...Read more

Reading “Bone Valley” is like devouring a novel from John Grisham, except every word is true.

A true crime page-turner, “Bone Valley” is by Gilbert King, who won a Pulitzer Prize for “Devil in the Grove,” about an early legal case in the career of future Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall. “Devil” is outstanding but “Bone...Read more

ANAHEIM, Calif. — Nearly 15 years ago, actor Charlie Sheen went on his “Torpedo of Truth” tour to tell the world what really happened after being fired from “Two and a Half Men,” but his substance abuse, not the truth, torpedoed that tour.

Now, after maintaining his sobriety since December 2017, Sheen is back on the road to once again...Read more

There are many books in the production offices of Judd Apatow — bookshelves full of books in rooms full of bookshelves. All sorts of books. Biographies, photo books, children's books, essays, stories. Has he read them? "So little," he says. "But as long you buy them, that's 90% of it. As long as I have a lot of books, I'm immortal — you can'...Read more

It’s dark outside, and teenager Casey Becker is home alone, making popcorn on the stove and preparing to pop a scary movie into the VCR while she waits for the arrival of her boyfriend, Steve.

The teen, portrayed by actress Drew Barrymore, picks up the phone and hears a deep, ominous voice on the other end.

It’s one of the most chilling ...Read more

A new expanded edition of Maia Kobabe's award-winning graphic memoir "Gender Queer" will be released next year.

Oni Press has announced that "Gender Queer: The Annotated Edition" will be available in May. The special hardcover edition of the seminal LGBTQ+ coming of age memoir includes commentary by Kobabe as well as other comic creators and ...Read more

Here are the bestsellers for the week that ended Saturday, Oct. 18, 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. "Remain: A ...Read more

Twenty-five years after "Almost Famous" put his origin story on movie screens, Cameron Crowe is thinking again about his roots as a teenage music journalist.

The Oscar-winning filmmaker's new memoir, "The Uncool," is a tender and insightful account of his adventures covering the likes of the Eagles, Led Zeppelin and Joni Mitchell for Rolling ...Read more

The SS Edmund Fitzgerald turned heads when she was launched in Detroit in 1958. The ship was longer and could carry more taconite than any other Great Lakes freighter, and it boasted plush quarters for the captain and sailors (carpeting! AC!), making it a sure bet to draw the best crew on the lakes.

So the 17-year-old vessel was already famous ...Read more

At just a hair more than 200 pages, “A Guardian and a Thief” manages superbly (and efficiently) to be many things: A beguilingly simple tale. A complicated morality play. A sensitive evocation of a time — the near future — and a place — Kolkata, India — during a period of flooding, drastic food shortages and heat like “a hand ...Read more

For years, the most beloved part of my personal library was my two-volume set of the Oxford English Dictionary (“the OED,” to word nerds everywhere). Poring over its tissue-thin pages, tracing a word’s etymology, scouring a follow-up entry then another and another, realizing hours later I’d fallen down a logophile’s rabbit hole. Bliss....Read more

First, you get stuck with a crappy mom. Then she lives to be 95. That’s nearly a century of terribleness.

In “Bad Bad Girl” author Gish Jen’s case, “terrible” doesn’t quite cover it. Her Chinese mother, who came to the United States in 1947, was mean, abusive, unapologetic and unchanging.

Still, as Jen says in an author’s note,...Read more

Can a cover doom a book?

I’d argue that’s what happens with “The Four Spent the Day Together.” It’s 304 pages long but the event that’s detailed on its back cover — three young people on the Iron Range murder an acquaintance while on a meth binge — does not happen until page 182. That incident also gives the book its title, and ...Read more