Thomas Hoobler, who with his wife, Dorothy Hoobler, wrote 103 books across a vast range of subjects, including young-adult biographies of Margaret Mead, mystery novels set in 18th-century Japan and, most recently, a book about presidential love letters with the attention-grabbing title “Are You Prepared for the Storm of Love Making?,” died on Feb. 22 … Read more
Dear readers, To live in this city is sometimes to be subject to random, unheralded encounters with the great and the good: a sitcom star fumbling for her MetroCard; a famously misanthropic novelist, happy as a clam in the stands at a Yankees game; a disgraced former governor looking entirely too unbothered at the bagel … Read more
COUNTING BACKWARDS, by Binnie Kirshenbaum Halfway through Binnie Kirshenbaum’s gutsy, funny, heart-wrenching novel “Counting Backwards,” Addie, an artist, switches media. Gone are the collages that made her “reasonably successful,” or at least fortunate enough to be represented by a middling gallery and to land the occasional commission from a bossy interior decorator. Suddenly Addie goes … Read more
Since her nomination to the Supreme Court, Justice Amy Coney Barrett has faced scrutiny from all sides. She weathered a swift and strong backlash from former supporters this month when she joined Democratic-appointed justices to reject President Trump’s request to freeze foreign aid funds. In the days after the decision, members of her family received … Read more
It’s partly why the most popular brand of best man or maid of honor toast is the gentle roast. The best man leans on personal stories to insult and haze the groom he knows well, then gushes vaguely about the bride he doesn’t. The goal here is making the target cringe, but not too much. … Read more
Whenever I talk about fantasy, readers hear it with a capital F. They conjure images of wizards and magic, dragons and fictional maps. And while there certainly is a section of the market devoted to tales with those traditional trappings, I imagine fantasy as far less monolithic — not a single furnished room but an … Read more
When the hard-boiled private-eye detective story was born about a hundred years ago, the United States was a few years removed from a pandemic, grappling with Prohibition and reeling from the influences of far-right ideology on government. With chaos rampant, the tidy, puzzle-minded investigations of Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot and their ilk didn’t satisfy readers … Read more
REBELLION 1776, by Laurie Halse Anderson Writers of historical fiction for children face a unique challenge: taking customs and language of a time very different from the present and making them real, and meaningful, to readers who are submerged in contemporary lingo and have scant knowledge of history. Laurie Halse Anderson, the 2023 Astrid Lindgren … Read more
Poems don’t have to be perfect, but this one pretty much is. I mean that less as praise — though it is a long-time favorite — than as a technical description. Not many modern verses are so finely wrought, so ruthlessly precise in every facet of meaning and music. It was included in her first … Read more
A posthumous memoir by the Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny, which detailed his fight against autocracy and corruption in Russia and was published eight months after he died in prison, won a National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography. Announcing the award, Rebecca Hussey, a member of the autobiography committee, praised the memoir, “Patriot,” as … Read more