In Rie Qudan’s "Sympathy Tower Tokyo," the protagonist turns to a chatbot dubbed “AI-built” to ask questions about the origin of new Japanese words borrowed from foreign languages.

She then gripes about its tendency to “mansplain things I hadn’t actually asked about” to fuel engagement. The AI tool has become “so used to stealing ...Read more

Here are the bestsellers for the week that ended Saturday, Sept. 20, 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. "The Secret ...Read more

Young adulthood might be a more uncertain period than ever before.

With so many more options, it can seem like everyone is on a different path in the period between 20 and 40 years of age as they navigate the buffet of choices that make a life. Some young adults are in cities, trying to make it at a big kid job while looking for love, while ...Read more

Who hasn’t dreamed of chucking it all, assuming a new identity and starting over?

Karen Palmer didn’t dream it, she lived it, except her experience — or at least the impetus of it — was a nightmare she writes about in her memoir “She’s Under Here.”

In 1989, Palmer, her new husband and two daughters from a previous marriage ...Read more

If you’re susceptible to vicarious (sympathetic?) hangovers, take care reading Adam Kay’s “A Particularly Nasty Case.”

“All-night Bender” is the first chapter, and that’s exactly what Dr. Eitan Rose goes on, bouncing from the techno thump of a London club to a bathhouse in the company of an American called Chester (“Why were ...Read more

If you’ve ever read a Susan Orlean book — “The Orchid Thief,” “ Rin Tin Tin” or “ The Library Book,” say — and didn’t want it to end, here’s good news. There’s more. Her memoir, “Joyride,” a chronicle of her career in narrative nonfiction, shares the backstory and process of each of her books in edifying detail.

From...Read more

When Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016. Anand Pandian knew almost no one who had voted for him. He had a hard time grasping what the result meant about the country he grew up in.

That election became the springboard for a sprawling project by the Johns Hopkins anthropologist. Pandian’s new book, “Something Between Us: The Everyday ...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS -- Mindy Mejia killed off her own mother in the first story she ever wrote so it’s hard to disagree with her when she says, “I’ve always been a crime writer. There have always been people dying in my work.”

That first story, about the Twin Cities native’s mom’s funeral, was way back in kindergarten. And its dark themes ...Read more

Working at an amusement park isn’t all fun and games.

In author Veronica Bane’s debut YA novel, “Difficult Girls,” Greta Riley Green finds out there’s something sinister going on at her seemingly innocent summer gig at Hyper Kid Magic Land.

Bane, who hails from San Diego and now lives in Los Angeles, spent her formative years ...Read more

Patricia Lockwood’s life and art are so closely linked that it’s appropriate for a cat meowing in the background during a phone interview from her Savannah, Georgia, home to make it into this story.

That cat, Miette, also is in Lockwood’s novel “Will There Ever Be Another You,” in fact. “Will There Ever” is a tricky book, with a ...Read more

In the middle of a conversation about “Clown Town,” the new Slow Horses novel, author Mick Herron reveals a bit of previously untold lore about the origins of Slough House.

Referring to a team of older spies who appear in the just-published book, Herron says, “Their careers never really went in the direction that they should have, very ...Read more

Plenty of memoirs have been written about fraught relationships between mothers and daughters, but few are as disturbing and fascinating as Jeannie Vanasco’s third memoir.

“A Silent Treatment” is about the ghosting the author’s mother inflicts on her frequently, for long periods of time and for reasons that are nearly unfathomable.

...Read more

Here are the bestsellers for the week that ended Saturday, Sept. 13, 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. "The Secret ...Read more

SAN DIEGO — As one of the most prominent music critics of the 1970s, Cameron Crowe often accompanied legendary rock bands on tour to conduct interviews and chronicle their work and lives. Now, the Oscar-winning screenwriter and veteran film director is set to hit the road on his own to discuss his upcoming memoir, “The Uncool,” in what is ...Read more

Once she turned 13, author Pamela Jones’ marriage clock began ticking, as the Twin Cities resident writes in “The Dirt Beneath Our Door”: “I was expected to become a wife in the next few years and fulfill my mission to produce as many children as possible for my husband’s posterity.”

Jones was born into the Church of the First Born ...Read more

The narrator of Alejandro Varela’s novel-slash-diatribe about polyamory in contemporary gay life is a self-professed overthinker/oversharer who mounts a full-throated defense of open relationships. Polyamorists must await another champion, however, since the one here fails to “make the case.”

The title itself is misleading. A “Middle ...Read more

You know what’s scary this fall?

How many new books are coming.

So many that no less than Thomas Pynchon, publishing’s favorite recluse, is back. Not to be outdone, even Harper Lee returns with a posthumous collection. But you know what’s scarier? How many new scary books are coming between now and November, and beyond. Horror, hotter ...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS -- ln a comic she drew before bedtime one night, K. Woodman-Maynard manifested a project that would occupy her for the next couple of years.

The author and cartoonist, who lives in south Minneapolis with husband Mike Schowalter and a one-eyed Vizsla named Leif, writes a “diary comic” each night. Creator of a graphic novel ...Read more