Great Books to Read This Week​

The Weekly Read What s New in Books

Michael Connelly s latest Great British Baking books and more from the publishing world

Little, Brown and Company

Michael Connelly s Harry Bosch returns

If you’re a fan of Michael Connelly’s gripping stories featuring Los Angeles police detective Harry Bosch — the inspiration for the popular Amazon Prime TV series Bosch and its 2022 spin-off Bosch: Legacy — you’ll surely want to dive into his latest Bosch novel, Desert Star (read the first chapter ). He teams up again with fellow detective Renée Ballard, now head of a cold cases unit, to find a serial killer who has eluded capture for years. Bosch is a compelling character — impatient with authority, relentless in pursuit of bad guys — and the fact that he’s still crime-busting after three decades (the first Bosch novel was 1992’s The Black Echo) may have something to do with ... Bill Clinton. Really. In an interview with , the author said that during a brief meeting with Clinton in 1994, the then-president “drew parallels between Harry Bosch and himself. They were basically along the lines of Harry never knowing his father and Harry loving the saxophone. And the parting words were, ‘I hope you keep writing about this guy.’ So I have been doing that.” Penguin Random House (2); Hardie Grant

More Great British Baking cookbooks

Great British Baking Show followers would carbo-load themselves comatose if they tried to plow through all the recent cookbooks by former contestants, free to profit from their triumphs and humiliations in the tent after suffering through the piercing critiques from cohost and judge Paul Hollywood (poking his finger into their “underbaked” or “underproved” rolls with disdain) well behind them. The newest (Nov. 8) is Cook as You Are: Recipes for Real Life, Hungry Cooks and Messy Kitchens by 2013’s winner, Ruby Tandoh. Released this fall: Giuseppe’s Italian Bakes by the show’s most recent champ, Giuseppe Dell’Anno; Nadiya’s Everyday Baking by 2019 winner Nadiya Hussain; and 2019 finalist Steph Blackwell’s Bake Yourself Happy: 50 Recipes to Bring You Joy. And on Nov. 1, Hollywood’s milder counterpart, Prue Leith, came out with Bliss on Toast: 75 Simple Recipes. The next winner — and future cookbook author — will be revealed during the current season’s finale on Nov. 18, on Netflix. Penguin Random House/Author photo by Cole Saladino

The Lemon is a tart treat

Steer clear of this book if you’re turned off by the liberal use of obscenities and rather dark, cynical humor. Otherwise? Read it. Please. Funny, smart and fast-paced, it’s a hugely entertaining send-up of celebrity culture and the media circus that fuels it. The irreverent story begins when a famous chef with a food/travel show (yes, he’s based on the late Anthony Bourdain) is found dead in a rather compromising position. His handlers and various hangers-on either go into overdrive to spin the story — trying to save his reputation solely to save their own — or slimily find ways to profit from the star’s passing and their tenuous (or nonexistent) connection to him. Author S.E. Boyd is actually three people: journalists Kevin Alexander (winner of a James Beard Award for food writing) and Joe Keohane, and editor Alessandra Lusardi. Their writing process was “quick, rigorous, and a lot of fun,” they said in a Q&A provided by their publisher, Viking. Alexander and Keohane would pen alternating chapters that Lusardi then edited “on the fly,” while the three texted ideas to each other constantly. “Much of the wild energy in the book came from the speed with which we wrote it,” they said, “but also from all of us trying to impress one another or make one another laugh.”

In case you missed it

Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group/Getty Images

Bono s memories through music

Yep, we’ve got another big memoir out in a season packed with them. Arriving today is Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story by the U2 lead singer and activist Bono. The Irish icon spins stories from his life through the lens of his music — describing, for instance, how deeply he’s felt the passing of his mother, Iris, who died after suffering a brain aneurysm at her father’s funeral when Bono was 14. It inspired both “Iris (Hold Me Close)” and “I Will Follow.” (“The song is a suicide note,” he says he told his bandmates. “It’s about some kid who wants to find his mother, and even if she’s in the grave, he’ll follow her there.”) Fans also might want to check out the audiobook, which is narrated by the singer and enhanced by a soundtrack that includes “newly recorded and reimagined” versions of U2 songs.

Heavy are their heads King Charles III and Prince Harry

Also out today is The King: The Life of Charles III by Christopher Andersen, who wasted no time in producing the first major biography of Charles, 73, since he replaced his late mother, Queen Elizabeth II, on the throne in September. Many observers don’t realize that the new king is “one of the most complicated, paradoxical, and enigmatic figures ever to sit on the throne,” the author explained when we asked him what he hopes readers will glean from the book. “Since early childhood, Charles has seen himself as a victim — unloved, misunderstood, underestimated,” he adds, so “now, beneath the regal exterior, is a man more determined than ever to prove himself.” Far more splashy, however, will be the release of the memoir from the king’s second son, Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, on Jan. 10. Its publisher, Penguin Random House (PRH), made headlines by simply revealing the book’s title: Spare, an allusion to the phrase that a monarchy needs an “heir and a spare” (his older brother, Prince William, is the current heir to the throne). Ghostwritten by J.R. Moehringer, Spare will offer “raw, unflinching honesty,” according to a PRH announcement, which also quotes Prince Harry, 38: “I’m writing this not as the prince I was born but as the man I have become … and my hope is that in telling my story — the highs and lows, the mistakes, the lessons learned — I can help show that no matter where we come from, we have more in common than we think.” ‎Forge Books/Macmillan

Southern comfort from Heather Webber

AARP members can read an entire heartwarming romantic novel for free : Heather Webber’s 2019 bestseller Midnight at the Blackbird Café tells the story of Anna Kate, who travels to Alabama to bury her beloved Granny Zee, owner of the Blackbird Café. Her trip is meant to be brief — to close the café and settle her grandmother’s estate — but she finds herself drawn to the quirky town her mother fled so many years ago and to its mysterious blackbird pie. Webber, who grew up in Massachusetts and now lives in Ohio, has set many of her more than 30 novels in Alabama. She’s never lived there, she tells AARP, but fell in love with the state while visiting about 15 years ago: “It was a place that felt strangely like home.” Getty Images

Note to ebook readers Amazon is not a library

Authors have long been peeved by Amazon’s lenient policy toward returns of its Kindle ebook purchases: Customers who’ve claimed they bought an ebook by mistake have been allowed to return it for a full refund within seven days of purchase, with little more than a click of a button and no questions asked. That’s plenty of time to read a whole book, critics note. A , signed by almost 79,000 people, calls for a policy change, noting that the refunds in effect steal rightful revenue from authors. “When you have read the book, you CONSUMED the product,” the petition states. “Returning a book after reading 10-20% is one thing. But when the book has been read in [its] entirety it should not be allowed to be returned. End of discussion.” Or, as one signer puts it, “If you can’t return used underwear, you shouldn’t be able to return used ebooks.” Amazon apparently got the message: It’s told the Authors Guild that it will change its policy by the end of the year, allowing returns within seven days of purchase only if the customer has read 10 percent or less of the ebook. The Guild responded with a on its site, noting “We are … grateful to Amazon’s team for listening to our concerns and taking good faith action.” Getty Images; Little, Brown and Company; Penguin Random House

Ted Kennedy and Sam Adams revealed

Two of the season’s big biographies happen to be focused on famous politicians from Massachusetts. Ted Kennedy: A Life by John Farrell, long-listed for the 2022 National Book Award for Nonfiction, explores how the late senator, the last of nine children, was shaped by his family — its excellence and pathologies, both — and the series of tragedies he experienced throughout his life, as the Kennedys appear cursed to do. When we asked the author what struck him most while researching this book, Farrell said, “How tormented Ted Kennedy was. His life was marked by physical pain, grief, fear, insecurity and guilt. Put aside the assassinations, the plane crashes, his absent parents, Chappaquiddick, his wife’s alcoholism. Think of just this: All three of his children were struck by cancer. Unimaginable, dealing with all that. Yet he soldiered on.” Another biggie is Pulitzer Prize-winner Stacy Schiff’s The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams, who, unlike Kennedy, “was a perfect failure until middle age,” according to the author. Schiff writes that the founding father known for his signature (and, today, the beer that uses his name) had few accomplishments before age 41, when Adams’ skill as a wordsmith helped stoke the revolutionary fervor of his fellow rebels that eventually led to independence. Schiff told us that she was struck most by her subject’s bravery: “There was a price on his head for years. He did not flinch.” HOOVER PHOTO: CHAD GRIFFITH / ATRIA BOOKS SIMON & SCHUSTER

Colleen Hoover queen of the bestseller list

As we wrote in our recent profile of , the author is dominating the bestseller list these days, and may well be one of the most popular writers of the 2020s (possibly the most popular, depending on how you calculate such a thing). Some of the 42-year-old author’s more than 20 books, such as 2016’s It Ends With Us have become recent bestsellers years after their initial publications, thanks to readers’ enthusiasm on social media. Now sales of its sequel, It Starts With Us, which came out October 18 and immediately hit number one on The New York Times bestseller list, are breaking records: Its publisher Atria Books reported that the novel sold more than 800,000 copies through Tuesday, October 18, and was the most pre-ordered book in Simon & Schuster history (Atria is a Simon & Schuster imprint). Darlene Hammond/Hulton Archive/Getty Images Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward

The real Paul Newman

October 18 brought the release of one of fall’s biggest books: The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man, a posthumous memoir/biography from acting legend Paul Newman, co-written with David Rosenthal. It’s stunningly revealing, full of expressions of self-doubt, regret and uncertainty from a man many still view as an icon of cool masculinity. The actor’s goal, he wrote, was to “leave some kind of record that sets things straight, pokes holes in the mythology that’s sprung up around me.” The project began 20 years before Newman’s death, when he asked his close friend screenwriter Stewart Stern to create an oral history of his life, says Peter Gethers, the book’s editor at Knopf. Stern interviewed Newman’s friends and family members, along with Newman himself, while Newman also wrote many pages of his own memories. His family eventually wrote a book proposal, based on more than 10,000 pages of transcripts. “The material was extraordinary,” and Knopf snapped it up in a heated auction, Gethers says. What surprised Gethers most about Newman’s writings? “What a brilliant writer he was, how extraordinarily honest and insightful he was, how insecure he was.” L to R: Penguin Random House / HarperCollins / Penguin Random House

Macchio Grisham and Kingsolver

Less splashy, but likely to appeal to plenty of nostalgic Gen Xers and Karate KidWaxing On: The Karate Kid and MeThe Outsiders Cobra Kai.
Readers can also pick up the new legal thriller from John Grisham, The Boys From Biloxi, as well as Demon Copperhead, a thick novel by The Poisonwood Bible author Barbara Kingsolver. Inspired by Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield, the story centers on a young man growing up in poverty in Appalachia. Left to right - Simon and Schuster; Getty Images; Hachette Book Group

A definitely unauthorized Bourdain biography plus the latest from Steel and Baldacci

The celebrity chef and TV star Anthony Bourdain, who died by suicide in 2018, is back in the headlines with the recent release of Down and Out in Paradise: The Life of Anthony Bourdain, by journalist Charles Leerhsen. The “definitely unauthorized” — as the author puts it — biography includes tales of Bourdain’s hiring of prostitutes, heroin use and text messages sent on the day of his death to a woman with whom he’d been romantically involved (“You were reckless with my heart,” Bourdain reportedly wrote), as well as the assertion that “he never stopped drinking.” Bourdain’s brother, Christopher, has many of Leerhsen’s characterizations, according to The New York Times. The book follows an arguably more well-reviewed 2021 Bourdain biography: In the Weeds: Around the World and Behind the Scenes With Anthony Bourdain by Tom Vitale, Bourdain’s longtime producer and director, who offers an insider’s look at what it was like to crisscross the world with the enigmatic celeb. The experience came with many highs (yes, in all senses of the word), as well as nearly unbearable stress, Vitale writes, noting that “each shoot often meant actual blood, sweat and tears.” A few other new releases destined for bestseller status: a novel from Danielle Steel, The High Notes, about the struggles of a talented young singer; and David Baldacci’s Long Shadows, the seventh book in the blockbuster author’s mystery series featuring Amos Decker, the detective blessed and cursed with a perfect memory. Penguin Random House/Sabin Gratz

21st-century etiquette

You know Emily Post as the doyenne of manners — or, rather, of etiquette, which, according to her great-grandchildren Lizzie Post and Daniel Post Senning, isn’t just about how to behave at fancy dinner parties; more importantly, it’s about treating others well with “acts of kindness, patience, compassion, awareness, and thoughtful behavior.” This wisdom comes from Emily Post’s Etiquette: The Centennial Edition, the pair’s new revision of their great-grandmother’s famous book (and potentially a great gift for the young people in your life). While they do broach such requisite subjects as how to address an envelope and the proper format for a debutante ball invitation, the authors (who have a weekly podcast called Awesome Etiquette) also dive into how to handle with class all kinds of modern situations, such as attending video meetings and tipping rideshare drivers. When I (politely) asked them what Emily Post would think of the etiquette displayed by Americans today, they responded by email, “She might not personally like how much we swear or the idea of social media (she was fairly private),” but “rather than clutch her pearls, she’d be curious about how people could find ways to be their best selves in these spaces.” Atria Books / Ronald Scarpa

Excerpt from Janet Evanovich s Going Rogue

It’s fall, so it must be time for beloved author Janet Evanovich’s next Stephanie Plum novel. Her latest is Going Rogue, the 29th book in the long-running series. Packed with humor, like all of her books, it features New Jersey bounty hunter Plum and a colorful cast of characters — one of whom, sexy weapons expert Gabriela Rose, stars in a spin-off series the author kicked off earlier this year with The Recovery Agent. Evanovich, 79, works hard at her craft. She notes on her website that she has no hobbies because she’s “always writing.” “Even after 43 bestsellers in the last 26 years, she still wakes up around 6 a.m. every day to write,” says her publicist Ariele Fredman. Want to dive into her latest? .

Join today and save 25% off the standard annual rate. Get instant access to discounts, programs, services, and the information you need to benefit every area of your life. Please share your own favorite new (or old) books, upcoming releases you’re excited about, or anything book related in the comments section. Christina Ianzito is the travel and books editor for aarp.org and AARP The Magazine, and also edits and writes health, entertainment and other stories for aarp.org. She received a 2020 Lowell Thomas Award for travel writing. Editor's note: This article was originally published on June 21, 2022. It has been updated to reflect new information.

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