Read Beat (...and repeat)

Lisa Scottoline fits into the category of celebrity writer very nicely. Having sold over 30 million copies, her books are published in over 35 countries.  So you might think that launching a new book, “What Happened to the Bennetts,” a mystery about a family that's moved into a witness protection program after a deadly carjacking incident, would be, well, routine. Instead, Scottoline opened a...

Elizabeth Williamson has excelled at three of the top newspapers in the country: Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and New York Times. Her reporting skills are in evidence in "Sandy Hook," a book that not only covers the tragic shooting that occurred on Dec. 14, 2012 when 20 first graders and six educators were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. but the strange a...

Arthur Brooks always wanted to be a French horn player. And became one, winding up playing professionally in the United States and Europe. In his early twenties, however, he realized he wasn’t getting better at his instrument. He was getting worse. “I visited famous teachers and practiced more, but I couldn’t get back to where I had been. Pieces that had been easy to play became hard; pieces that...

A lot of what people think is being recycled, isn't. That's Jennie Romer talking. A San Francisco attorney who first looked into the problem of  plastic bags and plastic pollution 15 years ago, Romer's book is a guide to better recycling. While nine states now have laws that ban plastic bags, "we still have quite a few places where that's not happening," she said. 

Evison's seventh novel chronicles 170 years of American history but it's not chronological. We skip back and forth between the California gold rush, the building of the transcontinental railroad and modern life. "Evison pulls off a wonderful high-wire act of storytelling that few would attempt," noted Jason Mott, author of "Hell of a Book."

Adam Tooze, a history professor at Columbia University, is the author of "Shutdown--How Covid Shook the World's Economy." Never before did the global economy contract by 20 percent in a matter of weeks as it did in 2020. While the number of people contracting covid as well as the heated debate over mask use and opening of facilities is finally easing, it's important to understa...

Interview with Nathaniel Philbrick, author of "Travels with George," an account of the tour of the colonies made by George Washington as he prepared to take office as the first president of the United States. Philbrick, along with wife Melissa and dog Dora, follow the same route that Washington made some 230 years earlier, providing both history and present updates at the various locatio...