Martin Cruz Smith, Best-Selling Author of ‘Gorky Park,’ Dies at 82

He startled critics, readers and the book industry in 1981 with a novel set in the Soviet Union that had a flawed detective as its antihero.

Adam Nossiter | NYTimes Books | Disclosure

‘I Don’t Ever Want to Be Free From the Pain of Missing My Children’

Only by writing could the acclaimed novelist Yiyun Li grapple with the suicides of her two sons. But her new book is no ordinary grief memoir.

Alexandra Alter | NYTimes Books | Disclosure

When Childhood Trauma Gives Way to Adult Ambivalence

“Sleep,” the debut novel by Honor Jones, moves back and forth in time between a 35-year-old mother’s present and her disturbing, unresolved past.

Fiona Maazel | NYTimes Books | Disclosure

José Andrés Picked a Bad Time to Give His Daughter ‘Charlotte’s Web’

“Good choice, Daddy. Very nice,” she said sarcastically, given what he was making for dinner. The chef and humanitarian’s new book is “Change the Recipe.”

Unknown Author | NYTimes Books | Disclosure

Wordplay, Weirdness and a Guest Appearance by Clint Eastwood

“Thrilled to Death” collects many of Lynne Tillman’s spiky short stories, where dreams tell the truth and glamour mingles with the mundane.

Alexandra Jacobs | NYTimes Books | Disclosure

He Dreamed Up Bosch and the Lincoln Lawyer. It All Started With L.A.

For almost four decades, Michael Connelly has set his characters loose in a city of big dreams and lucky breaks. Now they’re facing an altered landscape. So is he.

Elisabeth Egan | NYTimes Books | Disclosure

How Do You Like Your History? With Imaginative Leaps or Grounded in Fact?

Novelized accounts of historical figures’ lives are hugely popular. But do we really want to draw back the curtain on history and find people talking and acting the way we do?

Megan Marshall | NYTimes Books | Disclosure

How Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Wrote Her Way Through Loss

When her father died, the author of “Americanah” produced a slim work of nonfiction. When her mother died, she poured her grief into a sprawling 416-page novel.

Elisabeth Egan | NYTimes Books | Disclosure

Don’t Tell, but Mark Greaney Is No Fan of ‘Goldfinger’

The author of the “Gray Man” espionage series grew up on James Bond, but that Ian Fleming novel has too much golf, too little “secret agenting.”

Unknown Author | NYTimes Books | Disclosure

An Esteemed Biographer Puts Her Own Life in the Spotlight

The standout essays in Megan Marshall’s “After Lives” recall her troubled father and the fate of a high school classmate.

Alexandra Jacobs | NYTimes Books | Disclosure

Elinor Lipman Wants to ‘Get My Characters Out of the House’

Eighteen books in (the latest is “Every Tom, Dick & Harry”), she still recalls an editor’s note urging more action: “Could someone here please pass the potatoes?”

Unknown Author | NYTimes Books | Disclosure

Millicent Dillon, Chronicler of Jane and Paul Bowles, Dies at 99

A novelist and short-story writer, she devoted years to a nonfiction project examining of the lives of two eccentric authors who spent decades in Morocco.

Adam Nossiter | NYTimes Books | Disclosure

Hanif Kureishi Wonders What Dostoyevsky’s Characters Did in Bed

It’s among the more playful matters on his mind in “Shattered,” a memoir of the injury that took away his ability to turn pages — but not his hunger to tell a story.

Unknown Author | NYTimes Books | Disclosure

Books on Drug Trafficking, and Kant, Line Adam Haslett’s Shelves

His new novel is titled after Turgenev’s “Fathers and Sons,” he says, “given the theme of incomprehension between generations in that book.”

Unknown Author | NYTimes Books | Disclosure

Gay Talese Keeps Notes, Especially on Everyone’s Clothes

In a new collection about New York City, the writer turns his gimlet eye on its icons, its architecture, its hot spots — and its suits. “Clothes matter — especially when you get old,” he says.

Sadie Stein | NYTimes Books | Disclosure

Writing Fantasy Came Naturally. Reality Was Far More Daunting.

After winning just about every major science fiction and fantasy award, Nnedi Okorafor explores a traumatic event in her own history in her most autobiographical novel yet.

Alexandra Alter | NYTimes Books | Disclosure

Graham Norton Isn’t Insulted to Be Called an ‘Undemanding’ Writer

“I’m very comfortable with the level of ambition I have for my books,” says the ubiquitous BBC talk show host, who calls “Frankie” his “first happy romance.”

Unknown Author | NYTimes Books | Disclosure

Encyclopedia Brown Got Alafair Burke Started on Crime Fiction

The author of “The Note” traces her “real obsession” to discovering “a slew of smart, gritty female sleuths who began to feel like friends.”

Unknown Author | NYTimes Books | Disclosure

Pregnant With One Child and 295,233 Words

During the months before she gave birth, our critic wrote — a lot. What happens when the impulse to put pen to paper becomes extreme?

Molly Young | NYTimes Books | Disclosure

Stanley Booth, Music Journalist Who Loved the Blues, Dies at 82

He is best known for his book about the Rolling Stones. But he mostly wrote about blues artists, some of them famous (B.B. King) and some less renowned (Furry Lewis).

Richard Sandomir | NYTimes Books | Disclosure