Giddyup. “Lonesome Dove” — the nearly 1,000-page, Pulitzer Prize-winning Western novel first published in 1985 — is experiencing a resurgence thanks to Stephen King, TikTok and cowboys being in fashion. Larry McMurtry’s tale of retired Texas Rangers driving cattle into Montana has sold some 1.5 million copies in the 40 years since its publication. This … Read more
In the words of Cole Porter, “Is it the good turtle soup or merely the mock?” “Art Fraud: 50 Fakes That Fooled the Art World,” the new book by Susie Hodge, will leave you wondering whether any work of art is the real McCoy. “Art fraud is rife,” Hodge begins. “Many experts believe that as … Read more
In 1974, photographer Edie Baskin met Lorne Michaels at a poker game at the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles. The two became fast friends, and, not long after, they started talking about working together on a project Michaels had cooking. “He had seen my photography work, so he knew what I was capable of, and, … Read more
At 2:30 a.m. on July 11, 2020, Jen Hatmaker woke up to the sound of her husband of 26 years whispering on the phone to another woman. “I just can’t quit you,” she heard him murmur before he drifted off to sleep, smelling of booze. It was, as she chronicles in her new memoir “Awake” … Read more
Goodbye, beach reads! From juicy memoirs to enthralling epics, it’s time to turn the page to autumn. Have a look at some of the most anticipated titles set to be released in the coming months. Nonfiction John Malone (Simon & Schuster)The 84-year-old billionaire and CEO of Liberty Media, who launched a number of early cable … Read more
The dawn of the 20th century brought exciting advancements, including the automobile, mechanical flight and wireless messaging that could cross oceans. That led to an optimism about the future best summed up by Thomas Edison, who believed in the next 100 years, “Everything, anything is possible.” Balloonist Leo Stevens and astronomer David Todd thought so, … Read more
The infamous sax solo Clarence Clemons plays on Bruce Springsteen’s rock classic “Born To Run” is so vibrant and exhilarating that it seems like a moment of pure inspiration on Clemons’ part. In truth, as Peter Ames Carlin lays out in his new book, “Tonight in Jungleland: The Making of Born To Run,” (Doubleday, August … Read more
Louis Sachar really intended to be a lawyer. But, in between starting law school at the Hastings College of Law in 1977 and graduating in 1980, he published his first book, “Sideways Stories from Wayside School.” The zany, often surreal compendium of classroom antics went on to become a young adult classic, spawning a four-book … Read more
When it comes to writing books, author Christopher J. Yates has a unique approach. “My secret sauce for writing novels is I set to myself a puzzle I have to solve,” said Yates, who has published three novels and written for the puzzle pages of various publications — including The Post — for decades. His new … Read more
In the bitter winter of 1941, British military prisoners in Nazi-occupied Germany huddled around a Monopoly set, dazzled by the contents that awaited them. They didn’t pluck Community Chest cards. They looked past the thimble and race-car tokens, ignored the tiny houses and phony deeds. The real treasures were hidden within the board and its … Read more
Watching an American icon like Indiana Jones battle Nazis in “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” it’s hard to believe that it was actually a German cultural institute which played a pivotal role in transforming reckless Jones-style treasure hunting into the modern science of archaeology we know today. That institute, the German Archaeological Institute at Athens (DAI … Read more
Rosa Roisinblit was getting ready for her weekly salon appointment when she received the phone call that would alter the course of her life. “Se llevaron a los chicos,” she heard the distressed voice on the other line say. They took the kids. It was a Saturday morning in October 1978, two years after military … Read more
In 1996, Jack Spillman (a k a the Werewolf Butcher) confessed to murdering three people, two of them children and one just 9 years old. His brutality was staggering, not just raping his victims but dismembering them, drinking their blood and removing their sexual organs. Bob Keppel — the chief criminal investigator for the attorney general of … Read more
A former reporter with the Los Angeles Times and Boston Globe, Jeff Kramer’s new novel, ‘Mud Season’ (Köehler Books) tells the story of Atwood ‘Woody’ Hackworth, a journalist laid off after accusations of inventing a source in one of his stories. Which, as Kramer tells The Post, has never happened to him. “Incredibly, I’ve never been fired,” he says, … Read more
What makes a father? Most every living thing has parents, but only a small minority of animals exhibit any degree of paternal care. Almost none approach the amount of male investment in children that characterizes human societies, and some of our closest primate relatives appear to be especially unlike us in this regard. Fatherhood remains … Read more
Christina Hillsberg joined the CIA as an eager 21-year-old in 2006. She spent more than a decade there: traveling undercover to CIA stations across the globe, meeting with clandestine sources in cafes and hotel rooms and recruiting “assets” who would provide secrets and information to the US government. It was thrilling, dangerous, sometimes scary work. … Read more
Her death inspired the cult 1990s TV show “Twin Peaks.” Her ghost is said to haunt the woods where her body was found more than 100 years ago. And yet Hazel I. Drew remains a mystery. Drew was a pretty, vivacious 19-year-old blonde living in Troy, NY, when she disappeared near her uncle’s farm on … Read more
As a sales rep for drug manufacturers Questcor, Lisa Pratta always suspected the company’s business practices weren’t just immoral but illegal, too, as she explains in “False Claims — One Insider’s Impossible Battle Against Big Pharma Corruption” (William Morrow). But this was the final straw. Lisa Pratta at her home In New Jersey. In 2011, … Read more
In 1857, an 18-year-old female slave, Lear Green, who had been repeatedly raped and forced into prostitution by her white owner, one James Noble, was surreptitiously placed in a wooden seaman’s chest wearing a dress, bonnet and cape and delivered as simple freight on a steamship bound to Philadelphia from the port of Baltimore. To … Read more
She was a blend of P.T. Barnum, the colorful showman credited with declaring, “There’s a sucker born every minute,” and the infamous flamboyant televangelist couple Tammy Faye and Jim Baker who built a scandal-riddled evangelical empire — all rolled into one. Back in the early years of the Roaring Twenties it was a charismatic lady … Read more