Books

The story behind the foresight and planning that left us so much public land for our collective enjoyment. Stories, plural, actually, and 27 distinct histories.

Meet Samson Occom (1723-1792), Mohegan, scholar, orator, Montauker, minister, synthesizer of native spirituality and Christianity, prolific author of religious tracts.

In Kathy Engel’s timely new collection, “Dear Inheritors,” the poems do not sit still, they rise to the occasion of deep conversation, particularly when the subjects are tough.

Sex and drugs, sure, but especially opera: Ricky Ian Gordon lays it bare in telling the tale of his roller-coaster life as a composer.

Murder most fun? It may have come out while the days were still cold, but A.J. Finn’s “End of Story” is the beach read to end all beach reads.

Call it a cult following? Thomas McGonigle is out with a new paperback edition of his metafictional “Going to Patchogue.”

Betsy McCully’s richly descriptive writing and photos create a compelling invitation to readers to get out and explore, and amount to a powerful call to action to preserve the endangered places of Long Island.

Two Star contributors make good — Nanci Lagarenne reads from her new novel, “Scape Ghost,” in Southampton, and Dianne Moritz lands in “Chicken Soup for the Soul.”

East Hampton Library’s Authors Night will bring 100 writers to Herrick Park to sign and sell copies of their books, all in support of the library’s programs.

How did Bernie Madoff get away with it for so long? And who knew? These questions and others are what Richard Behar’s new book, “Madoff: The Final Word,” addresses.

Alice McDermott, a top novelist, will visit Fridays at Five at the Hampton Library tomorrow with her latest, “Absolution,” about expat American women in Vietnam during the war.

In her new novel of World War I Britain, Helen Simonson brings well-turned prose, well-drawn characters, a well-developed setting, and romance, romance, romance.

Susan Page, USA Today’s Washington bureau chief, is out with “The Rulebreaker,” a fascinating biography of Barbara Walters full of surprises even for dedicated followers of her career in TV news.

One Saturday, two book talks: a tale of Dutch Nazi resistance from John Tepper Marlin at the East Hampton Library, and thoughts on all things Montauk from Bill Akin at the Montauk Library.

Unvarnished, unfiltered, and insidery, here are the Beatles on the eve of John Lennon’s assassination, with one heck of a Yoko Ono story to boot.

Poetry fans, take note: From Lucas Hunt in Bridgehampton to Leah Umansky and Joyce Jacobson in Sag Harbor to Bruce Whitacre in both places, readings abound.

Following her hit “Fleishman Is in Trouble,” Taffy Brodesser-Akner returns with a new exploration of family life, this one spurred by a patriarch’s kidnapping.

Audrey Flack, an art world iconoclast, died on Friday. Her memoir holds nothing back, from the boorish big boys to parsing who the real feminists were to knowing when she nailed a masterpiece.

Julie Satow’s book reminds us how Hortense Odlum of Bonwit Teller, Dorothy Shaver of Lord & Taylor, and Geraldine Stutz of Henri Bendel remade American fashion retailing.

Kathy Engel will read from “Dear Inheritors,” her new poetry collection, on Sunday at 5 p.m. at the meetinghouse of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of the South Fork in Bridgehampton. Five other poets will join in.

Flynn Berry’s taut new thriller follows two Belfast sisters and I.R.A. informants as they flee a troubled past to make new lives in Dublin.

Neil J. Young has given us a nuanced look at the roles gay people have played in conservative American politics from the 1920s to the Biden administration.

Paul Auster’s last novel follows a philosophy professor as he digs through his lost wife’s poems and her journal of Vietnam-era America.

Poets with poetry collections in hand will convene in the East Hampton Library’s courtyard on Saturday for a reading.

Who knew the most masculine of American presidents was in fact a product of the nurturing of the women in his life?

Re-released after 25 years, Jon Schueler’s memoir, “The Sound of Sleat,” remains a gripping portrait of an artist in the throes of the creative impulse.

“The Hearing Test,” Eliza Barry Callahan’s revelatory debut novel, finds our heroine chasing down the cause of a deafness as mysterious as it is sudden.

Who better to lead a tour through the evolution of the white-knuckling, history-making Situation Room than George Stephanopoulos, White House veteran?

Another selection from George Held’s bird book slash poetry book.

Clare McHugh’s new novel explores the tangled webs of Russia’s star-crossed royals. And reader, family trees are included.