Books

Alafair Burke, a talented author of domestic noir, is back with “The Better Sister,” exploring sibling rivalry and the dark underbelly of family life.

Paul McCartney, Amagansett resident and grandparent (and wasn’t he with some band once?), has just come out with his first picture book, “Hey Grandude,” while the McMullans return with a tale of two French bulldogs and Susan Verde brings a heart-restorative “I Am Love” for worried kids.

“The Great American Sports Page” has Mike Lupica on the brother of a football-playing fireman killed on 9/11, Robert Lipsyte on Dick Tiger, a boxer with a championship belt and a champion's conscience, and the timeless hyperbole of Grantland Rice.

John O’Malley’s “Urethane Revolution” is a surprisingly compelling and sometimes moving firsthand history of how the development of urethane wheels took skating to where it is today — a cultural phenomenon and, as of next summer, Olympic sport.

We’ll never tire of Elvis, and, when it comes to rock ’n’ roll, he represents the exponential leap from what was to what is, a point that is well made in Richard Zoglin’s “Elvis in Vegas,” which chronicles the King’s return to live performing from the self-imposed gulag of his B-movie-making period.

Michael Shnayerson’s “Boom” traces the growth of a burgeoning postwar art world and its expansion into the head-spinning mega-market it is today, fueled by insatiable collectors, resourceful, combative art dealers, and a shifting array of artists.

The 12 linked stories in Joel Mowdy’s debut collection offer a 1990s tour of young lives in a place not so very far from the Hamptons, but very far indeed psychically and economically.

From Lucas Hunt’s latest thematically linked collection of poems, “Hamptons,” published by Thane & Prose.

Clay Risen’s engaging “The Crowded Hour” tells the story of Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders, while focusing on the Spanish-American War as the turning point in America’s role in the larger world.

The East Hampton Library’s Authors Night benefit will convene once again at 555 Montauk Highway in Amagansett, with cocktails and hors d’oeuvres, hobnobbing, and book signings starting at 5 p.m. on Saturday.

With “American Moonshot,” Douglas Brinkley has written a magisterial history of the space age and an affectionate valentine to those brave astronauts who flew to the moon, the politicians who dealt with the art of the possible, and above all to John F. Kennedy. He'll be at Authors Night in Amagansett on Aug. 10.

In “The Urethane Revolution,” John O'Malley tells “the greatest story never told in extreme sports history,” the 1975 birth of skateboarding, courtesy of a “hippy skunkworks of garages and shacks” in the Southern California sunshine. He'll read from it at a book launch at the Montauk Beach House on Friday, Aug. 9.

Ted Chiang, in his new collection of science-fiction stories, clearly enjoys imagining technological advances taken to the extreme, “Black Mirror” style, but you sense his ambivalence as he wonders what we're really doing to ourselves.

With “The Nickel Boys,” Colson Whitehead takes us deep into the Jim Crow-era South of the 1960s, in a novel based on the true story of a Florida reform school where wayward boys were trapped in a kind of hell on earth.

From "Mourning Songs," a poetry anthology just published by New Directions and edited by Grace Schulman. She will read new poems and excerpts from her recent memoir, "Strange Paradise: Portrait of a Marriage," on Aug. 3 at 5 p.m. at the Amagansett Library.

The Fridays at Five author series at the Hampton Library in Bridgehampton for July 19 brings Chris Babu with his dystopian Y.A. novel “The Initiation” and its sequel, “The Expedition.”

“Ballpark” is an architecture critic’s paean to the idiosyncrasies of old beauties like Fenway Park and the smart city-integrating design of new stadiums like Camden Yards. But hold the “concrete doughnuts,” please.

The East Hampton Historical Society's Poetry Marathon, held at the Mulford Farm on James Lane in the village, returns Sunday to continue a roughly 25-year tradition, with wine, comestibles, and signings.

It has been an open secret for some time that Howard Stern might be the best interviewer in America, humorous and agile. His new book, “Howard Stern Comes Again,” anthologizes the highlights of his radio career, from Paltrow to McCartney to Trump, complete with cross-references.

In a booze-soaked Montauk share house one summer, the housemates were grouped into three categories, “the girls, the finance guys, and the gays.” At 27, John Glynn didn't fit into any of them. “Out East” is his story of coming out and growing up.

Chris Pavone’s follow-up thriller plays a fast-paced game, with more twists than you can get your head around, expressive writing about Paris, and a most modern woman, an ex-C.I.A. agent who wants a family life.

Renting to the rich for the summer that old family house with the great views? In order to send your kid to college, or simply afford it here? Judy Blundell's first novel for adults explores the way we live now on the East End.

In his new novel, “Assassin of Shadows,” Lawrence Goldstone offers an alternative theory to the events of the McKinley assassination.

From "Millennial," a new collection by an East Hampton poet.

Jeffrey Sussman has dug up an all-star roster of low-life scum for our reading pleasure, but at least they had some style.

Thomas Harris, the undisputed king of memorable grotesquerie, returns with a murderous albino pornographer, sex trafficker, torturer, and organ harvester in his long-awaited new thriller.

From “Hamptons,” a new poetry collection by Lucas Hunt, who will read from it at the Amagansett Library on Sunday at 2 p.m.

“What better way to kick off the season than baseball and architecture?” asks Paul Goldberger, the architecture critic, who will do just that when he talks about his new book on Sunday at 5 p.m. at BookHampton.

An appraisal of Winsor McCay, an early master of animation and the most skilled and innovative newspaper cartoonist in the medium’s history, by the country’s pre-eminent scholar of animation.

A new poem by Bernard Goldhirsch of Springs