Books

The 30 stories in Francis Levy’s “The Kafka Studies Department” add a lightly absurdist take on human psychology to the landscape of literary brevity.

“Gays on Broadway” is not a comprehensive study. What it is is an idiosyncratic and arch amalgam of history, criticism, and juicy gossip.

Helen Schulman’s new novel is a #MeToo tale driven by one question: “How could one woman do this to another woman?”

Coogan’s, a late, lamented neighborhood bar in Washington Heights, is the subject of a new book whose author will be at the Hampton Library in Bridgehampton to talk about it with the saloon’s former owner.

Christopher Byrne considers the life and work of Terrence McNally, a giant of the American theater.

Go to this year’s Pushcart anthology to hear what’s not being talked about in polite company, to read work that would likely be banned in Florida, to be transported.

Eileen Myles, whose poems race headlong down the page, is nothing if not consistent, and prolific. Myles’s latest collection is “a Working Life.”

Public spaces needn’t be immutable, privatized, or useless. They can be claimed for the community good. Professor Setha Low takes a fresh look.

Colson Whitehead reads from his new novel, “Crook Manifesto,” Thursday night in Sag Harbor, while Bill Boggs is in East Hampton Saturday with “Spike Unleashed: The Wonder Dog Returns.”

Authors Night, Saturday, Aug. 12, Herrick Park, East Hampton. Be there.

Paul McCartney’s “1964: Eyes of the Storm” collects more than 200 photographs he took with a Pentax camera late in 1963 and early in 1964.

Here is the Jackie Bouvier Kennedy you may not know — photog, columnist, gal about town.

A Philip Schultz poem in tribute to the East Hampton artists Connie Fox and William King.

Women’s increasing numbers in and influence over American journalism is explored in “Undaunted” by Brooke Kroeger, a veteran correspondent and professor.

Carmela Ciuraru will talk to Katie Couric about “Lives of the Wives: Five Literary Marriages” at Guild Hall on Monday night.

For his new one, Colson Whitehead returns to Harlem, this time in the 1970s, and Ray Carney, who’s busier than ever with his furniture store and his stolen goods.

Katie Couric is first up at the revived Fridays at Five, while Sunny Hostin visits the East Hampton Library with her new novel.

Laurie Anderson has compiled Lou Reed’s notes into a book showing how tai chi saved the rocker’s life and came to define his life.

The dissolution of a writer’s marriage, one essay at a time.

The poet and farmer Scott Chaskey returns with fresh takes on birds and words, seeds and trees.

From tattoos to dead-end jobs, here is a novel for anyone who had no idea what came next in their youth.

It’s William Finnegan in Montauk on his “Barbarian Days” surfing life, and Brooke Kroeger in East Hampton on the history of women in journalism.

Meet Corie Geller, onetime F.B.I. agent, and her retired police detective dad, both thrilled to be back on the case.

The late Nancy Dougherty’s examination of Nazi evil through Reinhard Heydrich, “the puppet master of the Third Reich.”

Revealing recollections and surprising revelations about the Biden administration, many relevant to Election 2024.

The life of Bunny Mellon, a visionary of taste and style who knew immense privilege and cataclysmic loss.

Emma Cline’s new novel chronicles the adventures of an escort, thief, and pill addict over six days in the Hamptons.

The latest in a series of poems about moons and the Algonquin tribe.

Exploring the roots of Mel Brooks’s comedic greatness, from the Lower East Side to the Borscht Belt.

The late Lucas Matthiessen’s memoir recounts losing his vision, a descent into drinking, and a new life in recovery.