In Daphne Merkin's novel, Judith Stone is a book editor in 1990s Manhattan in a relationship of “erotic compliance” and “self-abandon” — not erotica, but literary erotic psychology.

Last spring, with the help of his mother’s 10-year-old sourdough starter and cooking in his in-laws’ Water Mill kitchen, Stephen Robinson decided to ride the sourdough wave.

The acclaimed American sculptor Mel Kendrick has spent most of the last 40 years taking things apart and putting them back together.