Books

The annual Pushcart Prize anthology of fiction, poetry, and essays is a barometer of our culture, and this year the word that echoes through it is “aftermath,” as we collectively pick among the ruins, searching for meaning.

Once more unto the urban grit with a master of verisimilitude, Richard Price.

Bill Schutt, a biology professor adept at addressing the general reader, is back with an amusing compendium of toothed animals, from horses to bats to George Washington.

From Bob Dylan’s explosion on the scene to the Mayor of MacDougal Street, Dave Van Ronk, this is the way it was in Greenwich Village, a work of music history reviewed by a working musician.

As autumn gets colder and darker, it's the perfect time to pull up a comfy chair, make a piping-hot beverage, and settle in with a good book. This list includes memoir, historical fiction, crime fiction, and more, both brand-new and recently released, that are also available in accessible formats like audio and large print.

A writer grieves so she won’t fall apart.

In “Category Five” Porter Fox mixes sailing adventure with oceanic science to explore how the power of the seas could be used to help save the planet.

Ellen T. White is out with a love letter to the hedonistic, freewheeling bottom of the continent, Key West, amply photographed by Missy Janes.

Philip Schultz airs out new poetry Saturday at The Church in Sag Harbor, while another poet, Wainscott’s Will Schutt, brings in a top prize for Italian translation. In New York, Francis Levy talks Einstein and Kafka with Ken Krimstein.

Kids’ books of note from Kathleen King and Emma Walton Hamilton tell encouraging real-life stories, while Susan Verde simply encourages.

The screenwriter, actor, and movie producer Edward Burns’s first novel is a sweet and sad Irish-Catholic coming-of-age story.

In “Wordhunter,” her new thriller, Stella Sands gives us a young, somewhat damaged protagonist and word fanatic who uses linguistic forensics to chase down a cyberstalker.

The letters in Bill Henderson’s “Dear Boys” are addressed to twin grandsons in anticipation of their future adolescence, offering advice on how to live a good life.

A handsome new coffee-table book shows off the skills and the life’s work of an N.B.A. photographer. Some of the greatest dunks in hoops history, too.

A Writer’s Desk residency at the college, Kathy Engel at Barnes & Noble, and David Browne’s history of Greenwich Village’s glory days at Sag Harbor Books.

A beautifully put together volume about an artist and his work doubles as a history of Long Island’s development.

You want New York in the ’70s? Guy Trebay’s “Do Something” is a small masterpiece celebrating its art, lit, and grit, its easy rents and hard times.

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.

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

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.