Books

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.

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.

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.

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.

Her work for Military Intelligence took Marguerite Harrison, foreign correspondent and socialite, across the world undercover, fur coat and evening dresses in tow. Incredible? Read on.

Bliss Morehead poetry grant winners read on Shelter Island, and Kimiko Hahn of the North Fork stops by the White House.

Brad Gooch continues his explorations of the culture of the 1980s in “Radiant,” his biography of the art star and activist Keith Haring.

Fearmongering and the ubiquity of security capitalism are everyone’s problem, two academics write in “Trapped,” a powerful yet accessible volume.

Behold “Language City,” a linguistic Baedeker of New York, especially its outer boroughs, which have become home to so many immigrant populations. But can the new Babel work?

Frank Johnson drew hundreds of remarkably accomplished comic strips over five decades, without any formal training in art and in complete obscurity. Until now.

From a new collection by George Held, just in time for the osprey’s arrival.

Irene Cairo’s collection of closely observed, ruminative stories, often examining family life, will reward rereading.

A Pulitzer Prize-winning historian argues that the threats to the American Republic we see today have been present in our culture from the start.

Jeffrey Sussman reads from “Tinseltown Gangsters” twice over, while the Southampton Writers Conference scholarship deadline looms.

An eminent ecologist’s life is changed when he rescues an injured screech owlet and they come to a certain, yes, understanding.

In this sophisticated espionage novel, Lea Carpenter’s young heroine seeks experience in her search for an identity. She gets more than she bargained for.

Ellen Feldman’s new historical novel brings vivid characters, juicy details, skillful pacing, and a solid plot, all in post-World War II New York.