Arts

When Jewish sisters were hunting for bagels to properly mourn their mother's passing, their hometown came through. The town has been a hub of Jewish soul food — and survival — since post-WWII.

Kevin Powers' bleak, stunning new book is set in both the 1950s and the Civil War era. It's an intricately plotted look at the ways violence can shape a nation in ways that may not be recoverable.

The odds of successfully telling the origin story of the Star Wars trilogy's lovable rogue are approximately 3,720 to 1. After a sluggish start, Solo: A Star Wars Story beats those odds.

The author of The Bonfire of the Vanities and The Right Stuff used to give himself a quota of 10 triple-spaced pages per day. He also experimented with literary techniques in his nonfiction.

Author Michael Pollan, who experimented with mushrooms, LSD and other psychedelics while researching his latest book, says: "I had an experience that was by turns frightening and ecstatic and weird."

Some of the sex scenes in Fuminori Nakamura's new novel Cult X will disturb you — but that's beside the point, because the book has much more disturbing things to say about groupthink and free will.