Books

NEW YORK — Former first lady Melania Trump has a memoir coming out this fall, “Melania,” billed by her office as “a powerful and inspiring story of a woman who has carved her own path, overcome adversity and defined personal excellence.” It’s the first memoir by Trump, who has been...

Since former President Donald Trump announced Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance as his running mate, Vance’s memoir has generated attention at local libraries. The 2016 book, “Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis,” tells the story of Vance’s family roots in Kentucky, his upbringing in Middletown, Ohio,...

KEY WEST, Fla. — Ernest Hemingway spent the 1930s in Key West, Florida, and more than six decades after his death, fans, scholars and relatives continue to congregate on the island city to celebrate the author’s award-winning novels and adventure-filled life. Hemingway Days started in 1981 with a short-story competition...

From bombastic battle demonstrations to silent parties, a variety of events will be taking place around Pittsburgh this weekend. It’s always a good time to try something new. Find an activity to fit into your busy summer schedule here! Quiet Reading Party Haven’t managed to finish that beach read just...

Don Ammon of Monroeville grew up writing short plays performed by other children in his neighborhood. By the time he graduated from Penn-Trafford High School, he’d read all 86 of Agatha Christie’s mystery novels and was ready to move to Devonshire, England, to do exactly what Christie was doing. That...

LANSING, Mich. — Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is releasing a new memoir at a particularly fraught moment, both for herself and for the Democratic Party. Set for release Tuesday amid the frenzy over President Joe Biden’s recent debate performance, “True Gretch” won’t do much to dispel questions about her national...

NEW YORK — In the winter of 1789, around the time George Washington was elected the country’s first president, a Boston-based printer quietly launched another American institution. William Hill Brown’s “The Power of Sympathy,” published anonymously by Isaiah Thomas & Company, is widely cited as something momentous: the first American...

Douglas Cavanaugh of Millvale has been a big boxing fan since he was a kid back in the 1970s. By the early 1990s, he was deep into the sport’s history and writing about its present, getting his first story published in 1993. “I wrote about mob-controlled lightweight champion Ike Williams,...

NEW YORK — Inspired by an 18th century Scottish philosopher and the modern scourge of misinformation, Suzanne Collins is returning to the ravaged, post-apocalyptic land of Panem for a new “The Hunger Games” novel. Scholastic announced Thursday that “Sunrise on the Reaping,” the fifth volume of Collins’ blockbuster dystopian series,...

As a fourth-generation resident of Washington County’s Smith Township, author Annette Dashofy has spent her whole life in Southwestern Pennsylvania. It should come as no surprise, then, that the region’s rolling hills and bucolic countryside have served as the setting for many of her books. The latest, “What Comes Around,”...

Monroeville resident Dr. Elisa Beth Haransky-Beck holds many titles, including optometrist, wellness practitioner, consultant, coach, somatic yoga instructor, educator and speaker. She founded Sustainable Monroeville in 2009 and Vegan Spirituality-Southwest PA in 2019. Along with several organizations, such as the League of Women Voters and Protect Penn Township and Trafford,...

NEW YORK — Three years ago, Erin Decker was a middle school librarian in Kissimmee, Florida, increasingly frustrated by the state’s book bans and worried that she couldn’t make a difference remaining in her job. So, she and fellow librarian Tania Galiñanes thought of a way to fight back. “We...

LONDON — German author Jenny Erpenbeck and translator Michael Hofmann won the International Booker Prize for fiction Tuesday for “Kairos,” the story of a tangled love affair during the final years of East Germany’s existence. Erpenbeck said she hoped the book would help readers learn there was more to life...

In May 1997, an Ohio punk band called Brainiac, on the verge of exploding into popularity, saw their dreams deferred by the sudden death of frontman Tim Taylor. TribLive reporter Justin Vellucci wrote a comprehensive, engaging chronicle of the band in “Brainiac,” published by J-Card Press and available now through...

NEW YORK — Something stopped Michael McDonald from telling his story publicly — him. The Rock & Roll Hall of Famer with multiple Grammys just didn’t think he had one. McDonald, a member of both Steely Dan and The Doobie Brothers who became a singular soul solo artist with such...

Nobel laureate Alice Munro, the Canadian literary giant who became one of the world’s most esteemed contemporary authors and one of history’s most honored short story writers, has died at age 92. A spokesperson for publisher Penguin Random House Canada said Munro, winner of the Nobel literary prize in 2013,...

The biggest challenge for an author tackling the history of the Situation Room, the basement room of the White House where some of the biggest intelligence crises have been handled in recent decades, is the room itself. As a setting, it’s pretty underwhelming. In “The Situation Room: The Inside Story...

Murrysville Community Library staff wants to give local authors a chance to connect with local readers, and will host its first-ever author fair next month. “At the end of our summer reading program last year, the one thing we got a lot of was requests for more literary events,” said...

Craving music? Good food? Some shopping? Don’t let the weekend go to waste. Here are a handful of fun things to do in Pittsburgh. Pittonkatonk Get ready to enjoy some free live music without boundaries. Starting at 1 p.m. Saturday at the Vietnam Veterans Pavilion in Schenley Park, Pittonkatonk is...

NEW YORK — Stories of race, slavery and the Civil War, real and invented, were winners this year for the Pulitzer Prizes. Jayne Anne Phillips’ “Night Watch,” a mother-daughter saga set in a West Virginia asylum right after the war, was cited for fiction. Jacqueline Jones received the history prize...

Brittney Griner continues to try to settle into a normal routine after being released from a Russian prison 17 months ago. Life isn’t what it once was for the perennial WNBA All-Star. The 6-foot-8 center looks different and has different priorities. Gone are her familiar dreadlocks that couldn’t be maintained...

Lovers of reading have a chance to celebrate their favorite booksellers — and get some fun giveaways in the process — with the nationwide Independent Bookstore Day on Saturday. Independent Bookstore Day, now in its 11th year, is an event conceived by the American Booksellers Association. Participating bookstores offer giveaways,...

Having a king as a godfather is pretty cool. Just ask India Hicks — hers is King Charles III, monarch of the United Kingdom. Hicks will be in Pittsburgh as the featured guest at the On Dec 2024 presentation and luncheon sponsored by the Women’s Committee of the Carnegie Museum...

NEW YORK — In Salman Rushdie’s first book since the 2022 stabbing that hospitalized him and left him blind in one eye, the author wastes no time reliving the day he thought might be his last. “At a quarter to eleven on August 12, 2022, on a sunny Friday morning...

University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg professor Liz Jones can still remember the first time she picked up a copy of Elie Wiesel’s memoir “Night,” at 12 years old. The book’s frank descriptions of the horrors of the Holocaust would stick with her for life. “It blew me away. I was...