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Past and Presents

Dollhouses, paper angels, fir trees … A new coffee-table book looks back at a century of holiday photographs from around the world

The Queen of Caricature

Before Nora Ephron and Gay Talese, there was Kate Carew, a cartoonist who sat down with everyone from Mark Twain to Picasso

AIR MAIL’s 10 Best Mystery Books of 2024

Death and deceit in Ireland from Tana French and John Banville! An L.A.P.D. cold case! A wicked widow! And much more …

AIR MAIL’s Best Coffee-Table Books of 2024

Dazzling volumes on Rosario Candela’s New York City penthouses and David Hockney’s works on paper, plus photography collections from Ernest Cole, Eve Arnold, and Ruth Orkin and a look inside an Italian home or two

Deadly Pleasures to Read and Watch

Hunker down with the holiday season’s best mysteries

Nicholas Knucklehead

AIR MAIL’s 10 Best Books of 2024

Percival Everett’s twist on Huckleberry Finn; biographies of Reagan and Isherwood, Didion, and Babitz; and more holiday reading for every type

The Anti–Mitford Sisters

Concrete Jungles

From Marcel Breuer’s early modernist designs to Le Corbusier’s pocket gardens, two new books speak to the enduring allure of brutalism

How to Write like Harlan Coben

The best-selling author shares the tricks he uses to craft a page-turner—from conjuring up villains to landing the big ending

A Boy’s Best Friend …

At Andy Warhol’s suggestion—“she’s so-o-o interesting”—a biographer pulls back the curtain on the artist’s mother, an unsung painter in her own right

Pretty Women

Editor’s Picks

This week, don’t miss a history of George Frideric Handel’s popular Christmas oratorio, an examination of old age in America, and an artist’s collection of stories and paintings

Out for Bloody Babs

Giant Girls Don’t Cry

Edna Ferber’s great-niece pulls back the curtain on the Pulitzer Prize–winning writer’s personal life—and the sacrifices she made for her craft

America’s Sweethearts

A new coffee-table book presents a visual history of the United States from the 1940s to today, courtesy of Magnum photographers

A Turk’s Progress

The Decline and Fall of the Campus Novel

Kingsley Amis, Evelyn Waugh, and Tom Sharpe used universities as their preferred vehicle for satire. But are modern colleges too ridiculous to parody?

The Ayatollah and the de Kooning

The Argo-like story of the top-secret, high-stakes trade of a priceless illustrated manuscript for a modern masterwork

Down and Dirty On the Waterfront

How the classic film, made in the wake of the McCarthy-era Red-hunting trials, pitted director Elia Kazan against star Marlon Brando

The Pages of Sin

The prolific crime-writing legend David Baldacci discusses his feud with Lee Child, his jaundiced view of American justice, and his latest—his 54th!—thriller

We’ll Always Have the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade

Paul Frank rockets, Hello Kitty planes, SpongeBob Santas … Elizabeth Kahane’s photos of the New York mainstay, taken from her third-floor window over the last 25 years, are collected in a festive coffee-table book

Light-Bulb Moments

Don’t Touch That Dial!