A Mission from God
How an epic friendship born out of quaaludes, comedy, and a shared love of R&B paved the way for The Blues Brothers
Murder, They Wrote
Revenge—served hot, cold, and everywhere in between—dominates this month’s new mystery books
Plot Twist
Six years after his blockbuster debut thriller—and a scandal about his credibility—A. J. Finn publishes his much-anticipated follow-up novel
The Beginning of Everything
Polo, parties, and the American Dream … how my grandfather inspired Fitzgerald’s Gatsby
Hitting the Ceiling
While Michelangelo’s St. Peter’s Basilica is remembered as a Renaissance masterpiece, the drama around the construction nearly stopped the project
Liar’s Poker, London–Style
How I went from the mean streets of East London to becoming the most profitable trader in the world
Sister Act
How the McLaughlin twins broke the glass ceiling of the male-dominated photography industry during the golden age of magazines
(Mid-)20th-Century Women
Ruth Orkin’s postwar photographs, collected in a new book, offer a snapshot of the modern woman navigating life in the big city
Drumming Up Sympathy
A new biography of rock legend Jim Gordon reveals how the music scene ignored his mental health struggles, then abandoned him when he snapped
Romantasy Addicts
It’s unadulterated escapism. It’s junk food for the mind. Suddenly, sales of fiction classed as both fantasy and romance are booming
Guiding Spirit
To write about Carson McCullers, the great American novelist, a biographer briefly lived in her childhood home
Weathering the Storm
The Pulitzer Prize–winning author and critic Michiko Kakutani discusses disruptive politics, the technology of the future, and her new book, The Great Wave
Romancing the Twitter Bro
The untold story of the lengths to which Twitter founder Jack Dorsey went to sway his company’s acquisition in Elon Musk’s favor