An illustrator in New York City imagines the personalities of some local bookshops and how they might be embodied.

In Lily Meyer’s first novel, “Short War,” love and family ties are tested by a nation’s upheaval.

The birth of a pioneering Black dance company comes alive in Karen Valby’s “The Swans of Harlem.”

“Liberty Equality Fashion” explores radical shifts in fashion that embodied the ideas of the French Revolution and the women who led the charge.

The writer Dolly Alderton has long had an avid following in her native England, but with her best-selling comic novel “Good Material” she’s become a trans-Atlantic success.

The decision by the free expression group came after intense criticism of its response to the war in Gaza. A wave of participants had pulled out of the festival in protest.