Books

Alex Berenson is a former reporter for The New York Times, for which he covered subjects ranging from Iraq to Hurricane Katrina to the drug industry. His newest book, “Tell Your Children: The Truth About Marijuana, Mental Illness, and Violence,” is the culmination of his conclusions on the latter, contextualized with research pulled from multiple disciplines. But while his research seems thorough, and he has clearly made up his own mind, the book itself leaves a lot to be desired for such a controversial topic.

The White Hart Speakers Series in conjunction with Oblong Books and the Scoville Memorial Library will present Jonathan Burnham Schwartz reading from his new book “The Red Daughter,” a sweeping historical novel and unexpected love story inspired by the remarkable life of Svetlana Alliluyeva, the only daughter of Joseph Stalin.  Novelist John Burnham Schwartz’s father was the young lawyer who escorted Alliluyeva to the United States after she defected in 1967. 

Sarah and David, the teenage protagonists of Susan Choi’s new novel “Trust Exercise,” have the kind of tumultuous connection that begs recognition, even when they are trying to avoid it themselves. Their unpredictable acting teacher Mr. Kingsley delights in bringing that tension to the forefront of his classes.

Mary Norris’s new book, “Greek to Me: Adventures of the Comma Queen,” takes readers on a personal voyage across the wine-dark seas of Greek history, mythology, geography and especially etymology, a word that derives from the Greek ἐτυµολογία (etumología), itself from ἔτυµον (étumon), meaning “true sense,” and the suffix -logia, denoting “the study of.”