Books

KPBS Midday Edition

'Crime and Punishment' as a comedy?

Beth Accomando

Dostoevsky's epic novel about murder, morality and suffering is now a 90-minute comic romp at The Globe.
Arts & Culture

San Diego weekend arts events: Garden dance, Small Press Nite and shoegaze

Julia Dixon Evans

This weekend in the arts: Movement art, dreamy shoegaze at Soda Bar, Thomas Adés, Cheryl Tall, Small Press Nite readings, "Phantom of the Opera," and more.
A new take on 'Pride and Prejudice' brings readers to 2000s New York Chinatown

Kai McNamee

By recasting the Bennets as a Cantonese, working-class immigrant family, C.K. Chau hopes to fill a gap in the Pride and Prejudice canon.
After the death of his wife, actor Richard E. Grant vowed to find joy every day

Tonya Mosley

Grant was married to Joan Washington, an acclaimed dialect coach, for 35 years. He writes about their relationship and her death from cancer in the new memoir A Pocketful of Happiness.
Feast on 'Sofreh' — a book that celebrates Persian cooking, past and future

Bilal Qureshi

Sofreh is a new cookbook from celebrated chef and author Nasim Alikhani. "If we as immigrants become stuck in the past, we deprive ourselves of the opportunities our new space has provided," she says.
In 'Family Lore,' award-winning YA author Elizabeth Acevedo turns to adult readers

Isabella Gomez Sarmiento

A winner of the National Book Award for Young People's Literature is out with a debut novel for adults. Elizabeth Acevedo's Family Lore is about sisterhood and memory in a Dominican-American family.
Arts & Culture

San Diego weekend arts events: SummerFest, paper theaters and free Shakespeare

Julia Dixon Evans

This weekend in the arts: Bad Vibes Good Friends Music and Art Festival; free Shakespeare at Southwestern College; Tom Driscoll's tiny found sculptures; miniature toy theaters and a big celebration of chamber music — "The most intimate form of music making."
Crime writer S.A. Cosby loves the South — and is haunted by it

Sam Briger

Cosby's novel All the Sinners Bleed centers on a Black sheriff in a small Southeast Virginia county. The novel was inspired by his own experiences growing up in the shadow of the Confederacy.
In 'Someone Who Isn't Me,' Geoff Rickly recounts the struggles of some other singer

Jason Heller

Rickly's first book is a solid and promising literary debut. He's a natural, albeit a germinal one. He is best known as a singer and songwriter of the rock band Thursday.
Trumpet was too loud, clarinet was too soft — here's 'The Story of the Saxophone'

Samantha Balaban

A shared love of jazz led author Lesa Cline-Ransome and illustrator James Ransome to discover inventor Antoine-Joseph "Adolphe" Sax and the instrument named after him.