Books and Literature

Local Authors Take Over Local Bestseller List

Here's your weekly St. Louis bestseller list for the week ending February 17, as compiled by the St. Louis Independent Booksellers Alliance and based on sales at Left Bank Books, Main Street Books, Subterranean Books and The Book House. This week The Book House in Webster Groves begins reporting sa ... More >>

Cardinals 101: This Week's Bestseller List

Here's your weekly St. Louis bestseller list for the week ending January 20, as compiled by the St. Louis Independent Booksellers Alliance and based on sales at Left Bank Books, Main Street Books and Subterranean Books. Even though hockey's back, this is the time of year when we yearn most for bas ... More >>

There's Always a Cardinal on the St. Louis Bestseller List

Here's your weekly St. Louis bestseller list for the week ending January 6, as compiled by the St. Louis Independent Booksellers Alliance and based on sales at Left Bank Books, Main Street Books and Subterranean Books. There are some changes to the local bestseller list this week. For one thing, fo ... More >>

Your Weekly St. Louis Bestseller List

Here's your weekly St. Louis bestseller list for the week ending December 2, as compiled by the St. Louis Independent Booksellers Alliance and based on sales at Left Bank Books, Main Street Books, Pudd'nhead Books and Subterranean Books. This week, there are three books on the local St. Louis inde ... More >>

Beer Book War! Updated Anheuser-Busch Biography Available as E-Edition

Last week Riverfront Times told you about Bitter Brew, the new biography of the Busch family that comes out this month from publisher HaperCollins. But Bitter Brew isn't the first book to examine St. Louis' first family of beer, nor is it the only book about the brewer to go on sale this fall. Under ... More >>

Your Weekly St. Louis Bestseller List

Here's your weekly St. Louis bestseller list for the week ending October 21, as compiled by the St. Louis Independent Booksellers Alliance and based on sales at Left Bank Books, Main Street Books, Pudd'nhead Books and Subterranean Books. In an exciting new development in the local book world, reade ... More >>

Carry On, Carrie

Your Weekly St. Louis Bestseller List

Here's your weekly St. Louis bestseller list for the week ending October 14, as compiled by the St. Louis Independent Booksellers Alliance and based on sales at Left Bank Books, Main Street Books, Pudd'nhead Books and Subterranean Books. Sometimes the bestseller list contains random, unexplainabl ... More >>

Your Weekly St. Louis Bestseller List

Here's your weekly St. Louis bestseller list for the week ending September 16, as compiled by the St. Louis Independent Booksellers Alliance and based on sales at Left Bank Books, Main Street Books, Pudd'nhead Books and Subterranean Books. Almost exactly a year after the death of Bob Cassilly, his ... More >>

Your Weekly St. Louis Bestseller List

Here's your weekly St. Louis bestseller list for the week ending July 22, as compiled by the St. Louis Independent Booksellers Alliance and based on sales at Left Bank Books, Main Street Books, Pudd'nhead Books and Subterranean Books. When we last wrote about Cheryl Strayed, the author was about to ... More >>

Your Weekly St. Louis Bestseller List

Here's your weekly St. Louis bestseller list for the week ending July 15, as compiled by the St. Louis Independent Booksellers Alliance and based on sales at Left Bank Books, Main Street Books, Pudd'nhead Books and Subterranean Books. Could it be that St. Louisans' Hunger Games lust has been sated? ... More >>

Beyond the Hunger Games

Your Weekly St. Louis Bestseller List

Here's your weekly St. Louis bestseller list for the week ending May 27, as compiled by the St. Louis Independent Booksellers Alliance and based on sales at Left Bank Books, Main Street Books, Pudd'nhead Books, Subterranean Books and Sue's News. Fifty Shades, Fifty Shades, blah blah blah. Once aga ... More >>

Your Weekly St. Louis Bestseller List

Here's your weekly St. Louis bestseller list for the week ending April 8, as compiled by the St. Louis Independent Booksellers Alliance and based on sales at Left Bank Books, Main Street Books, Pudd'nhead Books, Subterranean Books and Sue's News. Friends, it's finally here: that book that provides ... More >>

Your Weekly St. Louis Bestseller List

Here's your weekly St. Louis bestseller list for the week ending April 1, as compiled by the St. Louis Independent Booksellers Alliance and based on sales at Left Bank Books, Main Street Books, Pudd'nhead Books, Subterranean Books and Sue's News. Last week everybody was preparing for Easter, so of ... More >>

Your Weekly St. Louis Bestseller List

Here's your weekly St. Louis bestseller list for the week ending March 25, as compiled by the St. Louis Independent Booksellers Alliance and based on sales at Left Bank Books, Main Street Books, Pudd'nhead Books, Subterranean Books and Sue's News. More than half of the titles on this week's adult ... More >>

Your Weekly St. Louis Bestseller List

​Here's your weekly St. Louis bestseller list for the week ending March 4, as compiled by the St. Louis Independent Booksellers Alliance and based on sales at Left Bank Books, Main Street Books, Pudd'nhead Books, Subterranean Books and Sue's News. St. Louisans are apparently in a vengeful mood. G ... More >>

Your Weekly St. Louis Bestseller List

​Here's your weekly St. Louis bestseller list for the week ending February 26, as compiled by the St. Louis Independent Booksellers Alliance and based on sales at Left Bank Books, Main Street Books, Pudd'nhead Books, Subterranean Books and Sue's News. It never really got cold enough this year to ... More >>

Marvel v. Local Comic Book Writer: Who Has Rights to Ghost Rider?

image viaNever mind if he's dead or alive, who the hell gets the money he's making?​Sometime in the late 1960s, a Missouri-born comic book writer named Gary Friedrich came up with a new character: Ghost Rider, a motorcycle stunt rider who sold his soul to the devil and consequently exchanged h ... More >>

Your Weekly St. Louis Bestseller List

Here's your weekly St. Louis bestseller list for the week ending January 8, as compiled by the St. Louis Independent Booksellers Alliance and based on sales at Left Bank Books, Main Street Books, Pudd'nhead Books, Subterranean Books and Sue's News. Bob Reuter's got a band (Alley Ghost), a radio sh ... More >>

Your Weekly St. Louis Bestseller List

​Here's your weekly St. Louis bestseller list for the week ending October 30, as compiled by the St. Louis Independent Booksellers Alliance and based on sales at Left Bank Books, Main Street Books, Pudd'nhead Books, Subterranean Books and Sue's News. Unbelievable as it may sound, on this wee ... More >>

Your Weekly St. Louis Bestseller List

​Here's your weekly St. Louis bestseller list for the week ending October 23, as compiled by the St. Louis Independent Booksellers Alliance and based on sales at Left Bank Books, Main Street Books, Pudd'nhead Books, Subterranean Books and Sue's News. It's been a good week for St. Louisans -- ... More >>

Your Weekly St. Louis Bestseller List

​Here's your weekly St. Louis bestseller list for the week ending October 16, as compiled by the St. Louis Independent Booksellers Alliance and based on sales at Left Bank Books, Main Street Books, Pudd'nhead Books, Subterranean Books and Sue's News. Hey, look, it's Freedom! Back again, in it ... More >>

Your Weekly St. Louis Bestseller List

​Here's your weekly St. Louis bestseller list for the week ending September 11, as compiled by the St. Louis Independent Booksellers Alliance and based on sales at Left Bank Books, Main Street Books, Pudd'nhead Books, Subterranean Books and Sue's News. It's so good to see people planning ahe ... More >>

Author Bonnie Jo Campbell Talks About Hunting, Shooting and Once Upon a River

image viaBonnie Jo Campbell​Bonnie Jo Campbell will be in town tonight to help kick off this year's River Styx reading series at Duff's. (It starts at 7:30.) You should go. This may be your last chance to see Campbell up close and personal and buy her a beer before she becomes really, really f ... More >>

Implicated By Their Own Words

Your Weekly St. Louis Bestseller List

​Here's your weekly St. Louis bestseller list for the week ending July 31, as compiled by the St. Louis Independent Booksellers Alliance and based on sales at Left Bank Books, Main Street Books, Pudd'nhead Books, Subterranean Books and Sue's News. One of the subsidiary functions of the local ... More >>

Your Weekly St. Louis Bestseller List

This week's number five adult bestseller, the work of a couple of St. Louis cops.​Here's your weekly St. Louis bestseller list for the week ending July 24, as compiled by the St. Louis Independent Booksellers Alliance and based on sales at Left Bank Books, Main Street Books, Pudd'nhead Books, ... More >>

Your Weekly St. Louis Bestseller List

Is this a solution for the parents in Go the Fuck to Sleep?​Here's your weekly St. Louis bestseller list for the week ending July 3, as compiled by the St. Louis Independent Booksellers Alliance and based on sales at Left Bank Books, Main Street Books, Pudd'nhead Books, Subterranean Books and ... More >>

Your Weekly St. Louis Bestseller List

​Here's your weekly St. Louis bestseller list for the week ending April 10, as compiled by the St. Louis Independent Booksellers Alliance and based on sales at Left Bank Books, Main Street Books, Pudd'nhead Books, Subterranean Books, Sue's News and The Book House. Amazingly, there were some ... More >>

Your Weekly St. Louis Bestseller List

Not just a New York Times bestseller, but a St. Louis bestseller, too!​Here's your weekly St. Louis bestseller list for the week ending April 3, as compiled by the St. Louis Independent Booksellers Alliance and based on sales at Left Bank Books, Main Street Books, Pudd'nhead Books, Subterranea ... More >>

Band of Bookstores: Facing extinction, indies unite to show us everything they bring to St. Louis that Amazon can't

Publisher Attempts to Limit E-Book Circulation, Libraries Fight Back

image via​It's a brave new electronic world we live in, where blogs like this one that you're reading have replaced daily newspapers, e-mail and Facebook updates have replaced letters and phone calls and the heavy stacks of textbooks that used to weigh down schoolkids may now be replaced with ... More >>

Left Bank, Subterranean Books Now Selling Google eBooks

​As of this morning, two of St. Louis's proudly independent bookstores have joined in the digital revolution: Subterranean Books in the Delmar Loop and Left Bank Books in the Central West End and downtown are now offering Google eBooks on their respective websites. Both stores have been selli ... More >>

A Century After His Death, Twain is Back Atop of the Best-Seller List

image via​October has been a rough month for Jonathan Franzen. First his glasses got stolen. Then he didn't get nominated for the National Book Award. And now Freedom has been overtaken and surpassed on the Amazon best-seller list by volume one of The Autobiography of Mark Twain. Yeah, Franzen ... More >>

Even Oprah Must Concede That Franzen Reigns Supreme

​Even Queen Oprah must bow down to the overpowering literary force that is Freedom. Although she doesn't plan to reveal her new book club selection till tomorrow's show, the Associated Press reports that the Queen of Talk, like everyone else (except the Washington Post's Ron Charles) thinks Jo ... More >>

Jonathan Franzen Deserves the Freedom Hype

Every writer hates a winner. And so with Jonathan Franzen's new novel earning raves from just about everybody who matters in American letters, we've been subjected to the predictable envious backlash about how Franzen is overrated (and annoying), how middle-aged white guys get preferential treatment ... More >>

Forget Freedom (For Now): Other Books Are Just As Worthy

image via​Someday I'll read Freedom. I'm currently 113th on the waiting list at University City Library. Maybe Sarah will lend me her copy in an attempt to convert me to Freedom-dom. I suppose I could go out and buy a copy. But $28 is a pretty steep price to pay for a hardcover, especially for on ... More >>

From Mark Twain to Jonathan Franzen, St. Louis has been home to a surprising number of great writers

Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print, and Power

Columbia Named 17th Most Romantic City in America

flickr.com/photos/ryangladstonephoto Stuff like this happens in Columbia every day! That's what makes it one of the most romantic cities in America.​Some shocking news from Amazon.com: The most romantic city in Missouri is...Columbia. Yep. The home of the University of Missouri ranks 17th i ... More >>

St. Louis Short Story Writer Joe Schwartz Now Giving It Up for Free

lulu.com​That's his work, you dirty-minded fools.Joe Schwartz, as some of you may recall, is an employee of the St. Louis Public Library who self-published his first short story collection Joe's Black T-Shirt: Short Stories About St. Louis last August. He planned to sell the book at readings aroun ... More >>

The Value of Batman

One More Food Book for 2009

​In yesterday's list of the ten most essential books in my development as a food writer, I mentioned that I'm so behind in my reading that I can recommend only two books published in 2009: the Momofuku cookbook and Westword restaurant critic Jason Sheehan's memoir, Cooking Dirty. A crippling brain ... More >>

Pearson in Person

Lit Up: Keisha Ervin's gritty tales of the St. Louis streets have made her one of the nation's hottest purveyors of urban fiction

Augusten Burroughs

President Jimmy Carter

Leon examines cures for writer's block

Eileen Favorite