Books and Literature

Get Your Spooky Kicks

Disappearing Ink: What will happen to all the books?

This Week's Local Bestseller List: See the Play, Buy the Book

Here's your weekly St. Louis bestseller list for the week ending January 27, as compiled by the St. Louis Independent Booksellers Alliance and based on sales at Left Bank Books, Main Street Books and Subterranean Books. For the first time ever, one of the top books on the local bestseller list has ... More >>

New and Self-Improving: This Week's Bestseller List

Here's your weekly St. Louis bestseller list for the week ending January 13, as compiled by the St. Louis Independent Booksellers Alliance and based on sales at Left Bank Books, Main Street Books and Subterranean Books. Just as January is the time for eating brown rice and kale and going back to t ... More >>

Your Weekly St. Louis Bestseller List

Here's your weekly St. Louis bestseller list for the week ending December 30, 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's bestseller list displays the effects of final-de ... More >>

Your Weekly St. Louis Bestseller List

Here's your weekly St. Louis bestseller list for the week ending December 23, 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. You have seen almost all these books on the bestseller list ... More >>

Your Weekly St. Louis Bestseller List

Here's your weekly St. Louis bestseller list for the week ending December 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. Do you want to know what your fellow St. Louisans got for Ch ... More >>

Your Weekly St. Louis Bestseller List

Here's your weekly St. Louis bestseller list for the week ending December 9, 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. According to the Mayan calendar, the world's about to end thi ... More >>

Your Weekly St. Louis Bestseller List

Here's your weekly St. Louis bestseller list for the week ending November 25, 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's bestseller list proves that Cardinals baseball a ... More >>

Your Weekly St. Louis Bestseller List

Here's your weekly St. Louis bestseller list for the week ending October 28, 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. St. Louisans, you have made I Could Pee On This: And Other Po ... More >>

Your Weekly St. Louis Bestseller List

Here's your weekly St. Louis bestseller list for the week ending September 23, 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 talk about the Lewis and Clark expedition, we talk ... More >>

Your Weekly St. Louis Bestseller List

Here's your weekly St. Louis bestseller list for the week ending September 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. We may not have been as clear as we could have been, but we' ... More >>

Your Weekly St. Louis Bestseller List

Here's your weekly St. Louis bestseller list for the week ending August 19, 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. Dear readers of St. Louis, Holy crap! You've finally done it ... More >>

Your Weekly St. Louis Bestseller List

Here's your weekly St. Louis bestseller list for the week ending August 5, 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. At numbers 5 and 6 on this week's local bestseller list are deb ... More >>

Recycled Reads

Your Weekly St. Louis Bestseller List

Here's your weekly St. Louis bestseller list for the week ending July 29, 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. A couple of weeks ago, we checked in with DW Gibson, who was pa ... More >>

Enter Gut Check's "Drawing" to Win an Awesome Spider-Man Prize Pack from Hardee's

The Amazing Spider-Man -- this summer's comic-book movie spectacular that isn't The Avengers or The Dark Knight Rises -- opens on July 3. That means the Spider-Man promotional machine is kicking into high gear. Locally, the Hardee's at 2110 Hampton Avenue will host a Spider-Man event from 2-4 p.m. ... More >>

Your Weekly St. Louis Bestseller List

Here's your weekly St. Louis bestseller list for the week ending May 20, 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. Publishers must be eternally grateful for the advent ... More >>

Your Weekly St. Louis Bestseller List

Here's your weekly St. Louis bestseller list for the week ending May 13, 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. Following the ancient St. Louis precept that high sch ... More >>

Your Weekly St. Louis Bestseller List

Here's your weekly St. Louis bestseller list for the week ending May 6, 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. The Heart and the Fist, we think, would be a great ti ... More >>

Your Weekly St. Louis Bestseller List

Here's your weekly St. Louis bestseller list for the week ending April 29, 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 a pity Jean Carnahan decided not to call her ... More >>

Your Weekly St. Louis Bestseller List

Here's your weekly St. Louis bestseller list for the week ending April 15, 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. Maybe it's the beginning of baseball season, or the ... More >>

With The Might Have Been, rookie novelist and Webster U prof Joe Schuster hits one out of the park at age 59

Your Weekly St. Louis Bestseller List

Here's your weekly St. Louis bestseller list for the week ending February 12, 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 was a fine week on the bestseller list for St ... More >>

What the Dickens?! For Kids!

​John Hendrix makes a living creating illustrations and covers for periodicals such as the New York Times and Rolling Stone. It's a difficult field to break into, and it's just as difficult to maintain one's standing because you have to keep producing at a steady rate. "Sometimes you get a call at ... More >>

Your Weekly St. Louis Bestseller List

Read it and weep. Like, a lot.​Here's your weekly St. Louis bestseller list for the week ending January 15, 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. The children ... More >>

Your Weekly St. Louis Bestseller List

Here's your weekly St. Louis bestseller list for the week ending January 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. The bestseller list for the last week of 2011 is o ... More >>

Your Weekly St. Louis Bestseller List

Here's your weekly St. Louis bestseller list for the week ending December 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. Amanda Doyle's Finally, A Locally Produced Guide ... More >>

Your Weekly St. Louis Bestseller List

​Here's your weekly St. Louis bestseller list for the week ending December 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. Despite Amazon, e-books and the crappy e ... More >>

Your Weekly St. Louis Bestseller List

Here's your weekly St. Louis bestseller list for the week ending November 20, 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 took a month, but The Year of the St. Louis C ... More >>

Your Weekly St. Louis Bestseller List

Here's your weekly St. Louis bestseller list for the week ending November 13, 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. Sometimes the bestseller list has a sense of hum ... More >>

Your Weekly St. Louis Bestseller List

image viaJohn Hodgman: barefoot sage of the Mad Art Gallery.​Here's your weekly St. Louis bestseller list for the week ending November 6, 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 ... More >>

Your Weekly St. Louis Bestseller List

​Here's your weekly St. Louis bestseller list for the week ending October 9, 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. We don't know of any other author for young ... More >>

Your Weekly St. Louis Bestseller List

Here's your weekly St. Louis bestseller list for the week ending October 2, 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. There are plenty of new titles on this week's adu ... More >>

Your Weekly St. Louis Bestseller List

Of course, not all Bouchercon attendees were out-of-towners. Local Laurell K. Hamilton was there, too, with her latest Anita Blake novel.​Here's your weekly St. Louis bestseller list for the week ending September 18, as compiled by the St. Louis Independent Booksellers Alliance and based on sa ... More >>

The Inverted Forest -- New Novel by St. Louis Author John Dalton -- Hits Stores Today

St. Louis author John Dalton's second novel comes out today to advance praise from critics.​Somewhere in the next room, John Dalton's two daughters are watching Curious George cartoons as he explains his next project, a book that he frequently refers to as "strange and dark." It took the St. L ... More >>

Your Weekly St. Louis Bestseller List

Look, Dad, you actually can get ahead in life if you have stupid-looking hair.​Here's your weekly St. Louis bestseller list for the week ending May 29, as compiled by the St. Louis Independent Booksellers Alliance and based on sales at Left Bank Books, Main Street Books, Pudd'nhead Books, Subt ... More >>

Your Weekly St. Louis Bestseller List

The perfect Memorial Day gift for your favorite vet!​Here's your weekly St. Louis bestseller list for the week ending May 22, 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 N ... More >>

Your Weekly St. Louis Bestseller List

​​Here's your weekly St. Louis bestseller list for the week ending May 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. This week's St. Louis bestseller list is pa ... More >>

Interview: Sammy Hagar Autobiography Co-Writer Joel Selvin on Montrose and Why Sammy's an Ideal Subject

​In part one of our interview with Joel Selvin, co-author of Sammy Hagar's new autobiography Red: My Uncensored Life in Rock, we talked about the early years of Sammy's career and one memorable incident in which Selvin's home phone number became very public. Here's the second part o ... More >>

Your Weekly St. Louis Bestseller List

​Here's your  weekly St. Louis bestseller list for the week ending March 6, 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. This week, the adult and children's best ... More >>

After the Loving

Don DeLillo Accepts St. Louis University Literary Award

Image viaDon DeLillo​Don DeLillo hearkened back to his days as a student at Fordham University in New York City as he accepted St. Louis University's annual Literary Award late Thursday afternoon. It was at Fordham, said the 73-year-old novelist, that he learned an important lesson: "There's no es ... More >>

Adam Levin Talks About The Instructions

​The Instructions is the best 1,030-page book about a super-brilliant, super-violent ten-year-old with Messianic tendencies that you're going to read this year. (It doesn't matter that there probably aren't that many others.) This first novel by Adam Levin has been touted as the literary love ... More >>

Carl Phillips Named National Book Award Finalist

Jennifer SilverbergPhillips and Andy.​Carl Phillips, a Washington University professor, has been named a finalist for the National Book Award in poetry for his latest collection, Speak Low. This is Phillips' third National Book Award nomination. The awards ceremony will take place November 18 in N ... More >>

Mistress of Horror: Nobody writes vampire novels the way St. Louis' Laurell K. Hamilton does – and yes, there's lots of sex

Fowler Play

Hillbilly Noir

The literary world is abuzz over Daniel Woodrell, bard of the Ozarks.

Book Me, Dan-O

READING AT THE TABLE