Doing HarmBy Kelly Parsons (St. Martin’s Press)Kelly Parsons’ highly entertaining debut delves deep into the ethics and competitiveness of the medical profession while exploring why doctors choose their careers. “Doing Harm” starts strong and never loses its momentum throughout the energetic plot infused with an intriguing look at modern medicine without being overwhelmed by the intricacies of the profession.“Doing Harm” also will scare anyone who has to go to the hospital.Steve Mitchell, the ch

Kathy Kulig was out of town for a business trip when she texted her husband, Joe.“Don’t be worried,” she wrote. “I learned to use a flogger tonight and I have a few bruises.”“Why should I be worried?” he replied.Attending a conference on bondage and sadomasochism is just business as usual for Kathy, whose latest erotic romance is “Summer Sins” (Ellora’s Cave).Her second career ― she has a day job in a medical laboratory ― has created a few relationship challenges, the Kuligs say, but not because

“I should write a book.” We’ve all heard that statement before from friends or family or co-workers. We might even have said it ourselves. We all have stories to tell, whether real or fictional.In the past, those who wrote a book faced a limited number of options: They shopped their manuscripts around to agents and editors at publishers, a process that could take years, if ever. Alternatively, they could contract with a vanity press for production that could cost them thousands of dollars. They

And the Dark Sacred NightBy Julia Glass (Pantheon)Julia Glass can really do geezers. Her sure hand with the voices and idiosyncrasies of older men is the strongest thing about “And the Dark Sacred Night,” the third in a trio of novels featuring gay Scottish bookseller Fenno McLeod. He debuted in Glass’ National Book Award-winning “Three Junes” (2002), then returned in “The Whole World Over” (2006), where he got a boyfriend, a bantering, nurturing Greenwich Village restaurant owner named Walter.N

The Age of Radiance: The Epic Rise and Dramatic Fall of the Atomic EraBy Craig Nelson (Scribner)There are few more mysterious and dangerous men in modern history than German nuclear scientist Werner Heisenberg, the man who could have given Adolf Hitler a nuclear bomb. That’s the joke behind the Heisenberg nickname for the mysterious science teacher/maniac meth cooker in “Breaking Bad.”The story that unfolds in Craig Nelson’s “The Age of Radiance” makes Walter White’s character seem laughably tam

Barbara Ehrenreich never meant to write a memoir.“It seems very self-involved,” she says by phone from her home in Arlington, Virginia. “I have anxiety about it.”That anxiety is heightened at the moment because her new book, “Living With a Wild God: A Nonbeliever‘s Search for the Truth About Everything” (Twelve, $26), is as personal a piece of writing as she has ever done, built around a journal from her teenage years that traces both a spiritual quest and a youthful mystical experience, each ha

In his scathing and deeply reported examination of the U.S. Border Patrol, Todd Miller argues that the agency has gone rogue since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, trampling on the dignity and rights of the undocumented with military-style tactics.“The U.S. Border Patrol is not just the ‘men in green,’ it is a much larger complex and industrial world that spans from robotics, engineers, salespeople and detention centers to the incoming generation of children in its Explorer programs,” Miller writ

In the U.S. debate over the Ukraine crisis, with its inward focus on which U.S. administration has been the most naive about Vladimir Putin’s intentions, it’s easy to lose sight of the recent history that led him to judge he could get away with seizing the Crimean peninsula.Former President George W. Bush famously described looking into Putin’s soul, but he failed to block Putin’s dispatch of troops to Georgia, while Republicans now blame President Barack Obama’s attempt to “reset” tense relatio

This Dark Road to MercyBy Wiley Cash (Morrow)Wiley Cash’s lyrical, poignant approach to storytelling ― an outstanding asset of his 2012 debut ― takes another leap forward in “This Dark Road to Mercy.”As he did in his first novel “A Land More Kind Than Home,” Wiley mixes crime fiction with bits of Southern Gothic for a graceful second novel that is steeped in strong characters driven by a longing to connect with each other. Using the caper ― a mystery category that often is underutilized ― Cash d

Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the TimeBy Brigid Schulte (Sarah Crichton Books/Farrar, Straus and Giroux)Remember boredom? Fifty years ago, big thinkers were wringing their hands over an oncoming age of mass boredom prompted by ever-increasing worker productivity. The Harvard Business Review fretted in 1959 that “boredom, which used to bother only aristocrats, has become a common curse.”Needless to say, the curse has lifted. These days, most of us experience boredom only in th

Popular webtoon author Yoon Tae-ho shares his life and work

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China Bridges: Living Architecture from China’s PastBy Ronald G. Knapp (Tuttle Publishing)Budding bridge engineers should look to Asia for inspiration.For thousands of years, China has built bridges for commerce, convenience and sometimes, to mark the “material achievements of emperors down through the ages,” says Ronald K. Knapp, writer of “China Bridges,” an oversized paperback coffee-table book.“Born of necessity to span streams, valleys and gorges, bridges are literally underfoot and often i

Providence RagBy Bruce DeSilva(Forge)The difference between justice and the truth can be miles apart as well as diametrically opposed to journalism ethics as Bruce DeSilva succinctly shows in his third solid novel featuring Liam Mulligan, a Providence, R.I., reporter.“Providence Rag” is an unflinching look at how doing right thing can have dire reverberations. DeSilva’s other novels, including the Edgar-winning “Rogue Island,” have shown Mulligan secure in his career as an investigative reporter

The cycling section of Powell’s Books in Portland, Oregon, is vast. And as you stand before it, as I did recently, it’s easy to split the volumes into distinct categories: before doping and after.In the first realm rest the hagiographies and how-to tomes mostly about or inspired by Lance Armstrong, including “It’s Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life,” “Lance Armstrong: Images of a Champion” and the now painfully ironic “The Lance Armstrong Performance Program: Seven Weeks to the Perfect