For the novelist Rebecca Makkai, writing blurbs had become nearly a full-time job. She explains why blurbs matter — and why ...

After fierce online bidding wars for vintage copies of “Entertaining,” a homemaking classic from 1982, the publisher decides to put it back in stores.

Jon Kalman Stefansson’s novel “Heaven and Hell” recounts a 19th-century fishing trip and its aftermath. John Self is a book ...