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New guide goes from Arrowhead to Yuca

Eats roots and leaves
If you want to eat more local produce come winter in Maine, you have to learn to love root vegetables.

By: LAURA MCCANDLISH | February 13, 2013

Roorbach’s newest book tastes of envy, mystery

Crossing the divide
Secrets and food and celebrity and bodies. These are the subjects of Maine author Bill Roorbach's new novel, Life Among Giants, a literary mystery with a tinge of soap-opera sudsiness.

By: DEIRDRE FULTON | January 30, 2013

USM prof: Teaching is about spirit, not data

The turning of souls
Making an impassioned plea for humanistic considerations to remain paramount in our societal discussion about education and its continual improvement, University of Southern Maine philosophy professor Jeremiah Conway follows his own advice.

By: JEFF INGLIS | January 23, 2013

Local suspense novel conjures summertime

Mysterious strangers
If these chilly winter days have you dreaming of sunbathing on the beach, a new mystery novel by Maine author Josh Pahigian could be just the thing to turn up the heat.

By: DEIRDRE FULTON | January 23, 2013

Bipolar and off the leash of meds: Juliann Garey's Too Bright to Hear Too Loud to See

Juliann Garey's debut novel begins with its narrator doing something unforgivable.

By: LISA WEIDENFELD | January 08, 2013

Kate beyond time: The Kate Moss Book

Almost all models who achieve some degree of fame find themselves blamed for whatever agenda their era's most vocal scold happens to be pushing.

By: CHARLES TAYLOR | January 08, 2013

Bipolar Babies: Leonard Cohen and Rod Stewart in misery and delight

GIFT GUIDE 2012
"Every night and every morn," wrote William Blake one afternoon in 1803, "some to misery are born."

By: JAMES PARKER | December 05, 2012

Musical literary stocking stuffers

GIFT GUIDE 2012
The choices for books by and about rock stars are almost endless this season. Here are a few.

By: DANIEL BROCKMAN | December 05, 2012

Matthew Guerrieri on duh duh duh DUM

In The First Four Notes: Beethoven's Fifth and the Human Imagination (Knopf), Matthew Guerrieri, music critic for the Boston Globe , calls the iconic duh duh duh DUM opening "short enough to remember and portentous enough to be memorable."

By: DEBRA CASH | December 05, 2012

A new book about Antarctic cuisine satisfies foodies and historians alike

Eat before it gets cold
As you nurse your post-Thanksgiving food coma back to normality, spare a thought for the men and women in Antarctica this holiday season. They're warm, well-fed, and happy (if really far from family) — but it wasn't always this way.

By: JEFF INGLIS | November 28, 2012

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Review: Dylan Jones's 'Biographical Dictionary of Popular Music'

In the modern world of Wiki and the Interweb, if you're going to produce an actual print-edition dictionary of pop music, you'd better frontload it with attitude.

By: JON GARELICK | November 08, 2012

YA novel explores the refugee experience in Portland

‘A tongue gives you power’
I wish every teenager — nay, every person — in Portland could read Terry Farish's new book, The Good Braider (Marshall Cavendish/Amazon Children's Publishing).

By: DEIRDRE FULTON | November 07, 2012

Bright lights, no city

What the poorest of the poor can teach the rest of us
I never cared about Africa. I never wanted to join the Peace Corps, raft the Zambezi, haggle in Fez or climb Kilimanjaro.

By: MAX ALEXANDER | August 22, 2012

Considering Monica Wood’s heartfelt memoir

Another Maine, another time
It's April, 1963, in Mexico, Maine — a town on the Androscoggin River in the Western part of the state.

By: DEIRDRE FULTON | July 03, 2012

Seating Arrangements tackles propriety, love, and whales

Island adventure
Winn Van Meter, the patriarch of the WASP-y New England family portrayed in Maggie Shipstead's debut novel Seating Arrangements, likes things just so.

By: DEIRDRE FULTON | July 03, 2012

Richard Russo pairs with his artist daughter

Marrying story + art
When the biggest news in the literary community is that the federal Department of Justice is suing Apple and five major publishing houses for fixing prices of e-books, or that the Pulitzer Prize for fiction went to exactly no one this year, it's easy to wonder whether we're getting away from the primary purpose of writing, and reading, books.

By: DEIRDRE FULTON | May 02, 2012