Los Angeles magazine called it 'aggressively mediocre,' but its simple food and family-style seating reminded me of my Queens childhood.

Steph Cha doesn't expect much in the way of good crime fiction to spring from the coronavirus outbreak.

As are bread and milk, gas and aspirin, alcohol and marijuana, books should be available, with safety precautions in place, at the usual places we buy them in our neighborhoods.

Eric Nusbaum's "Stealing Home" follows a family displaced from Chavez Ravine, where Dodger Stadium was built.

In his new book, Colton Underwood — who was recently diagnosed with coronavirus — talks about being manipulated by producers on "The Bachelor."

César Aira's latest novel, "Artforum," is about the art magazine and also the universe

"Harry Potter" mastermind J.K. Rowling has launched a new website called "Harry Potter at Home" to help distract families from the coronavirus crisis.

"Apropos of Nothing" is a mixed bag of rich memories, harsh defenses and tone-deaf reveries.

Author James Patterson is donating $500,000 to help indie bookstores across the country. For many L.A. booksellers, that could be a life saver.

Patricia Bosworth, an actor who went on to chronicle lives including Jane Fonda's, Marlon Brando's and her own, died from coronavirus. She was 86.

Winners of the L.A. Times Book Prizes will be announced in a special, virtual Twitter ceremony this year because of the global health crisis.

Recipe: Writer turns to Fanny Singer's "Always Home" for comfort chicken during family's Seder.

Jenn Shapland's "My Autobiography of Carson McCullers" and Mark Doty's "What Is the Grass," about Walt Whitman, are hybrid memoir-biographies.

The author of "Nothing to See Here" enjoys BennY RevivaL, furniture-breaking wrestling moves and lots of books in his quarantine diary.

In "Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties," Mike Davis and Jon Wiener track the uprisings, outrages and elections that shaped the city.

The best series of books in four categories — including highbrow ('Wolf Hall'), L.A. favorites (Easy Rollins) and epic histories (Taylor Branch).

In "The World Without Us," Alan Weisman imagined how the Earth would look if humans vanished. Is the COVID-19 lockdown making that a reality?

Read "Attack on Titan," "Somali & the Forest Spirit," "Fire Force," "Arte" and more with Mangamo, a new mobile manga subscription service.

Thomson, the author of dozens of books including "The Biographical Dictionary of Film," binges on "Ozark" and Godard but finds "L'Avventura" a drag.

Paulette Jiles delighted with her convention-breaking western romance, 'News of the World.' Her follow-up, 'Simon the Fiddler,' is just old-fashioned.

The 14 Times book prize winners, including Steph Cha, Namwali Serpell, Marlon James and George Packer, were honored in a virtual ceremony on Twitter.

Former First Lady Michelle Obama will be reading children's books in a weekly series of videos for Penguin Random House and PBS Kids through May 11.

In Rufi Thorpe's novel, a poor, closeted teenager befriends a wealthy girl, until an act of violence lays their class distinctions bare.

Blake Gopnik's definitive 'Warhol' gathers up all the receipts on the blank icon who stormed the barricades of art, only to serve it up to commerce.

'Always Home' author Fanny Singer worries more about running out of garlic than toilet paper.

Nick Capizzi and Jenny Yang founded A Good Used Book in 2018 as an itinerant book-browsing mecca. Now they're surviving on hope and Instagram.

Rishi Reddi's "Passage West" plumbs an important story of Indian immigrant farmers, but isn't quite up to the task as fiction

Nina Renata Aron's memoir, "Good Morning, Destroyer of Men's Souls," doubles as an ennobling history of recovering enablers of addiction.

Walter Thompson-Hernández's "The Compton Cowboys: The New Generation of Cowboys in America's Urban Heartland" tells a grand story in granular detail.

In 'Scandinavian Noir: In Pursuit of a Mystery,' the critic travels to Nordic cities to investigate the society that shaped a global phenomenon.

In an excerpt from "Scandinavian Noir: In Pursuit of a Mystery," the essayist Wendy Lasser recommends her favorite writers in the booming genre.

Gov. Newsom has taken to calling California a "nation-state" when discussing its efforts to fight the coronavirus. Constitutionally, that's not true.

Laguna Woods residents express dismay at their neighbors' opposition to using a nearby hotel as housing for homeless coronavirus patients.

Local hotels have repurposed thousands of rooms for use by medical professionals and homeless people during the coronavirus pandemic.

Screening a sample of the population to see who has been infected with COVID-19 and who hasn't is a huge step forward in returning to normal life.

America's optimism may have blinded it to the coronavirus. Now, with suffering a part of our daily life, we have a chance to become a mature nation.

Easing sanctions on Iran, hard hit by the coronavirus, would be a humanitarian act that reminds the world of what America truly is.

Trump can't 'reopen' the economy, but Republican governors can follow his lead. If they do, Newsom must continue to protect Californians.

Warning memos were written. Research was funded. But what good is any of this if American leaders fail to act?

Trump justifies his actions on coronavirus by saying he's a businessman who doesn't like having a lot of employees. But government is not a business.

Clean energy wants a level playing field with fossil fuels and nuclear power. It needs government funding for that to happen.

A writer criticized atheist activist Ron Reagan. In a sign of the times, that letter drew howls of protest from readers.

People who blame the president for failing to prepare the country ignore an important fact: We didn't want to believe America was vulnerable to COVID-19.

A program for one-time assistance to undocumented workers affected by the pandemic is a start, but California must do much more.

The Postal Service is as important to the United States as its language and its highways. Losing it would forever change the country for the worse.

No Democratic candidates called for social distancing before Super Tuesday, and now the left is Monday-morning quarterbacking the president.

Governments across the U.S. have simply not saved enough to deal with coronavirus-induced budget shortfalls. They need to start taxing the rich more.

Even when he was being impeached, Trump still had a job to do. Nothing justifies his failure to take early action against the coronavirus.

The study authors are reckless to say we need to "recalibrate" public health approaches because the actual COVID-19 mortality rate might be lower.

A 2006 law requiring the Postal Service to pre-fund future retirees' health benefits has accelerated the agency's financial decline.