This Week in Calendar

The following reviews are scheduled:

Martin Rubin reviews “Uncommon Arrangements: Seven Portraits of Married Life in London Literary Circles 1910-1939” by Katie Roiphe.

Paula L. Woods reviews “New England White,”

a novel by Stephen L. Carter.

Tim Rutten reviews “Off the Record: The Press, the Government, and the War Over Anonymous Sources” by Norman Pearlstine.

Richard Fausset reviews “Redemption Song: The Ballad of Joe Strummer” by Chris Salewicz.

Patt Morrison reviews “Sammy’s House,” a novel by Kristin Gore.

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On the Web

This week at latimes.com/books, Richard Rayner looks at perhaps the quintessential paperback writer, Robin Cook -- no, not that Robin Cook -- an upper-crust British writer and petty criminal of the 1960s who wrote bleak comedies of manners and then disappeared, only to discover upon his return in the early 1980s that his name had been co-opted by the writer to whom he referred as “the ‘Coma’ bloke.” Cook did not come back healthy; he was a prodigious drinker, pallid and skeletal, with a bitterly existential outlook. His particular perspective can be found in a series of hard-boiled novels that he wrote under the pseudonym of Derek Raymond -- police procedurals that untangle the conventions of the form.

Also on the Web, look for expanded bestsellers and listings of local literary events, as well as “Jacket Copy,” our books and publishing information blog.