This Week in Calendar

Tod Goldberg reviews “The Jew of Home Depot and Other Stories” by Max Apple.

Denise Hamilton reviews “Entering Hades: The Double Life of a Serial Killer” by John Leake.

Tim Rutten reviews “Ad Infinitum: A Biography of Latin” by Nicholas Ostler.

The following reviews are scheduled:

Fred Schruers reviews “The Star Machine” by Jeanine Basinger.

Regina Marler reviews “A Romanov Fantasy: Life at the Court of Anna Anderson” by Frances Welch.

Martin Rubin reviews “The Letters of Noel Coward,” edited by Barry Day.

On the Web

This week at latimes.com/books:

In her Dark Passages column, Sarah Weinman looks at the relationship between crime fiction and alcohol, which have gone together since the days of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. Here, Weinman focuses on “Snitch Jacket,” the first novel by Los Angeles Times reporter Christopher Goffard, which revolves, in part, around a Southern California bar called the Greasy Tuesday. For Goffard, the Greasy Tuesday is not just a setting but also its own odd kind of moral universe; his narrator, a petty criminal named Benny Bunt, uses it as a base of operations from which to rat out his friends. The result, Weinman suggests, is a book in which lies mingle with “stone-righteous veracity,” much as they do in the Greasy Tuesday itself.

Lists and blog: Look for expanded bestseller lists, book excerpts and our guide to local literary events, as well as Jacket Copy, our books and publishing information blog, at latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacket copy.