This Week in Calendar

Monday

Bernadette Murphy reviews “The Big Turnoff: Confessions of a TV-Addicted Mom Trying to Raise a TV-Free Kid” by Ellen Currey-Wilson.

Tuesday

Susan Salter Reynolds reviews “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life” by Barbara Kingsolver.

Wednesday

Tim Rutten reviews “Passion and Principle: John and Jessie Fremont, the Couple Whose Power, Politics, and Love Shaped Nineteenth-Century America” by Sally Denton.

Friday

Clancy Sigal reviews “Red Mutiny: Eleven Fateful Days on the Battleship Potemkin” by Neal Bascomb.

Saturday

Kai Maristed reviews the novel “The Sun Over Breda” by Arturo Perez-Reverte.

On the Web

At latimes.com/booksthis week, Sarah Weinman uses her Dark Passages column to discuss hard-boiled fiction and its penchant for artists on the outs. Focusing on classic practitioners such as David Goodis and Charles Willeford, as well as such contemporary talents as John Harvey, Robert Eversz, Elizabeth Hand and Vicki Hendricks, Weinman argues that the tendency of noir writers to evoke the downside is a metaphor for their own at-times tempestuous relationship with their work. Also online, please look for our expanded bestseller lists and comprehensive Book Calendar of literary events. And don’t miss Jacket Copy for additional book news and notes.