The daily digest of Twin Cities culture | Secrets of the City

It's often said that you can't go back, but sometimes it would be wise at least to try. A murder detective with a forgotten past is at the center of Tana French's tense debut novel In the Woods - a man whose lost memories collide with the present in what should have been an open-and-close case.

In the last decade or so, Stephen King has been winning praise from institutions that, if not reviling him, had at least brushed him off as a not-so-serious author.

I raised three daughters who spent their childhoods reading Harry Potter. So I had never encountered the Nancy Drew mysteries until Malcolm, my seven-year-old son, received a copy of one in a bookstore earlier this year. Apparently, Nancy Drew wasn’t selling, so to spark interest the store was giving away The Secret of the Old Clock, the first book in the series, with purchase of any two children’s books. The story, to me, was rather predictable, and Nancy Drew, the eighteen-year-old daughter of a well-to-do attorney, was so wholesome as to be unbelievable.