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Welcome, readers! Im Carolyn Kellogg, The Times book editor, with links to book reviews and news for you this week.

THE BIG STORY

Arundhati Roys 1997 novel, The God of Small Things, won the Booker Prize and earned her international acclaim. She then turned her attention to activism and protest, until returning to fiction this summer with The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, a novel packed with the ghosts of Indias conflicts. The Ministry of Utmost Happiness unfolds in that liminal space between novel and history lesson, writes critic at large Rigoberto Gonzlez in our review, which might disappoint all but her most ardent fans since the fictional story appears to have been written in service to the nonfiction content.

Mayank Austen Soofi

Arundhati Roy, author of "The Ministry of Utmost Happiness."

Arundhati Roy, author of "The Ministry of Utmost Happiness." (Mayank Austen Soofi)

HILLARY CLINTONS NEW BOOK

This week publisher Simon & Schuster confirmed that the book coming this fall from Hillary Clinton is changing shape instead of essays on her inspiration, it will be a deep dive into the 2016 presidential election titled What Happened. The publisher writes: Now free from the constraints of running, Hillary takes you inside the intense personal experience of becoming the first woman nominated for president by a major party in an election marked by rage, sexism, exhilarating highs and infuriating lows, stranger-than-fiction twists, Russian interference, and an opponent who broke all the rules."

Patrick Semansky / Associated Press

Former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton

Former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton (Patrick Semansky / Associated Press)

IF YOU LIKE GET OUT, YOULL LOVE VICTOR LAVALLE

We talk to Victor LaValle, who writes complex and literary horror and speculative fiction that, like the blockbuster movie Get Out, addresses social issues such as racism and inequality. His new book, The Changeling, also tackles the complex emotions around parenthood. For all this horror stuff, Im really an optimist, so I wouldnt say that I only think the world is a horror show, he tells writer Nichole Perkins. I think its also beautiful.

Spiegel & Grau

Victor LaValle

Victor LaValle (Spiegel & Grau)

Some people, like Morgan Jerkins at the New Republic, think that the roil of news from Washington, D.C., has taken the wind out of book sales. But some books seem to be riding the wave, and I think its why Trevor Noahs Born a Crime is now in its 22nd week on our nonfiction bestseller list. The book, a memoir of growing up mixed-race in South Africa, isnt speaking directly to whats happening with President Trump, but Noahs appeal as the host of politically edged The Daily Show, has, I think, a clear connection to his books enduring popularity.

Timothy A. Clary / AFP/Getty Images

Trevor Noah at "The Daily Show Presents: The Donald J. Trump Presidential Twitter Library," designed to look like the Oval Office.

Trevor Noah at "The Daily Show Presents: The Donald J. Trump Presidential Twitter Library," designed to look like the Oval Office. (Timothy A. Clary / AFP/Getty Images)

ALAIN MABANCKOU

Speaking of growing up in Africa: Black Moses is a picaresque novel of an orphan in the Republic of Congo in the 1960s-70s. Author Alain Mabanckou, who writes in French, is widely acclaimed in France and teaches at UCLA. Like every other literary orphan, Moses gets a sense of freedom and a few good times out of his predicament, reviewer Mark Athitakis writes. But his restless wanderings are never a substitute for what hes lost.

Caroline Blache

Alain Mabanckou

Alain Mabanckou (Caroline Blache)

MORE ON BOOKS

As an editor at Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Sean McDonald gained a reputation for championing boundary-pushing fiction and for creating new ways for readers to engage with it (the three books of Jeff VanderMeers Southern Reach Trilogy were published just months apart). Now McDonald has his own imprint at the publisher, MCD; Margaret Wappler takes a look at whats in store.

The premise for many dystopias is how those who remain after a cataclysm will survive without the benefits of our technological society. But what if youve already opted out of that society? Thats the idea behind the Amish dystopia, When the English Fall, the debut novel by David Williams, reviewed by Swapna Krishna.

Janelle Brown hit bestseller lists with her debut novel, All We Ever Wanted Was Everything, a wry take on the Silicon Valley suburbs. Now shes written a page-turning thriller, Watch Me Disappear, about a mother who goes missing. The novel evolved a lot. I didnt expect it to be a mystery, she tells Meredith Maran.

Seattle Seahawks star Michael Bennett is writing a book: How to Make White People Uncomfortable. Co-written by Dave Zirin, Bennetts book will be published by Haymarket Books in 2018.

Ted S. Warren / Associated Press

Seattle Seahawks defensive end Michael Bennett, above left at a recent football practice, is co-writing a new book, "How to Make White People Uncomfortable," to be published next year.

Seattle Seahawks defensive end Michael Bennett, above left at a recent football practice, is co-writing a new book, "How to Make White People Uncomfortable," to be published next year. (Ted S. Warren / Associated Press)

carolyn.kellogg@latimes.com

@paperhaus

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Books: Rigoberto Gonzlez on Arundhati Roy, a new book from Hillary Clinton and more - Los Angeles Times

Democrat Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election to President Donald Trump, but some Republicans in Congress are intensifying their calls to investigate her and other Obama administration officials.

As investigations into Russian meddling and possible links to Trump's campaign have escalated on both sides of the Capitol, some Republicans argue that the investigations should have a greater focus on Democrats.

Democrats who have pushed the election probes "have started a war of investigative attrition," said GOP Rep. Steve King of Iowa, a member of the House Judiciary Committee.

Several officials from former President Barack Obama's administration and Clinton's campaign have appeared before or been interviewed by the House and Senate Intelligence Committees as part of the Russia investigation, along with Trump campaign officials. The GOP-led committees are investigating whether Trump's campaign had any links to Russian interference in last year's election.

The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., has continued a separate investigation into whether Obama administration officials inappropriately made requests to "unmask" identities of Trump campaign officials in intelligence reports.

The House Judiciary Committee, which has declined to investigate the Russian meddling, approved a resolution this past week to request documents related to the FBI's now-closed investigation of Clinton's emails. In addition, Republican on that committee wrote the Justice Department on Thursday and asked for a second special counsel, in addition to Special Counsel Robert Mueller, to investigate "unaddressed matters, some connected to the 2016 election and others, including many actions taken by Obama administration."

"The American public has a right to know the facts all of them surrounding the election and its aftermath," the lawmakers wrote.

Republicans want to investigate the unmasking issue and also Clinton's email scandal that figured prominently in the campaign. They also frequently bring up former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and former FBI Director James Comey's testimony that she told him to call the Clinton email investigation a "matter" instead of an investigation during the campaign.

Nunes wrote his own letter to Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats last week, saying that his committee has learned that one Obama administration official had made "hundreds" of the unmasking requests.

Even though he remains committee chairman, Nunes stepped back from the Russia investigation earlier this year after he was criticized for being too close to the White House. Rep. Mike Conaway, R-Texas, took over the leading role.

The committee has conducted bipartisan interviews of witnesses; Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner appeared on Tuesday, a day after talking to Senate staff. But partisan tensions have been evident.

GOP Rep. Pete King of New York, who's on the House Intelligence Committee, said after the Kushner interview that the committee investigation into Russian meddling is a "sham."

"To me there is nothing to this from the beginning," he said of his committee's own probe. "There is no collusion ... it's the phoniest investigation ever."

Both the Senate and House committees have interviewed or expressed interest in interviewing a series of Democratic witnesses, including Obama's former national security adviser, Susan Rice, and former U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power both of whom Republicans have said may be linked to the unmasking. Rice met with staff on the Senate Intelligence Committee earlier this month, and Power met with the panel Friday.

"Ambassador Power strongly supports any bipartisan effort to address the serious threat to our national security posed by Russia's interference in our electoral process, and is eager to engage with the Senate and House committees on the timeline they have requested," Power's lawyer, David Pressman, said in a statement.

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Clinton lost, but Republicans still want to investigate her - ABC News

The title of Hillary Clinton's memoir on her failed 2016 campaign for the White House has at long last finally been revealed, ending the suspense for left-wing policy wonks. Hillary has officially gone from "What difference does it make" to What Happened.

What Happened will chronicle what Hillary was thinking and feeling during one of the most controversial and unpredictable presidential elections in history, according to the synopsis released by the publisher.

The publisher goes on to breathlessly describe the tell-all: Now free from running, Hillary takes you inside the intense personal experience of becoming the first woman nominated for president by a major party in an election marked by rage, sexism, exhilarating highs and infuriating lows, stranger-than-fiction twists, Russian interference and an opponent who broke all the rules.

Thats right. Hillary Clinton wants to convince you she believes in rules. Sources who claim to have spoken to her people about the book say its a bombshell and say she blames her historic election loss on former FBI Director James Comey and, of course, the Russians. Will Hillary tell us the Russians parked a supersonic stealth submarine in Lake Michigan and cloaked the entire state of Wisconsin for over 100 days, preventing her from visiting the state once?

What Happened is Hillarys hubris, accompanied by a bubbling distrust among the public over the enshrined Hollywood-media complex. She underestimated an opponent she herself wanted to face off against and was a terrible candidate. That cost her a place in history.

Hillary definitely wont tell you what really happened. Valid concerns were raised about her health after she collapsed at the 9/11 Memorial in New York City, an event that she at first attempted to shield from the media. It only became a full-blown scandal when a private citizen with a video camera caught the whole thing and broadcast it on Twitter.

Hillary also wont tell you that her campaign strategy was, in many ways, just plain dumb.

And she wont tell you that Donald Trump simply outworked her by campaigning at a ratio of almost 2 to 1 in battleground states, as reported by NBC News shortly after the election.

Over the final 100 days of the election, Trump made a total of 133 visits to Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, North Carolina, Michigan and Wisconsin, NBC reported. Over the same time period, Hillary Clinton visited the first five of those states a total of 87 times. She never traveled to Wisconsin during the 102 days between the convention and the election.

What Hillary Clinton also wont tell you is that Donald Trump was carried to the White House by 218 counties across the Rust Belt of the United States that had previously voted for Barack Obamas message of hope and change.

After eight years, many Obama voters were left without hope. Nothing had changed for the better. Voters were now strapped with a financial catastrophe in ObamaCare and some fell victim to a ravaging epidemic of opioid addiction. Hillary Clinton was more interested in appearing with millionaire celebrities, while telling coal miners she was going to put them out of work.

Hillary may tell you that James Comeys letter to Congress on Oct. 28,, which addressed the prior unknown existence of emails discovered on a laptop belonging to her aide Huma Abedin and Abedins then-husband Anthony Weiner (as part of an FBI investigation into Weiners underage sexting scandal), cost her the election. What Hillary wont tell you is that just four days prior, news hit that ObamaCare premiums in 2017 would spike over 22 percent

The Comey letter certainly had an impact on voters, but it was prompted by a self-inflicted wound to a badly managed campaign and an email scandal that could have been avoided. However, when news of ObamaCare premiums once again spiking hit, Hillary was left flat-footed and without an answer.

Hillary probably wont tell you about her former position that the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal was the gold standard in such agreements, as she did in her previous memoir. That left her open to a policy attack from Trumps sweet spot, which left her speechless on a debate stage, other than to say that Donald Trump called a beauty queen fat 20 years ago.

Hillarys support and then opposition to the TPP agreement was emblematic of her many flips and flops over the course of 25 years. These went from violent crime and bringing super predators to heel, to DOMA, DADT, RFRA and other acronyms that her husband signed into law that she no longer claimed to support.

Hillary wont tell you that she had the lowest approval ratings of any presidential candidate in the history of the United States not named Donald Trump, but still was defeated by Trump.

What Happened is Hillarys hubris, accompanied by a bubbling distrust among the public over the enshrined Hollywood-media complex. She underestimated an opponent she herself wanted to face off against and was a terrible candidate. That cost her a place in history.

Youre not going to get the real story of What Happened from Hillary Clinton, because Hillary Clinton is what happened. Youre going to hear Russia, Russia, Russia. You can save the $25 and hear the same thing every day on CNN for free.

Stephen L. Miller has written for Heat Street and National Review Online. Follow him on Twitter at @redsteeze.

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Hillary Clinton wants to tell you 'What Happened' in her new book which won't actually tell you what happened - Fox News

Weve been gorging on the travails of Donald Trump and the Republicans. When a president and his own governing party step in so many cowpats in so brief a period of time, its hard to avert your gaze. Whats next? Mitch McConnells drops his trousers on the steps of Congress?

That happened already, of course. The humiliation that was the Senate rebuke in the wee hours of Friday to McConnells last-gasp effort to kill the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare cant be overstated. A majority leader just doesnt ask for a floor vote unless he knows how it will turn out. Not at 1.30am. Not when half the land has stayed awake to watch. Not when the thing youre trying to do has been the sole obsession of your party for nigh on eight years.

But lets give some due to the Democrats, who have almost been forgotten in all of this. Its been a long, long road. I suggest we turn the page, Chuck Schumer, the Minority leader, offered minutes after McConnells so-called Skinny Bill at least to unwind parts of Obamacare fell to defeat. If the senator from New York was looking smug, you could hardly blame him.

Hillary Clinton wins! That was the headline we thought we were going to be reading last November. But maybe now she does. The one thing that most terrified her supporters about the unthinkable occurring complete Republican control of Washington was that the only really big thing Democrats had done in eight years with Barack Obama at the top would be destroyed.

Obamacare, an attempt at last to bring a kind of universal health coverage to the last country in the developed world not to have it, was, Clinton declared, one of the great accomplishments not only of this president, but of the Democratic Party going back to Harry Truman.

Call it a vicarious victory for Clinton, at least. It comes thanks to Schumer who warned colleagues in January that Republicans would try to pick them off one by one in their quest to kill the health law. Only by sticking together would they thwart them. This wasnt going to be easy. The Democrats are no more ideologically homogeneous than the Republicans are, ranging from Bernie Sanders on the left to Joe Manchin of West Virginia to the centre. But they did it.

They also coordinated with a fearsome army of grass-roots resisters, including groups like MoveOn.org, Indivisible and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. Relations were sometimes tense, the anti-Trump factions not always convinced the Senate Democrats would stay strong. Indeed, Schumer was not always as obstructive on the Hill as they wanted. But his strategy of more constructive resistance he allowed members to talk to Republicans about improving Obamacare but never, ever about repealing it outright worked. Instead of Republicans exploiting Democrat disunity, it was Democrats who exploited theirs.

All the while, a group of former Obama aides who had been at ground zero of passing the Affordable Care Act and then shielding it from various assaults had come quietly come out of retirement to form a third front. Called Protect Our Care, the group included Kathleen Sebelius, Obamas Secretary of Health and Human Services, who was plotting a month-long, nationwide bus tour to pressure Republicans not to dump Obamacare. That wont be necessary now. As the New York Times reported this week, Leslie Dach, one of Obamas top health care officials, meanwhile ran a war room in Washington also helping to coordinate the grass-roots resistance.

What they did was win the propaganda war. The White House and congressional Republicans continued to pedal the notion that Obamacare was a catastrophe. Americans couldnt use the doctors they wanted, faced stiff fines if they ignored the laws requirement that every America buy insurance and sometimes lost coverage anyway because of soaring premiums. Elements of the message were true - premiums are rising fast. But the momentum was shifting to the Democrats. The greatest of ironies is this: Obamacare was never as popular when Obama was president as it is now, with more than 50 per cent of Americans now saying theyd like to keep it. It didnt hurt that with every new Republican proposal so came a new forecast from the Congressional Budget Office of how many Americans would lose coverage as a result. 26 million. 23 million. 16 million.

Republicans sometimes have the easier job of getting their message across just because it is so simple: government intrusion is bad. Taxes are bad. Freedom to choose is good, and so forth. But all that is only so much ideological guff when policy decisions actually impact directly on peoples lives. Even Trump voters started to see through it. If you are poor and live in one of the 33 states that accepted a massive expansion of Medicaid benefits that was allowable under Obamacare, they were always going to ask what will happen to them if those benefits are erased.

Republicans should have grasped that once new benefits are given, there is no taking them away. The watered-down Skinny Bill was a nonsense, because it sought to leave the good bits of Obamacare intact while taking away the bad bits like the mandate that said you must have health insurance just as you must have car insurance. You cant have one without the other; the system would simply collapse. Its why Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina publicly called it a fraud and why, in the most dramatic moment of his career, the ailing Senator John McCain killed it by voting "no" alongside Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine.

Clinton is putting the final touches to a book about her failed 2016 run due out in September called What Happened. She might indulge now in writing an epilogue. Maybe We Won After All.

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Did Hillary Clinton win after all? The collapse of Trumpcare has turned her defeat into unexpected victory - The Independent

Hillary Clinton in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, November 7, 2016.

By Melina Mara/The Washington Post/Getty Images.

It seems Donald Trump isnt the only politician in Washington still hung up on Hillary Clinton. Frustrated that most of the investigatory intrigue is currently centered on Robert Muellers probe into Russian election interference and alleged collusion with the Trump campaign, Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee are calling on the Justice Department to appoint a second special counsel to investigate other matters related to the 2016 election: specifically the role played by Clinton, former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and ousted F.B.I. Director James Comey.

The unbalanced, uncertain, and seemingly unlimited focus of the special counsels investigation has led many of our constituents to see a dual standard of justice that benefits only the powerful and politically well-connected, the Republicans wrote Thursday in a letter signed by 20 members of the House Judiciary Committee. For this reason we call on you to appoint a second special counsel to investigate a plethora of matters connected to the 2016 election and its aftermath.

If its in the public interest to investigate the Trump administration, it is most certainly in the public interest to investigate the real crimes by the real criminals.

The matters the House Republicans want investigated include Clintons use of a private e-mail server during her tenure at the State Department, Comeys handling of the subsequent F.B.I. investigation, Lynchs controversial tarmac meeting with Bill Clinton, and an alleged connection between the Clinton Foundation and a uranium mining deal approved by Clinton, among others. If its in the public interest to investigate the Trump administration, it is most certainly in the public interest to investigate the real crimes by the real criminals, said Representative Matt Gaetz, as reported by McClatchy D.C. Just because Hillary Clinton lost the election doesn't mean we should forget or forgive conduct that is likely criminal. He continued, We need an investigation of Tarmac-Gate.

The House Judiciary Committees request echoes Trumps renewed attacks against his former political rivals in recent weeks. As the tensions between the president and Attorney General Jeff Sessions have spilled into the open over the latters recusing himself from the Russia investigation, Trump has criticized the beleaguered top lawyer for not taking a harsher line on Clinton, while lambasting the Mueller probe as a witch hunt orchestrated by Clintonworld.

House Democrats were taken by surprise when their Republican colleagues spun a Democratic request for a probe into Trumps firing of Comey to their favor. There appears to be deliberate stonewalling to stop any inquiry into the questions facing us today, Democratic Representative Primala Jayapal, who introduced the original resolution of inquiry, said. You want to have another beating of the dead horse of Hillary Clinton and her e-mails? Fine, Ill include it. But lets have another opportunity to debate.

Trumps calls for new investigations into the conduct of the Democratic Party and Clinton during the 2016 election has faced greater pushback in the Senate. It harkens back to the notion of a banana republic, Senator Lindsey Graham said of Trumps tweets about Sessions and Clinton. Its what dictators do, they look to punish their enemies.

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House Republicans Want to Go Back to Investigating Clinton - Vanity Fair