A simple interpretation of "Chekhov's gun," a literary device made popular by author and playwright Anton Chekhov, is that if there's a gun in a story, at some point somebody should fire it. In other words, every detail in a story, no matter how small, should exist to move the narrative along. Even if the hypothetical gun is never fired, its very existence could be used to create an unnerving atmosphere crucial to the story.......

TUESDAY: Breena Clarke, a Washington D.C. native and alumna of Howard University, will be at Politics and Prose to discuss her novel, Stand the Storm, which is set in Georgetown but takes place before and during the Civil War. 7 p.m. Arjun Makhijani discusses and signs his book, Carbon-Free And Nuclear-Free: A Roadmap for U.S. Energy Policy, at Busboys and Poets in D.C. 6 p.m. WEDNESDAY: Daniel Levitin and songwriter and record producer Parthenon Huxley......

We got a press release announcing that a new book, Ben's Chili Bowl: 50 Years of a Washington, D.C., Landmark, is now available for sale. Ben's is celebrating its 50th anniversary this month. Mahaboob Ben Ali and his then-fiancée, Virginia Rollins, opened the hot dog and chili shop on U Street on August 22, 1958. Congratulations to the Ali family on all their achievements! The book, written by journalist Tracey Gold Bennett and Ben's co-owner......

MONDAY: Award-winning author and columnist Maggie Jackson will be at the Busboys and Poets in D.C. to talk about Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age. If a dark age is characterized by a decline in civilization, and Jackson believes it's only just now "coming," she hasn't been watching enough reality TV. 6:30 p.m. Dick Meyer, a long-time CBS journalist who now spends his time with NPR, will be making an appearance......

MONDAY: Prize-winning Civil War historian Noah Andre Trudeau talks about Southern Storm: Sherman's March to the Sea at the Barnes and Noble in Georgetown. 7:30 p.m. Sheryll Cashin will be at Politics and Prose to talk about The Agitator's Daughter: A Memoir of Four Generations of One Extraordinary African-American Family. 7 p.m. TUESDAY: Steven Shafarman will be at the Busboys and Poets in D.C. to sign and discuss Peaceful, Positive Revolution: Economic Security for Every......

MONDAY: Michaele Weissman will be at Politics and Prose to talk about God in a Cup, Weissman’s investigation of coffee at every stage of its production, marketing and consumption. 7 p.m. Leora Kahn will be at Busboys and Poets in D.C. to discuss and sign copies of Darfur: Twenty Years of War and Genocide in Sudan. 6:30 p.m. Martin Clark will be at the Olsson's in Dupont Circle to read from The Legal Limit, the......

MONDAY: Karen Dawn will be Thanking the Monkey at the Olsson's in Dupont Circle. No, that doesn't mean what you think. Dawn, who founded the animal advocacy media group DawnWatch.com, merely wants us to rethink the way we treat animals. For starters, chimpanzees want all you horrible sitcom and commercial writers out there to stop calling them monkeys. They're apes, dorks. 7 p.m. Law professor Cass Sunstein will make an appearance at Politics and Prose......

The National Book Festival, which has become a flagship event for area bibliophiles, just announced its 2008 author line-up. The festival, held rain or shine on the National Mall, will take place on Sept. 27 and once again be hosted by First Lady Laura Bush in conjunction with the Library of Congress. Retaining its inclusive tradition, the event will feature writers, readings, book and activities for readers of all ages. This year’s line-up features over......

MONDAY: Ethan Canin, bestselling author of the The Palace Thief, will make an appearance at Politics and Prose to discuss America, America, a novel about America as it was and is. Or as Sam the Eagle would say, "It's a tribute to all nations, but mostly America." 7 p.m. Rebecca Harrison Reed, a local artist, will be at the Olsson's in Old Town Alexandria to read from and discuss her work illustrating The Train to......

MONDAY: Stella Rimington will make an appearance at the Olsson's in Dupont Circle to talk about the new installment in her series of books about MI5 officer Liz Carlyle, Illegal Action. When it comes to mysteries and thrillers, an illegal action has to be more interesting than a legal action, right? 7 p.m. When he isn't making creepy YouTube videos, presidential candidate Mike Gravel is writing books about the military-industrial complex and the imperial presidency.......

MONDAY: Those of you interested in questions of population growth and its relationship to female sexual autonomy will want to catch Robert Engelman, vice president for programs at the Worldwatch Institute, as he discusses his new book, More: Population, Nature, and What Women Want, at Busboys and Poets. 6:30 p.m. Sorry folks, Salman Rushdie’s discussion and signing of The Enchantress of Florence at Politics & Prose is, sadly, sold out. TUESDAY: Bestselling author Lauren Weisberger......

It was just a couple weeks ago that we told you about Olsson's plans to shutter its Penn Quarter location -- which it finally did, on Friday. In an email to customers, owner John Olsson had said that "The landlord has other plans for the space," and we confirmed that those plans were to bring in UK noodle shop Wagamama. But the Post reported on Saturday that it looks like there's a lot more to......

MONDAY: John Harwood, chief Washington correspondent for CNBC and a political writer for The New York Times, will be at the Busboys and Poets in D.C. to discuss and sign copies of his new book, Pennsylvania Avenue: Profiles in Backroom Power. 7:30 p.m. Alan Furst will be at Politics and Prose to discuss his new novel, the tenth in the Night Soldiers series, The Spies of Warsaw. 7 p.m. Michael I. Meyerson will be at......

Sad news for lovers of locally-owned bookstores: the Olsson's location in the Lansburgh building in Penn Quarter is shutting down. We had heard rumors this was in the works for a couple of weeks, especially after so many author events appeared to be moving to the Dupont Circle location. The email below was sent out to the Olsson's list on Monday. Dear Friends, After 15 years in The Lansburgh building on 7th Street NW, the......

MONDAY: Jonathan Miles will be at the Olsson's in Dupont Circle to talk about his novel, Dear American Airlines, the story of a man stuck at Chicago's O’Hare airport with thousands of other passengers who decides to write a complaint letter. 7 p.m. Conservative columnist George Will will make an appearance at Politics and Prose to discuss and sign copies of his new book, One Man's America: The Pleasures and Provocations of Our Singular Nation.......

MONDAY: Robert Scheer will be at Politics and Prose to discuss his book, The Pornography of Power. If you swapped those words around, you'd have an entirely different book. 7 p.m. TUESDAY: Comedian and The Daily Show contributor Lewis Black will be at the Sixth and I Historic Synagogue to read from his new book, Me of Little Faith. Two tickets are free with a book purchase at Politics and Prose, or cost $6 each.......

MONDAY: George Lakoff, a linguist and cognitive scientist, will make an appearance at Politics and Prose to talk about his book, The Political Mind: Why You Can't Understand 21st-Century American Politics with an 18th-Century Brain. We can tell you why: With an 18th century brain, you'd be dead. We be smart. 7 p.m. Author Stephanie Klein will be at the Olsson's in Dupont Circle to discuss and sign copies of Moose: A Memoir of Fat......

TUESDAY: Carl Hiaasen will make an appearance at Politics and Prose to discuss and sign copies of his book, The Downhill Lie. A downhill lie must be like when you tell a friend that you love their favorite band, even though you don't, and then they say, "Well, I have an extra ticket to their show on Saturday," which you respond, "That's too bad. My sister's in town." Actually, the book is about golf. 7......

MONDAY: Kelly McMasters will be at Politics and Prose to talk about her memoir, Welcome to Shirley, which looks at the town of Shirley, New York — a wonderful place to grow up in the 1970s, but unfortunately not a great place to spend the rest of your life thanks to the close proximity of the leaky Brookhaven atomic research facility. 7 p.m. Rick Perlstein will be at the Penn Quarter Olsson's to talk about......

When blogging about books in D.C., you tend to receive more press releases about political non-fiction than any other genre — so much that it starts to make you cynical. Most of the books read like armchair quarterbacking with an unhealthy dose of rhetoric. But Matthew Yglesias' book, Heads in the Sand: How the Republicans Screw Up Foreign Policy and Foreign Policy Screws Up the Democrats, manages to break out of that mold. Yglesias, an......

MONDAY: Nostalgic for the grunge rock of yore? Laurie Lindeen will be at the Olsson's in Dupont Circle to talk about her memoir, Petal Pusher: A Rock and Roll Cinderella Story, which looks at her stint in the 80s and 90s as the guitarist for Zuzu's Petals. 7 p.m. Chris Meyers Asch, co-founder of the prospective U.S. Public Service Academy, will appear at Politics and Prose to talk about The Senator and the Sharecropper, the......

Most first-time novelists never actually become first-time novelists; in most cases “first novels” end up abandoned as real life overwhelms the time commitment and intellectual energy necessary to take a book from concept to completion. Those lucky enough to finish sometimes never find a publisher, ending up instead with dashed hopes and a pile of rejection notices that begin with “While we found your book intriguing and well-crafted…” and end with “…and we’re sure that......

Washington, D.C's Big Read continues through May 24. Celebrating F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby this year, venues throughout town are holding events: On Tuesday the Arts Club of Washington will be "Flirting with the Masters," with two fiction writers discussing Fitzgerald's impact on their work, or try one of the many events at the MLK, Jr. Library, such as the ongoing Fitzgerald exhibit, or the film tribute screening of The Last Tycoon on Thursday.......

MONDAY: Newsweek contributing editor Eleanor Clift will make an appearance at the Olsson's in Penn Quarter to read from and sign copies of her book Two Weeks of Life: A Memoir of Love, Death, & Politics, a commentary on how we deal, or fail to deal, with dying in modern America. 6 p.m. Paris Review editor Nathaniel Rich will be at Politics and Prose to discuss his debut novel, The Mayor's Tongue. Don't miss our......

MONDAY: Keith Gessen will be at Politics and Prose to discuss his novel, All the Sad Young Literary Men, which focuses on the lives of three young intellectuals at the beginning of the 21st century. 7 p.m. TUESDAY: Geraldine Brooks, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of March, will appear at the Sixth and I Historic Synagogue to read from her book, People of the Book, based on real-life Australian rare-book expert Hanna Heath’s travels to Sarajevo to......

You’re sitting around with your friends at a local dive bar. The beer and the conversation are flowing. It’s late, and you start thinking of those “let’s-pursue-our-dreams” things you should all do together. Maybe it’s “we should start a band,” or “we should run the Marine Corps marathon” or “we should all knock over a convenience store.” Whatever. Usually nothing ever comes of it, perhaps a good thing, on occasion. The convo digresses, you all......

MONDAY: NPR senior news analyst and ABC commentator Cokie Roberts will be at Politics and Prose to talk about the companion volume to her 2004 book Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation, Ladies of Liberty. 7 p.m. TUESDAY: Busboys and Poets in D.C. will hold an event to discuss Let Me Stand Alone: The Journals of Rachel Corrie, a collection of writings by the young American who was run over by a bulldozer......

MONDAY: To commemorate the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination, Michael Eric Dyson will be at Busboys and Poets in D.C. to sign and discuss his new book, April 4, 1968: Martin Luther King Jr.'s Death and How It Changed America. 6 p.m. David Hajdu, music critic at the New Republic, will be at Politics and Prose to talk about The Ten-Cent Plague. No, he's not talking about a cheap knockoff of the......

MONDAY: Elizabeth Crane will appear at the Dupont Circle Olsson's to read from her new book of stories You Must Be This Happy To Enter. Paul Fattaruso will also be there to read from his new book, Bicycle. According to Olsson's, Fattaruso "does for bicycles what Richard Brautigan did for trout." We'll take their word on that one. 7 p.m. Annie Griffiths Belt, one of the first women hired as a staff photographer at National......

A while back, Metropolitan Police Chief Cathy Lanier announced she wanted to start a book club of sorts, and now, the date of the book club discussion has been finalized. On Thursday, May 1, at a location yet to be determined, the Chief will host a public discussion of pop-sociology books The Tipping Point and Blink by Malcolm Gladwell. Sadly, the invitation doesn't make it seem like the Chief necessarily wants to keep the book......