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Throughout the spring and summer of 2020, across the U.S. and the world, millions of quarantined citizens appeared nightly at their windows and balconies, offering thanks to the healthcare workers whose lives were dedicated to saving theirs. In my little corner of Silver Lake, 7 p.m. commenced a daily cacophonous communal concert of pots and pans banging, trombones and trumpets blaring, dogs and coyotes howling: a grateful group roar. I was 67 with a history of respiratory illness: extra high risk. My younger neighbors, knowing this, grocery-shopped for me, sweetening my mornings with fresh milk and fruit during those long, grim days.

“Sacrament” is Susan Straight’s homage to a small fictional band of ICU nurses battling the 2020 COVID-19 surge at a San Bernardino hospital. Her 10th novel follows the beat she’s been covering, and living, since her first. “Aquaboogie,” her 1990 debut, was set in Rio Seco, a fictional stand-in for Riverside, where Straight grew up and still lives. The first in her bloodline to graduate high school, Straight earned an MFA at the University of Massachusetts and brought it home to UC Riverside, where she’s been teaching creative writing since 1988. Her twin passions for her homeland and lyrical artistry bloom on every page. “All summer, there had been fewer cars on the road in Southern California, and everyone remarked on how with no smog, the sunsets weren’t deep, heated crimson. Just quiet slipping into darkness.”

As Susan Straight’s work invariably does, “Sacrament” challenges the prevailing notion that the overlooked Californians she centers in her work and in her life are less worthy, less interesting, less human than their wealthier, whiter, more visible urban counterparts.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

The Los Angeles Times dubbed Straight the “bard of overlooked California,” and “Sacrament” proves the praise. Straight’s African American ex-husband and three daughters; her Latino, Filipino, white, Native and mixed-race neighbors; and her immersion in overlooked California bring new meaning to the advice “write what you know.” Straight’s personal and literary missions extend to who she knows.

In “Sacrament,” Straight turns her singular focus to a handful of nurses camping in a wagon train of funky, sweltering trailers near the hospital they call Our Lady. Separated from their spouses and kids — “Six feet apart or six feet under,” Larette’s son Joey chants — Larette, Cherrise, Marisol and their colleagues are themselves underprotected from the virus, which they eventually contract, and from the domestic dramas that seep from home into their pressure-cooker days. Fearful that her mom will die, Cherrise’s teenage daughter, Raquel, convinces Joey to drive her to the hospital from the date farm where Raquel has been deposited into her Auntie Lolo’s care. The drive should take two hours, but the teens are MIA for two nightmare days. Having narrowly escaped a would-be captor, Raquel remains haunted by her near fate. “The fingers in her hair pulling so hard her scalp felt like it had tiny bubbles under the skin. Wait till I pull your hair for real, bitch. She heard him even now.”

Diving deeper than the quotidian insults of her characters’ loneliness, poverty and fear, Straight brings us inside their exhausted minds. Attempting a nap, Larette lies on the break room cot, eyes closed, to no avail. “Ghost fingers in her left palm. Her right hand holding the phone on FaceTime for the wives. The husbands. The children who were grown,” she writes. “All their faces. Stoic. Weeping. Biting their lips so hard.” Later, Larette tells her husband, “Everyone you see on TV, banging pots and pans, everyone doing parades, it’s so nice. But then I have to be all alone with — their breath. Their breath just — it slows down and it’s terrifying every time.”

Perhaps most painful among the nurses’ many miseries is their isolation: the secrets they keep in hopes of sparing their loved ones an iota of extra suffering. “None of us are telling anyone we love about anything, Larette thought. She hadn’t told [her husband] anything true in weeks.”

As Straight’s work invariably does, “Sacrament” challenges the prevailing notion that the overlooked Californians she centers in her work and in her life are less worthy, less interesting, less human than their wealthier, whiter, more visible urban counterparts. Programmed to equate “rugged independence” with success, many advantaged Americans first appreciated human interdependence (berries in our cereal, test kits on our porches) in lockdown. In Straight’s world, raising each other’s kids, feeding each other’s elders, keeping each other’s secrets, mourning the dead and fighting like hell for the living is not called exigence. It’s called life.

“Sacrament” broadens the reader’s understanding of community beyond flesh-and-blood friends, family and neighbors. The love and care that flow within her community of characters draws the reader into their bright, tight circle, making the characters’ loved ones and troubles feel like the reader’s own.

Spoiler alert: The nurses’ sacrifices, strengths and foibles; their families, robbed not only of their moms and wives and daughters but also of any shred of safety; and their patients — who have tubes stuffed into their urethras and down their throats, blinking their desperate last moments of life into iPads as they take their final breaths — will likely make the reader see and respect and love not only these characters, but the consistently brilliant author who gave them life on the page of this, her finest book.

Maran, author of “The New Old Me” and other books, lives in a Silver Lake bungalow that’s even older than she is.

Authors, readers and publishing industry experts lament the underrepresentation of Hispanic stories in the mainstream world of books, but have found new ways to elevate the literature and resolve misunderstandings.

“The stories now are more diverse than they were ten years ago,” said Carmen Alvarez, a book influencer on Instagram and TikTok.

Some publishers, independent bookstores and book influencers are pushing past the perception of monolithic experience by making Hispanic stories more visible and discoverable for book lovers.

The rise of online book retailers and limited marketing budgets for stories about people of color have been major hurdles for increasing that representation, despite annual celebrations of Hispanic Heritage Month from Sept. 15 to Oct. 15 in the U.S. There’s been a push for ethnically authentic stories about Latinos, beyond the immigrant experience.

“I feel like we are getting away from the immigration story, the struggle story,” said Alvarez, who is best known as “tomesandtextiles” on bookstagram and booktok, the Instagram and TikTok social media communities. “I feel like my content is to push back against the lack of representation.”

Latinos in the publishing industry

Latinos currently make up roughly 20% of the U.S. population, according to Census data.

However, the National Hispanic Media Coalition estimates Latinos only represent 8% of employees in publishing, according to its Latino Representation in Publishing Coalition created in 2023.

Brenda Castillo, NHMC president and CEO, said the coalition works directly with publishing houses to highlight Latino voices and promote their existing Latino employees.

The publishing houses “are the ones that have the power to make the changes,” Castillo said.

Some Hispanic authors are creating spaces for their work to find interested readers. Award-winning children authors Mayra Cuevas and Alex Villasante co-founded a book festival and storytellers conference in 2024 to showcase writers and illustrators from their communities.

“We were very intentional in creating programming around upleveling craft and professional development,” Cuevas said. “And giving attendees access to the publishing industry, and most importantly, creating a space for community connection and belonging.”

Villasante said the festival and conference allowed them to sustain themselves within the publishing industry, while giving others a road map for success in an industry that isn’t always looking to mass produce their work.

“We are not getting the representation of ourselves,” Villasante said. “I believe that is changing, but it is a slow change so we have to continue to push for that change.”

Breaking into the mainstream

New York Times bestselling author Silvia Moreno-Garcia, a Mexican-Canadian novelist known for the novels “Mexican Gothic” and “The Daughter of Doctor Moreau,” is one of few Hispanic authors that has been able to break to mainstream. But she said it wasn’t easy.

Moreno-Garcia recalled one of her first publisher rejections: The editor complimented the quality of the story but said it would not sell because it was set in Mexico.

“There are systems built within publishing that make it very difficult to achieve the regular distributions that other books naturally have built into them,” Moreno-Garcia said. “There is sometimes resistance to sharing some of these books.”

Cynthia Pelayo, an award-winning author and poet, said the marketing campaign is often the difference maker in terms of a book’s success. Authors of color are often left wanting more promotional support from their publishers, she said.

“I’ve seen exceptional Latino novels that have not received nearly the amount of marketing, publicity that some of their white colleagues have received,” Pelayo said. “What happens in that situation (is) their books get put somewhere else in the bookstore when these white colleagues, their books will get put in the front.”

Hispanic Heritage Month, however, helps bring some attention to Hispanic authors, she added.

Independent bookstores

Independent bookstores remain persistent in elevating Hispanic stories. A 2024 report by the American Booksellers Association found that 60 of the 323 new independent bookstores were owned by people of color. According to Latinx in Publishing, a network of publishing industry professionals, there are 46 Hispanic-owned bookstores in the U.S.

Online book retailer Bookshop.org has highlighted Hispanic books and provided discounts for readers during Hispanic Heritage Month. A representative for the site, Ellington McKenzie, said the site has been able to provide financial support for about 70 Latino bookstores.

“People are always looking to support those minority owned bookstores which we are happy to be the liaison between them,” McKenzie said.

Chawa Magaña, the owner of Palabras Bilingual Bookstore in Phoenix, said she was inspired to open the store because of what she felt was a lack of diversity and representation in the books that are taught in Arizona schools.

“Growing up, I didn’t experience a lot of diversity in literature in schools.” Magaña said. “I wasn’t seeing myself in the stories that I was reading.”

Of the books for sale at Palabras Bilingual, between 30% to 40% of the books are Latino stories, she said.

Magaña said having heard people say they have never seen that much representation in a bookstore has made her cry.

“What has been the most fulfilling to me is able to see how it impacts other people’s lives,” she said. “What motivates me is seeing other people get inspired to do things, seeing people moved when they see the store itself having diverse books.”

Figueroa writes for the Associated Press.

Walter Mosley has penned more than 60 novels in the course of about four decades, but the Easy Rawlins mysteries are arguably his most readily recognized body of work. After writing about Easy, Raymond “Mouse” Alexander and other memorable characters in the series since their 1990 debut in “Devil in a Blue Dress,” the Los Angeles native is certainly entitled to sit back and enjoy the significant milestone in Easy’s history. But neither the success, the accolades nor the 35-year anniversary matter to Mosley as much as the work itself.

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“It’s funny,” he muses over Zoom from his sun-drenched apartment in Santa Monica where he’s working one August afternoon. “Everyone has a career. Bricklayer, politician, artist, whatever. But what you think of as a career, for me it’s … I just love writing.”

It’s a good thing that he does. In the 17 mysteries in the series, Easy has given readers a front-row seat to Mosley’s vision of L.A.’s evolution from a post-World War II boom town proscribed by race and class to the tumultuous ’70s, with seismic social shifts for Black Americans, women and the nuclear family. These are the long-term changes that Easy must navigate in “Gray Dawn,” out Sept. 16.

The year is 1971 and Easy, now 50, is beset by memories of his hardscrabble Southern youth and first loves before he enlisted to serve in World War II in Europe and Africa. And while coming to L.A. after the war meant opportunity, real estate investments and success as “one of the few colored detectives in Southern California,” Easy has not lost his empathy for the underdog. So when he’s approached by the rough-hewn Santangelo Burris to find his auntie, Lutisha James, Easy leans in to help, even after he learns Lutisha is more dangerous than he suspected and brings with her an unexpected tie to his past. Then his adopted son, Jesus, and daughter-in-law run afoul of the feds and Easy must also figure out a way to save them from a certain prison sentence. Add assorted killers, business tycoons, Black militants and crooked law enforcement to the mix, all of whom underestimate Easy’s grit and outspoken determination to protect himself and his chosen family, and the recipe is set for another memorable tale.

Given Easy’s maturity and the world as it was in 1971, Mosley felt the need, for the first time, to write a note to readers to put Easy and his times into context. “When I was writing this book, I realized that, in 2025, there are some readers who may not understand where Easy’s coming from.”

Mosley’s introduction provides that frame, calling the combined tales “a twentieth century memoir” and linking them to the fight for liberation and equality. “Black people, people during the Great Enslavement,” Mosley writes, “weren’t considered wholly human, and, even after emancipation, were only promoted to the status of second-class citizenship. They were denied access to toilets, libraries, equal rights, and the totality of the American dream, which had often been deemed a nightmare.” But Easy, with his passion for community and love for the underdog, is always there to help. “He speaks for the voiceless and tried his best to come up with answers to problems that seem unanswerable.”

Despite these conditions, Mosley explains to me, the series’ recurring characters — Mouse, Jackson Blue, Fearless Jones, among others — who serve as Easy’s family of choice have prospered since the beginning of the series, Easy most of all. “Easy is a successful licensed PI, living on top of a mountain with his adopted daughter, plus his son and his family are around too. So for readers who pick up the series at this point, everything seems great. But then, Easy walks into a place [in the novel] and he’s confronted by some white guy who says, ‘Well, do you belong here?’ Before, when I had written something like that, I assumed that people are going to understand how those kinds of verbal challenges are fueled by the racism of the time. But this time I thought there are readers who may not understand it, even though it’s speaking to something about their lives or their world, even today.”

Easy Rawlins also speaks to other writers, who read the mysteries as a beacon of hope, a crack in the wall through which other voices can be heard.

S.A. Cosby, bestselling author of “Blacktop Wasteland” and “All the Sinners Bleed” and an L.A. Times Book Prize winner, clearly remembers his introduction to Easy’s world. “Reading ‘Devil in a Blue Dress’ was like being shown a path in the darkness. It spoke to me as a writer, as a Southerner and as a Black person,” he said in an email. “In some ways, it gave me ‘permission’ to write about the people I love.”

Easy also offers a unique lens through which to view L.A. Steph Cha, Times Book Prize winner for “Your House Will Pay,” discovered “Devil in a Blue Dress” as a freshman in college. “I was totally thunderstruck,” she said in an email. “This was before I had the context and vocabulary to articulate its importance in the broader literary landscape, but I knew I loved Easy Rawlins and his eye on Los Angeles. Walter was one of my primary influences when I started writing fiction. I even named a character Daphne in my second book after the missing woman in ‘Devil.’”

But why does the series endure? Cha credits the quality of the man himself: “Easy’s been through so much over 35 years, but he’s still the same guy, a man who will go anywhere, talk to anybody and bear anything, while still giving the feeling he bleeds as much as the rest of us.”

But Easy’s also thinking about the future, which in “Gray Dawn” means helping Niska, a young Black woman in his office, develop into a detective. Along the way, he shares his creed and his hope for what she will become one day: “‘Toes in the soil beneath my feet.’ That’s what a detective has to have. She has to know the city, its peoples, dialects, and languages. Its neighborhoods and histories. Everything you could see and touch. A detective’s mind has to be right there in front of her. Your city was your whole world.”

Back on our Zoom call, I ask Mosley whether he was thinking of Raymond Chandler’s seminal 1944 essay “The Simple Art of Murder” and the oft-quoted line “Down these mean streets…” when writing that passage. Not consciously, but he liked the comparison because “Easy in many ways is the opposite of Philip Marlowe.”

Not the least of which is his willingness to help a woman become a detective. “Even though Easy is skeptical about a woman being a detective,” he explains, “he recognizes it’s the 1970s and, with the women’s movement, he’s willing to help her if that’s what she wants.”

As the song goes, the times they are a-changin’, and Easy with them. What does Mosley hope readers take away from “Gray Dawn,” Easy’s midlife novel? “I want them to see how Easy has developed and changed over the years. And that family, even though Easy’s doesn’t look like the nuclear family, is what America has always been about.”

“I love being a writer so much that even if I had much less success, or even none, I would still be doing it,” Walter Mosley says.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

Mosley’s also experienced enough to know that what writers hope readers understand and what readers actually see in their writing can be very different. And while he appreciates comments from writers like Cosby and Cha, he puts it all in perspective. “As a writer, I think it’s important for you to remember not to judge your success by what other writers have said about your work. Because writers more than anybody in literature are confused about what literature actually is. Writers will say, ‘I did this, and I did that, and I wrote this, and this was my intention, and I started here, and I moved it there.’ But the truth is you’ve written a book, you’ve created the best thing you could have written, and all these people have read it. And for every person who has read it, it’s a different book.”

Mosley is also a talented screenwriter, having served as an executive producer and writer on the FX drama “Snowfall.” Most recently, he shared a writing credit (with director Nadia Latif) for the screenplay of the upcoming film “The Man in My Basement” — an adaptation of his 2004 standalone novel — starring Willem Dafoe and Corey Hawkins. Mosley is particularly cognizant of how book-to-film translations can have different meanings for their creators.

“With very few exceptions, books and the films that they spawn are very different,” he explains. “And they have to be because books come to life in the mind of readers, who imagine the characters and places the writer describes. And books are language, and your understanding through language as a reader is a part of the process. But a film is all projected images. So when somebody says they’re writing a book, you tell them, ‘Show. Don’t tell.’ When you produce or direct a movie, they just say, ‘Show.’”

Mosley praises Latif, who, in her directorial debut, leaned into certain aspects of his novel. “She’s very interested in the genre of horror and uses certain elements of it in the film,” he notes. “But I don’t think she could do that without those elements already being there in the novel.”

Beyond “Gray Dawn” and the forthcoming film, Mosley’s collaborating with playwright, singer and actor Eisa Davis on a musical stage adaptation of “Devil,” as well as working on a monograph about why reading is essential to living a full life. But regardless of the medium, Mosley’s purpose is crystal clear. “For me, it’s about the writing itself,” he says, leaning in to make his point. “I love being a writer so much that even if I had much less success, or even none, I would still be doing it.”

As September begins, legions of Californians have just wound up their summer travels, which often follow family traditions. Frequently there are lakes involved. Or islands. Or a national park.

We’re asking readers to tell us about a place you keep going back to, how you keep the tradition alive and what makes it special. If you are able to share up to three of your own photos, even better. We may feature you in an upcoming story.

When I learned R.F. Kuang was taking readers to hell in her newest book, I groaned. Haven’t we done this enough? I’m not just talking about Orpheus retrieving Eurydice, Dante’s “Inferno” and Virgil’s “Aeneid.” Nor the 19th century poets and cults obsessed with everything chthonic. We as a culture have done katabasis — that is, a journey into the underworld — a lot recently: Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s “Gods of Jade and Shadow” (2019), Leigh Bardugo’s “Hell Bent” (2023) and Netflix’s “Kaos” (2024).

(I’m sure it has nothing to do with the political instability we’re facing. We probably shouldn’t worry about the historical pattern of writers becoming obsessed with the living journeying into hell whenever things aren’t going great in society. I’m sure it’s fine.)

I didn’t think there could be much new here. “Katabasis” is a dark academia fantasy where the protagonist — a psychologically wounded but talented student, lacking self-love, perspective or even just one friend to talk sense into her — journeys into hell to fetch the soul of a mentor she’s in thrall to … and may have killed. If this sounds familiar, well, Kuang’s newest hero, Alice Law, does bear similarities to Bardugo’s Alex Stern.

But I was wrong — there are new things here. The journey into hell has been done, but it hasn’t been done quite the way R. F. Kuang does it.

Like “Babel,” which relied on R.F. Kuang’s knowledge of linguistics, “Katabasis” is rich and textured because of her familiarity with the subject.

(John Packman)

Alice Law and her partner-in-hell, Peter Murdoch, are acutely aware of their literary predecessors, even guided by maps based on those journeys. They go because their doctoral advisor, a man they hate and worship in equal measure, has died and they need him back to ensure they get a good teaching position after graduation. It’s a flawed reason, and a greedy one, a fact neither character seems to understand. They don’t seem to see themselves fitting in anywhere in hell, actually — that tension is both annoying and amusing. Their trip is an intriguing take on the journey; things in hell have changed since Virgil played tour guide.

In “Katabasis,” we’re once again treated to the power of Kuang’s mind. It takes a smart person to write geniuses, and Alice and Peter are brilliant, if blinkered. Like “Babel,” which relied on Kuang’s knowledge of linguistics, “Katabasis” is rich and textured because of her knowledge of the subject, her deep familiarity with its shape and philosophy. Also like “Babel,” “Katabasis” revolves around the dark inequities cracking the foundations of a fictional department in an Oxbridge school, a place people would kill to get into and then die in while they’re there.

A warning: The nesting doll of literary references in “Katabasis” will be a delight to some and impenetrable to others. People who aren’t familiar with chthonic myths might want to do some research before reading. For example, there’s a joke toward the end about how John Gradus is clearly a fake name: The reference is never elucidated, and you’ll only get the joke if you know the phrase gradus ad parnassum means “a step toward Parnassus,” which is the mountain where Apollo and the Muses live in Greek myth, and that the phrase is often used by scholars to indicate a process of gradual mastery over a subject. So John Gradus is a journeyer in his own right, learning where he went wrong in life to reach the Lethe and reincarnate. This novel is not for the intellectually indifferent.

But generally, “Katabasis” is a more mature and less showy novel than Kuang’s earlier works. Perhaps this isn’t surprising; Kuang’s first book was published when she was just 21 and she’s 29 now. A person’s 20s are transformative even if they don’t study in China, at Oxford, at Cambridge and at Yale in quick succession. Readers who thought “The Poppy War” trilogy didn’t stick the landing, or that Rin became insufferable by the end, will be pleased that “Katabasis” does stick it, and that Alice evolves.

Some of the same themes from “The Poppy War” return — the horror of sex, the power of delusion to transform reality. But when Alice faces challenges, she lets go of her delusions. Peter is not disposable like Kitay. Both Alice and Rin sacrifice, but this isn’t Rin’s abject despair; Alice’s sacrifices are more nuanced than Rin could ever fathom.

As much as “Katabasis” has in common with Kuang’s earlier works, tonally it might have most in common with “Yellowface.” Unlike the brutality of “The Poppy Wars” or the tragedy of “Babel,” “Katabasis” maintains a slight wry humor throughout. There’s a satirical subtext here that wasn’t present in her earlier earnest fantasies. I mean, these PhD candidates choose to go to actual hell rather than have an honest conversation with someone at Cambridge. Kuang shows us how self-destructive that is, intriguing as the story reads. Like June Hayward/Juniper Song in “Yellowface,” Alice and Peter are so trapped in the flimsy reality they’ve constructed that they can’t see the obvious way out.

Because in “Katabasis,” hell is not other people. It’s defending your dissertation.

This is my one sticking point with writers taking readers to hell. Cultural images of the underworld are bound by writers, and though Kuang introduces new elements, she adheres largely to their canon. Her take on Dante’s City of Dis is — spoiler! — a regal college where academics spend eternity writing self-absorbed dissertations (shortened by real PhD candidates, of course, to “Diss” — there’s that wry humor). There’s no feedback, no advisors, just faith that someone’s reading. I understand why a PhD student would envision this as the worst kind of punishment, but I’m not convinced it’s the worst possible sin.

“Katabasis” is hell filtered through a scholar’s eyes. Orpheus’ journey has stood the test of time because he went for love. Dante went for knowledge. Alice goes for a recommendation letter. It’s an intriguing addition to the canon, but for mere mortals who haven’t survived abusive, plagiaristic and mystifying advisors to earn Oxbridge degrees — or even just bad bosses — it might be unrelatable.

Castellanos Clark, a writer and historian in Los Angeles, is the author of “Unruly Figures: Twenty Tales of Rebels, Rulebreakers, and Revolutionaries You’ve (Probably) Never Heard Of.”

A LIP reader has revealed Vladimir Putin’s pledge to Donald Trump as the two leaders met in Alaska.

The US President greeted his Russian counterpart on the tarmac at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson Air Base on Friday.

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The pair went on to address the world in a brief press conference and negotiate with their teams in private, but they also shared words in front of cameras that couldn’t be heard.

That hidden speech can tell us a lot about their pair’s relationship and hint at what could be happening behind closed doors.

Forensic lipreader Nicola Hickling has now revealed what the powerful men said when they greeted each other airport.

The world’s eyes were on the moment when Putin walked towards Trump to shake hands.

Putin looked relaxed as he walked down a red carpet towards Trump – giving the US leader a thumbs-up before greeting him with a warm handshake.

Trump begins clapping as Putin approaches and the American says: “Finally,” according to Hickling.

Hickling then said that as the pair shook hands Trump added: “You made it, fantastic to see you and appreciated.”

The pair then appear to begin talking about Ukraine and the bringing the fighting to an end with a ceasefire.

Putin responds in English, saying: “Thank you — and you.”

He also makes a pledge to Trump: “I am here to help you.”

Trump replies: “I’ll help you.”

Pointing towards Trump, Putin says: “All they need is to ask.”

Trump answers simply: “Okay.”

Putin continues: “I will bring it to a rest.”

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Trump responds: “I hope it does.”

Turning towards the vehicle, Hickling said Trump smiles and says: “Come on, let’s get straight into the vehicle. We need to move forward, both giving it attention. I know this is serious, it’s quite long. What a journey it is.”

Trump salutes and says: “Thank you.”

On the podium, Trump says: “Thank you. Let’s shake hands — it gives a good impression.”

Putin nods in agreement, shakes his hand, and says: “Thank you.”

The pair then shared a moment alone in Trump’s presidential limo – known as The Beast – which drove them to the summit venue.

They were then next seen when they posed for photos in front of the press to record the historic moment.

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But the photocall descended into chaos when the journalists started shouting at Trump and the tyrant – who doesn’t face that sort of opposition in Russia.

Hickling said that Trump noticed Putin wasn’t happy with a question or remark made.

The American leans in to his aide, according to the lipreader, and whispers: “I’m uncomfortable, we need to move them quickly.”

Putin then makes a face after being on the receiving end of the aggressive questioning.

Hickling said the Russian tells a reporter: “You is ignorant.” 

Then, as he cups his hands to his mouth to shout above the chaos, he says again: “You are ignorant.”

After nearly three hours of talks in Alaska, the US president said the pair “agreed on some big points” they said in a brief press conferece.

There was a lot of flattery between the pair as they spoke in front of the world.

Hickling’s analysis of the chumminess between the pair out of range of the microphones suggests that there could possibly be a real relationship between the pair, despite the geopolitical differences.

What was the outcome of the historic peace talks?

Following the historic talks, Donald Trump said there is still disagreement, adding: “There is no deal until there is a deal” and “we didn’t get there” despite progress.

Trump said he would “making some calls” to European leaders and Volodymyr Zelensky soon – and added “we have a very good chance of reaching a deal”.

Vladimir Putin says he is “sincerely interested” in ending the conflict, which he called a “tragedy.”

He insists Russia must eliminate the “primary causes” of the war – a Kremlin talking point he has been saying since the start of the conflict.

Putin invited Trump to hold a next meeting in Moscow.

“We’ll speak to you very soon and probably see you again very soon,” Trump said.

“Next time in Moscow,” Putin replied.

“That’s an interesting one,” Trump laughed.

“I’ll get a little heat on that one, but I could see it possibly happening.”

Brigitte Knightley’s debut novel, “The Irresistible Urge to Fall for Your Enemy,” has everything fans of enemies-to-lovers romance are looking for: disagreement that becomes flirtatious banter, ethical quandaries, forced proximity, and characters who can overcome their prejudices to see a human beneath a label. Featuring a brutal assassin and a magical healer forced to work together while trying — desperately — not to fall in love, the heat of this romantasy novel is perfect for warm summer nights.

Osric Mordaunt, considered a dark magic user, is part of an order of assassins hated and dismissed by Aurienne Fairhrim’s light magic order of healers. When Osric seeks medical treatment for a degenerative condition, he gets roped into helping Aurienne’s order cure an outbreak of pox that is killing children in droves. The pair traipses around seeking healing under romantic full moons and become involved in spycraft that reveals evidence that the outbreak is not what it seems. They begin to see each other beyond their individual allegiances, but it happens slowly, prejudices unraveling at a crawling pace. The author’s bio declares that she puts the unresolved back in “unresolved sexual tension,” and it’s true: Knightley is a master of the slow burn.

There is plenty of fun along the way: Getting to know both magical orders, their fortes and foibles, is a squelching, bodily fluid-filled delight: The only thing sharper than their wit is the divide that separates their lives. The magic system has an almost science-fiction element to it, with lots of medical talk about magical maladies and a well-rendered in-line breakdown of how “Outlander”-esque menhir travel works. Aurienne is as much a scientist as a witch, which is a treat in a genre overrun by wand-waving laziness. The novel is set in the 19th century, but in a version of England where the Norman Conquest of 1066 failed. Instead of a unified empire, the smaller kingdoms of the Heptarchy still dominate, their various dangerous machinations providing the raison d’être for the differing orders.

“Irresistible” might be set in the period we know as the Victorian era, and there are royals and attendant paraphernalia, but lovers of polite courtly romances might want to steer clear. With more dick jokes than a Deadpool movie, Knightley’s novel is dirty. Sexual attraction is not hidden behind genteel metaphors; Aurienne and Osric want. They’re not blushing virgins on their way to an altar, but adults who have loved and lost, who each bring a trolley’s worth of emotional baggage and sexual preferences to their relationship. Their self-awareness is part of the charm; they might wield magic like us mortals wield butter knives, but they’re relatable.

Readers plugged into the world of fan fiction may recognize the author’s name, which is a pseudonym. Writing under a previous nom de plume, isthisselfcare, Knightley gained an enormous fan base dedicated to “Draco Malfoy and The Mortifying Ordeal of Being in Love,” her 199,000-word Dramione — short for Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy — on a popular fan-fiction site. With a Jane Austen-influenced voice, it was ironic, sarcastic and delightful. Knightley’s new novel is like a grown-up version of “Mortifying” — more mature, more grounded and more voicey than ever. Fans will be pleased to see how she’s grown.

People love to denigrate fan-fiction writers, though some of today’s most popular authors started as fan-fiction writers: Cassandra Clare, Naomi Novik and Andy Weir, to name just three. Novels like “Irresistible” are proof positive that writing fan fiction is an excellent training ground for building a novel. To write truly great fan fiction, a writer must identify what makes the source material sparkle and then replicate it. It’s not enough to graft existing characters into new situations. The most effective fan fiction shows readers how characters can continue to grow beyond the bounds of the original work while remaining consistent with the source material. That exercise in maintaining consistency and internal logic is excellent practice for creating original worlds.

In some cases, that also means identifying elements about characters that original authors themselves might not see. This was especially true of the explosion of Draco/Hermione fic after the Harry Potter series ended. Where author J.K. Rowling saw an irredeemable villain in Draco Malfoy, thousands of people saw an abused child who had grown up in a dangerous household and was trying to survive. Fan fiction allowed writers to transform Draco into a good person who falls in love with his childhood enemy; this gave readers the redemption arc Rowling set up but didn’t follow through on. There are tens of thousands of fics that explore this arc.

Literary-minded sociologists could probably study how millennial women never fully recovered from Draco’s lost redemption. The preponderance of platinum blond bad boys with chances at redemption has only grown as the girls who grew up reading Harry Potter became authors themselves: Coriolanus Snow in Hunger Games trilogy prequel “Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes,” Sebastian Morgenstern in “City of Glass,” Cardan in “The Cruel Prince.” (“Buffy’s” Spike is a clear predecessor.)

With Knightley’s debut, we can add Osric Mordaunt to the list. He is a tragic figure, doomed to a life filled with violence after an abusive childhood. He’s shaken out of this destiny by meeting the STEMinist figure Aurienne, who accepts no excuses for his bad behavior.

Though Osric seems to have Malfoy DNA at his heart, the rest of the cast is original and well-developed. That said, Aurienne does toe the line between aloof and arrogantly unlikable. We get the hint that she has a dark backstory, that her snark is a shield, but we’ll have to wait for Book 2 to find out. Until then, “Irresistible” will probably inspire fan fiction of its own, training a new generation of authors.

Castellanos Clark, a writer and historian in Los Angeles, is the author of “Unruly Figures: Twenty Tales of Rebels, Rulebreakers, and Revolutionaries You’ve (Probably) Never Heard Of.”