The L.A. authors who predicted these fires and the books to help us understand them

Some residents are beginning to assess the damage done to their homes by the wildfires as firefighters appear to turn a corner in containing the blazes. This week we take a look at past books that touch on subjects related to the Los Angeles fires and speak with Los Angeles native Kristin Hannah, whose Vietnam War novel “The Women,” was the best-selling book of 2024. Kristin Hannah on her new bestseller “It’s impossible to comprehend,” Hannah tells The Times after evacuating to Palm Springs during a visit with her son in La Cañada Flintridge. The city exists amid a wildfire ecology and in a seismic landscape where faults regularly slip.” Charles McNulty, The Times’ theater critic, writes about a report on the library of iconoclastic writer Gary Indiana that arrived at an Altadena residence one day before burning in the fires, and reflects on how Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” illuminates an existential truth revealed by the devastating blazes. Gary Goldstein speaks with fourth-generation Angeleno Lou Mathews about his new story collection, “Hollywoodski.” Mathews describes Los Angeles as “the city of a thousand villages.” Scarlett Harris speaks with Brooke Shields about her new memoir, “Brooke Shields Is Not Allowed to Get Old.” Harris writes that “Shields is willing to poke fun at herself — and she doesn’t take herself too seriously, as past comic turns in shows such as ‘Suddenly Susan’ and ‘Friends’ attest.” Ilana Masad reviews Erika Krouse’s story collection “Save Me, Stranger.” Masad writes, “It’s rare, in my experience, that the titles of short story collections reflect an identifiable unifying theme, but ‘Save Me, Stranger’ is full of people saving one another.” And Chris Vognar – yo, right here – reviews Kyle Paoletta’s “American Oasis,” which argues why we’d best pay attention to the Southwest.