Atlantic County Library System

Readers respond to recent issues of the Sunday Book Review.

In both Lea Carpenter’s “Red, White, Blue” and Dan Fesperman’s “Safe Houses,” a daughter learns more about the death of a parent who worked for the C.I.A.

The author, most recently, of ‘The Spy and the Traitor’ is moved by ‘discretion and modesty’ in literature: ‘As a very British sort of Briton, I have an affection for the stiff upper lip, the emotion unvoiced, the desire undeclared.’

“Dead Girls,” by Alice Bolin, and “Against Memoir,” by Michelle Tea, reflect on American culture’s often violent fixation on female bodies.