Each essay is self-contained, making it possible to choose those most relevant to your own interests.

How Fiction Works is a marvelously readable appreciation of how Wood's favorite writers achieve their effects.

In spite of its brooding subject matter, the novel maintains a lyrical air throughout, with prose that often borders on poetry.

If I'm less than celebratory about Man in the Dark, it's because Auster has written many better books and seems content in this one to coast on his reputation.

McCall Smith explores the web of human relations with particular focus on the question of what is truth, and whether honesty is always the best policy.

The tone of A Prayer for the Dying reminds me of Stephen King's The Gunfighter…if The Gunfighter were actually entertaining or interesting.

In an instant, the book becomes something to reread, reinterpret and rethink.

Rather than plan for college in the fall, James spends his days trolling the internet, looking for the perfect house in the middle of America.

I was repulsed by the book's narrator, and the more I read, the less I liked him.

The book is an unusual point of view for a cultural history of sorts that is also a guilt-free piece of chick lit.

The border between independent and studio production has always been permeable, and from the earliest years of film people have gone back and forth between the two worlds.

Its current incarnation, the Denim and Diamonds Tour, is itself a bit of a traveling carnival, part gallery installation, part concert, with a smattering of party and old-fashioned "happening" thrown into the mix.

Stefan Merrill Block's elegant prose kept me turning the pages.

Peace is a book that makes you think and feel. Not a lot happens, yet everything does.

The series feels like taking a trip to Botswana in the company of an intimate friend who grew up there,

I felt like I'd finally seen everything this golden age of exploitation had to offer.

That's the spirit of Alyson's Q Guide series: heartfelt and ironic at the same time, with an ample dose of humor and a very personal approach to the topic at hand.

If you want to get wise to how the economy works in the modern world, a good place to start is here.

Flood endows Lincoln with the humanness that sometimes eludes him in other books,

How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance and Why They Fall