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.

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