"What Seems Simple"
/"Pride and Prejudice" has been so thoroughly revised, modernized, and sequelized that its subtleties risk being overlooked. A new annotated edition seeks to yield up its many secrets.
Read MoreThe Sorcerer
/Donald Sturrock's hefty new biography of Roald Dahl shows both the troubled, temperamental family man and the conjurer of wicked, entrancing stories
Read MoreGary Shteyngart, Old Man
/Who is Gary Shteyngart to call thirty-somethings old? Perhaps a thirty-something himself, bringing forth his most mature novel to date.
Read MoreThe Crossing
/Warmth and pleasure are scarce commodities in Per Petterson's new novel "I Curse the River of Time," but Janet Potter reveals where they're hidden
Read MoreI Don't Find My Jokes Funny Anymore
/The classic epistolary novel is given a new, notably misanthropic turn in Sam Savage's The Cry of the Sloth -- Jeff Bursey reviews
Read MoreFetch My Embroidery!
/Was Eleanor of Aquitaine a power in medieval politics or a glittering figurehead? This wife of two kings and mother of four stars in a new novel by Alison Weir - but will the real Eleanor please stand up?
Read MoreDame Alice
/Alice Perrers is reviled by history for insinuating her way into Edward III’s bed and Queen Phillipa’s jewels. Now Emma Campion’s new novel aims to rescue her tattered reputation.
Read MoreThe Sound and the Furry
/As our freelancer Khalid Ponte validly points out, the problem with werewolves is literature, not lycanthropy: they lack a foundational text! Although an excellent recent anthology offers some likely candidates.
Read MoreCrazy in the City
/In Craig Dilouie's new thriller Tooth and Nail, American troops are called home to New York from war-torn Iraq, only to find there are some horrors far worse than those of war
Read MoreOn the Bunny Slopes of Helicon
/Steven Moore's big new book seeks to give an 'alternative history' to that most familiar of literary forms, the novel. But at what point does history become wishful thinking?
Read MoreThe Idea of Her
/Her stature has only grown over time, dominating bookstores, television, movie theaters, and now the Internet. She's Jane Austen, the world's least likely pop star.
Read MoreCounterfeit Wit
/Liars and impostors have been Peter Carey's bread and butter for 30 years--so he's up to mischief when he takes on the beloved and upright Alexis de Tocqueville in a new novel.
Read MoreThe Playground of the Gods
/Hermes, god of thieves and liars, is the narrator of John Banville's new novel The Infinities. Janet Potter looks into the story he's got to tell.
Read MoreZen and the Art of Skull-Impaling
/Even in these fractious times, we can all agree that zombies are bad, and that killing zombies is good. But how exactly do you do it? A new book hones your technique.
Read MoreOnward, Muriel, Onward!
/Perceptive, cosmopolitan British novelist Muriel Spark has at last received an enormous and long-promised biography. Is justice done - or perhaps overdone?
Read MoreCarson McCullers and Her Crowd
/She's been praised by Oprah and cut by Joyce Carol Oates; the nature of Carson McCullers' prose has always confounded some readers and pleased others. We read her again.
Read MoreThe Once and Future Arthur
/He pulled a sword from a stone and became a legend, and for a thousand years, that legend has changed and shifted. Two new Young Adult novels take up the old familiar story in new ways.
Read MoreShe Paints for Them
/Sofonisba Anguissola was the best-known female painter of the Renaissance, but before that, she was art instructor to a willful young queen. A new novel revives those sad, glorious days.
Read MoreAs If In a Glorious Hell
/In her debut collection of stories, Tiphanie Yanique attempts to capture in prose the complexities of modern-day life and racial identity in a Caribbean behind the tourism ads.
Read MoreThrough the Keyhole
/Mikhail Chekhov's Anton Chekhov: A Brother's Memoir has at last been published in English in its entirety, and its flaws and omissions make it almost as revealing as one of Anton's own stories.
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