Articles Index

The Reluctant Fundamentalist - Excerpt
A young Pakistani's rise to success in America is violently interrupted on September 11. Mohsin Hamid delivers this young man's story as a sustained monologue describing how everything in his life turns upside down from 9/11 forward. Read the excerpt.

All Aunt Hagar's Children by Edward P. Jones
Edward P. Jones has filled this collection of stories with people who call Washington, D.C., home. "All Aunt Hagar's Children" turns an unflinching eye to the men, women, and children caught between the old ways of the South and the temptations that await them further north, people who in Jones's masterful hands, emerge as fully human and morally complex, whether they are country folk used to getting up with the chickens or people with centuries of education behind them.

The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards
The Memory Keeper's Daughter begins on a winter night in 1964, when a blizzard forces Dr. David Henry to deliver his own twins. His son, born first, is perfectly healthy, but the doctor immediately recognizes that his daughter has Down's syndrome. For motives he tells himself are good, he makes a decision that will haunt all their lives forever. He asks his nurse, Caroline, to take the baby away to an institution. Instead, she disappears into another city to raise the child as her own.

The Woman at the Washington Zoo - Excerpt
Marjorie Williams wrote political profiles for The Washington Post and Vanity Fair that came to be considered the final word on the capital's most powerful figures. This splendid collection digs into the psyche of the nation's capital, revealing not only the hidden selves of the people who run it, but the messy lives that the rest of us lead.

Come Back: A Mother and Daughter's Journey through Hell and Back
The unflinching true account of a teenage girl's descent into society's underbelly-and her mother's desperate and ultimately successful attempts to bring her back. How does an honor student at one of Los Angeles's finest prep schools trade school uniforms and afternoons at the beach for shooting up in the back of a van in rural Indiana? How does her devoted mother emerge from the shock of finding that her daughter has not only disappeared but had been living a secret life for more than a year?

Heart Of A Hawk: One Family's Sacrifice and Journey Toward Healing
David and Deborah Tainsh were living the happiest years of their lives until the dark morning of February 12, 2004, when a six a.m. knock at the door brought the news that their son, Sergeant Patrick Tainsh, had been killed in Iraq. Patrick, David’s only child, was the pride of his life. In the wake of their loss, David and Deborah battle horrific grief and anger while trying to hold their marriage—and one another—together in an unforgettable journey toward healing.

The Messiah of Morris Avenue - First Chapter
In the near future, there is no separation of church and state. The Christian Right in theocratic America has positioned pastors among politicians and what passes for Christianity in these times informs Federal law. But when Christ returns as a young man named Jay, "driving about New Jersey in a beat-up van preaching radical notions like kindness and generosity—and even tossing off a few miracles," things are really going to get stirred up.

Indecision by Benjamin Kunkel - Excerpt
Dwight Wilmerding, the narrator of Ben Kunkel's comic novel, Indecision, is encouraged by one of his roommates to try an experimental pharmaceutical meant to banish indecision. And when all at once he is "pfired" from Pfizer and invited to a rendezvous in exotic Ecuador with the girl of his long-ago prep-school dreams, he finds himself on the brink of a new life.

Cover the Butter - Excerpt
Get ready to cheer for Kate Cadogan, a forty-something who has spent her life trying to please her family without a moment’s thought to her own needs. Until one day when a series of events causes her to slip back in time... Cover the Butter proves that starting over has nothing to do with age and everything to do with spirit. Carrie Kabak is a former children’s book illustrator. Born and raised in the United Kingdom, she now lives in Missouri. Cover the Butter is her first novel.

Chronicles, Volume One - Excerpt
By turns revealing, poetical, passionate and witty, Chronicles: Volume One is a mesmerizing window on Bob Dylan's thoughts and influences. Dylan's voice is distinctively American: generous of spirit, engaged, fanciful and rhythmic. Utilizing his unparalleled gifts of storytelling and the exquisite expressiveness that are the hallmarks of his music, Bob Dylan turns Chronicles, Volume I into a poignant reflection on life, and the people and places that helped shape the man and the art.

"Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell
In <i>Blink</i>, Malcolm Gladwell revolutionizes the way we understand the world within. <i>Blink</i> is a book about how we think without thinking, about choices that seem to be made in an instant - in the blink of an eye - that actually aren't as simple as they seem. Why are some people brilliant decision makers, while others are consistently inept? Why do some people follow their instincts and win, while others end up stumbling into error? How do our brains really work?

State of Fear - Excerpt
Michael Crichton has a remarkable gift for realizing the terrifying possibilities of science gone awry. Invoking nightmares that could actually happen, "State of Fear" spans the globe, unraveling a terrorist plot to manipulate the forces of nature and fool the world. This time, Crichton’s demons are not minuscule computer-born organisms or gigantic dinosaurs. This time, the agents of destruction are human, including scientists and activists committed to the cause of environmental protection.

The Distance Between Us by Masha Hamilton
Caddie Blair, a war correspondent, loses her photojournalist lover and her detachment in one tragic moment during an unexpected ambush in the war-torn Middle East. An authentic look at the emotional and ethical chaos she feels and the consequences when she becomes too involved in the story she is covering. The Distance Between Us is a straight-ahead story of human passion--desire, conviction, and the guilt of a survivor--struggling for order within the frayed justice of the Middle East conflict.

The News From Paraguay
A historical epic that tells an unusual love story, "The News From Paraguay" offers a kaleidoscopic portrait of nineteenth-century Paraguay, a largely untouched wilderness where Europeans and North Americans intermingle with both the old Spanish aristocracy and native Guaraní Indians. Lily Tuck, author of "The News From Paraguay" has won the 2004 National Book Award for the novel.

Excerpt: Ringworld's Children
The Ringworld: a landmark engineering achievement, a flat band 3 million times the surface area of Earth, encircling a distant star. Home to trillions of inhabitants and host to amazing technological wonders, the Ringworld is unique in all of the universe. Blending awe-inspiring science with non-stop action and fun, "Ringworld's Children," the fourth installment of the award-winning saga, Larry Niven's "Ringworld."

My Life with Corpses - Excerpt
Author of the award-winning Margaret Cape,Wylene Dunbar has written a novel that looks into our hearts and souls with intelligence, humor, and, finally, wisdom. My Life with Corpses blends a sharply defined reality with a soaring leap of imagination in the story of an enigmatic narrator we know only as Oz, a Kansas girl raised by a family of dead people.

The Exception to the Rulers - Excerpt
In The Exception to the Rulers, award-winning journalist Amy Goodman, with the aid of her brother David, exposes the lies, corruption, and crimes of the power elite -- an elite that is bolstered by large media conglomerates. Her goal is "to go where the silence is, to give voice to the silenced majority."