Articles Index
The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human
Jonathan Gottschall, an English professor at Washington & Jefferson College, taps a variety of disciplines - psychology, sociology, anthropology and more - as he explores the reasons for and origins of human proclivity for story.
The Shoemaker's Wife
Adriana Tigiani's story of star-crossed Italian lovers is a novel rich in family, history, and story-telling. It is not to be missed.
A Naked Singularity
Sergio De La Pava originally self-published A Naked Singularity, the story of Casi, a young public defender caught in a surrealistically bizarre justice system in a postmodern novel that is garnering comparisons to Don DeLillo and David Foster Wallace.
Life Sentences: Literary Judgments and Accounts
Essays from award winning essayist, novelist, and literary critic William Gas, in which he once again shows the various perspectives at which he can aproach the topics of reading, writing, and thought.
Suddenly, a Knock on the Door
Israeli author Etgar Keret is back with "Suddenly, a Knock on the Door," another collection of ultra brief, absurdist stories that combine humor with human frailty to great effect.
The Book of Drugs
Mike Doughty is the former lead man for the 1990s band, Soul Coughing. The Book of Drugs is Doughty's rock and roll addiction memoir, his story of his rise with Soul Coughing and his fall at the hands of heroin.
Catching Fire
In book two of the Hunger Games trilogy, Catching Fire, Katniss Everdeen finds herself challenged by President Snow himself to live up to the star-crossed lovers act she and Peeta played in The Hunger Games, and everyone is caught off guard by an unexpected twist in the games that follow.
The New Republic
Written in 1998, The New Republic is a satirical novel that takes on the topic of terrorism in the form of a radical Portuguese organization that protagonist Edgar Kellogg happens upon in his search to locate another journalist in the terrorists' home turf.
The Sea Is My Brother
The Sea is My Brother, described as Jack Kerouac's "lost novel" is the semi-autobiographical story of a young man's sea-faring with the Merchant Marine.
The Cove
Ron Rash, author of the 2009 PEN/Faulkner finalist novel Serena, is back with another historical novel set in North Carolina's Appalachian Mountains. A woman suspected of witchcraft by the local townspeople saves a mysterious mute flutist, unleashing another mesmerizing tale.
Satantango
Published in 1985, Laszlo Krasznahorkai's Satantango is reknown as the inspiration for filmaker Bela Tarr's seven-and-a-half hour film adaptation, often considered a cinephile rite of passage. Translated now by George Szirtes, the novel is finally available to English language readers.
Angelmaker
A gangster's son and an aging secret agent team up in Nick Harkaway's Angelmaker to stop a doomsday device and an evil villain from bringing about the end of the world.
Autoportrait
Edouard Levé's Autoportrait is a brutally honest autobiographical portrait of the author constructed from more than 3000 simple sentences about the author's likes, dislikes, preferences and feelings.
Zona: A Book about a Film about a Journey to a Room
A sprawling work caught between an essay, a novelization of a film, and a cinephile's diary, Zona is Geoff Dyer's celebration of Andrei Tarkovsky's under-appreciated film Stalker.
Hot Pink
Hot Pink by Adam Levin 3 ˝ stars Hot Pink is a collection of ten short works by Adam Levin, author of 2010's magnificent novel The Instructions. These stories provide brief, wry glimpses into an array of troubled lives, all trapped somewhere on the brink of adulthood.
Lone Wolf
Jodi Piccoult is known for centering her novels around issues of morality, and Lone Wolf is no exception. Using the behavior of wolves within their packs as a model, Piccoult confronts the difficult and painful decision faced by individuals and families with a loved one who is tethered only by the merest of tendrils to this life.
Writer, M.D.: The Best Contemporary Fiction and Nonfiction by Doctors
An anthology of medically themed essays and stories written by doctors, Writer, M.D., highlights the decisions, tragedies, and skills that doctors must experience and learn to work through as part of a medical education and career.
Iago
Beginning where Shakespeare's Othello leaves off, David Snodin's Iago finds the eponymous villain Iago doing battle with the powerful and evil chief inquisitor of Venice, Il Terribile.
How Eskimos Keep Their Babies Warm
In How Eskimos Keep Their Babies Warm, Mei-Ling Hopgood questions Western parenting methods and embarks on an anthropological quest to understand how other cultures raise their young.
The Sugar Frosted Nutsack
An entire pantheon of ridiculously-imagined and slightly hungover gods and goddesses roll into the universe on a bus blaring the Mister Softee jingle and take up residence in Dubai's Burj Khalifa, from which they gaze down upon their sole acolyte, an unemployed New Jersey butcher.
Men in Space
Men in Space is Tom McCarthy's (C, Remainder) first novel, a cinematicaly-inclined story set in the 1990s whose characters range from a Bulgarian football referee to a stranded astronaut, all of whom are chasing after an elusive MacGuffin, a stolen painting making its way from Sofia to Prague.
The Flame Alphabet
In The Flame Alphabet, Ben Marcus' dark and dystopic novel, children begin speaking a form of speech that is lethal to adults.
Mr. g A Novel About the Creation
Alan Lightman presents us with a rather young and whimsical God in Mr. g, a being who lives alone in the Void with his aunt and uncle until one day, he decides to experiment with the act of creation. The rest, as they say, is history.
Unbroken
When Louis Zamperini, a former Olympic runner and an American pilot in World War II, crashes his bomber in the Pacific Ocean, he had know idea that he was about to embark on one of the most extraordinary oddyseys ever recounted.
And So It Goes Kurt Vonnegut: A Life
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. died in 2007 at the age of 85 after a head-injury put him in a coma. At the time of this accident, Charles Shields had been working with Vonnegut to create And So It Goes, an engaging biography that illuminates the life of this fascinating author.