Bookworm

Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It (Riverhead Books) Maile Meloy’s stories go shooting off in such surprising and unpredictable directions that a reader might think, "every which way is the only way she wants it..."

The Lovers (Harper Collins/ Ecco) Vendela Vida has crafted another mysterious and beautiful novel about a woman's identity. This woman, Yvonne, is middle-aged, the oldest woman whose tightly-knit personality Vida has unraveled so far.

First, Sparks on Bookworm's new theme songs. Then poet Paul Muldoon (Maggot, from Farrar, Straus & Giroux) on how writing poems differs from writing song lyrics..

The Informer (Shaye Areheart Books) Craig Nova has written a frightening novel about corruption in pre-Nazi Berlin. Especially frightening is Nova's perception that those times are so similar to ours...

Dear Money (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) In Martha McPhee's comic novel, a wizard of Wall Street promises he can change a novelist from a desperate bohemian into a "Master of the Universe," in a brief eighteen months. In this conversation, we explore the mis-marriage of aesthetics and greed...

WEB EXCLUSIVE: Extended interview with David Mitchell Glowing front-page reviews and profiles proclaim David Mitchell to be "the real thing" and his new novel, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (Random House), a masterpiece.

Chronic (Graywolf) The Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award offers an impressive $100,000 prize to a poet entering the major phase of his/her career. We speak to this year's winner, D.A. Powell, and the chair judge, Linda Gregerson, to find out about poetry awards and how they are determined...

Private Life (Knopf) Jane Smiley explores lives limited by repression, narrow scope and boundless ego, describing the sadness of a genius whose work never catches on, and the frustration of a wife whose husband never achieves his potential—and who barely discerns her own

Parrot & Olivier in America (Knopf) Australian-born Peter Carey celebrates his years in America with a larking, picaresque novel based on Toqueville's Democracy in America...

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake (Doubleday) A little girl is able to taste sadness in her food. Her brother, who has become emotionally withdrawn, is able to turn himself into inanimate objects. Aimee Bender shows how by using the techniques of fairy tales, legends and magic realism, her novels and stories about family dysfunction are transformed into narratives about growth and change.

Role Models (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) and The Possessed (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) John Waters’ gives a passionate description of his favorite books, and for good measure, Elif Batuman gives a lively count-down of her favorite Russian novels.

Isabel Allende's historical novel about slavery and the Haitian revolution becomes a springboard for a conversation about global injustice and the re-emergence of slavery.

The Lost Books of the Odyssey (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) Higher mathematics and logic problems have long intrigued fiction writers, including Zachary Mason. Both Lewis Carroll (the Alice books) and Vladimir Nabokov (Lolita) had a profound love of logic and chess..

Self-Portrait Abroad (Dalkey Archive); Running Away (Dalkey Archive) French fiction had become austere and theoretical until Jean-Philippe Toussaint took it in the direction of the wacky, even goony. His earlier stories focused on characters retreating from contemporary life, but that has given way to work with a light, lyrical approach...

Beatrice & Virgil (Spiegel & Grau) After recognizing that most holocaust literature is centered on personal testimony, Yann Martel decided to create an allegory about the holocaust — a different approach to this traumatic material...

Reality Hunger: A Manifesto (Knopf) and Vanishing Point: Not a Memoir (Graywolf Press) New web technologies (and the ever-increasing availability of information) have made possible a new kind of writing. This prose uses fact and randomness rather than story and structure. Two active practitioners wave the banner for the new.

Solar (Doubleday) Along the way in our conversation about bad morals and good intentions, Ian McEwan dabbles in the background subjects of his new novel...

Nox (New Directions) Anne Carson's brother ran away, and she never saw him again. After learning of his death some twenty years later, she assembled Nox as a form of grieving....

In the midst of all his scandalous anger and shenanigans, it's the shape of a great sentence that keeps Sam Lipsyte's interest in writing fiction at fever pitch.

The Surrendered (Riverhead) Renowned for his novels about repressed, withdrawn characters, Chang-rae Lee new novel explores new ground....