Bookworm

This conversation provides a mini-course in short-story writing, George Saunders-style and explores the construction of short fiction from the ground up.

Channeling Mark Twain (Random House)This novel revives the belief that poetry has a close connection to personal and political liberation.

Steve Erickson's breakthrough novel Zeroville is about the The Movies — not the movie business, not the wheels and deals— but The Movies themselves.

The Bad Girl (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)We take the occasion of the publication of Mario Vargas Llosa's new novel, The Bad Girl, to air this previously unheard interview in which the great Peruvian novelist describes the effects of "El Boom" –- magic realism and its relatives -- on the literature of Latin America...

Bowl of Cherries (McSweeney's) Millard Kaufman has written a classic comic novel that belongs in the tradition that runs from Charles Dickens to Evelyn Waugh.

Joe is Ron Padgett's intimate and affectionate biography-memoir of his friend of four decades, artist-poet Joe Brainard.

The Book of Psalms: A Translation with Commentary (Norton) Biblical scholar Robert Alter faces a barrage of questions: What are psalms? Who wrote them? If they are prayers, why does he consider them poems?

This wide-ranging yet intimate conversation with Junot Díaz explores many difficult subjects...

twin time: or how death befell me (Semiotext(e)) The heroine of twin time is a woman whose life is surrounded by mystery. Who is her father? Where is her mother? Why did no one tell her she has a twin brother?

Death of a Murderer (Knopf) A factual series of murders provides the background for this novel: the Moor Murders that haunted the British imagination in the 1960's.

The Almost Moon (Little, Brown) Alice Sebold wrote The Lovely Bones, one of the most beloved and lovable books in recent years. How did she prepare herself for the onslaught she'll face with The Almost Moon, a book which, for all its quality, is resolutely in the realm of unlovability.

The Guardians (Random House) This is a novel about borders in which borders disappear: the border between old and young, between secular and sacred, between states—but not the border between the U.S. and Mexico.

Spook Country (Putnam)Along with the most sophisticated future-predictions, speculations about the sociology of cities, and adventures in virtual post-realities, William Gibson has finally learned how to get his characters from one room to another.

Das Kapital: A Novel of Love and Money Markets (Simon & Schuster)Viken Berberian writes in a post-modern apocalyptic vein about billionaire stock traders, terrorists and nationalists.  

The Shadow Catcher (Simon & Schuster) With its fascinating combination of history, biography, memoir and essay, is The Shadow Catcher a novel?

No one belongs here more than you and Learning to Love You More, co-author Harrell Fletcher (Prestel) Miranda July's film Me and You and Everyone We Know captured the mood of a generation –- and its attention. In this first book of stories, we find the same fear of paralysis, the same narcotized, sleepwalker affect. Why does Miranda July, a tireless whirlwind, identify with these listless characters?

The Ministry of Special Cases (Knopf)Nathan Englander uses desapareacidos to stand for all kinds of disappearance. Here, we focus on yet another: his own.

The Perfect Man (Random House)Naeem Murr's work has been described as perverse—but he insists that this perversity seems ordinary to him.

Michael Ondaatje's novels come together through obsession and intuition. He works in the dark, not knowing where he is heading, juxtaposing disparate materials, noticing echoes and recurrences.

Their Dogs Came with Them (Atria) Helena Maria Viramontes has written about L.A.-based Latino culture before -- but who could have expected this epic work about a neighborhood that is divided by a freeway, cut off and lost in Los Angeles. Viramontes explores the explosive insights that gave her the ability to grow as a novelist.