These essays and reviews are mostly about literary fiction published in the last ten years and are written from the perspective of a fan of the McElroy/Coover/DeLillo axis or, more recently, the Powers/Vollmann/Wallace axis. The review-essays include pieces on all of the National Book Award fiction finalists of the last five years. Reviews selected here first appeared in Electronic Book Review, Barnes and Noble Review, New York Times Book Review, Atlantic, BookForum, The Nation, American B...

Michael Keever, former Celtic teammate of Larry Bird’s, changes his name and passes himself off as Greek-American to play in the Greek Basketball Association. When Michael appears on Greek TV in a public service spot against pollution, a viewer suspects that his ethnic background would not qualify him to play in Greece.

Abraham Lincoln trusted and confided in his law partner William “Billy” Herndon, but his still-influential 1889 biography was censored by his collaborator and publisher. In Lincoln’s Billy, Tom LeClair imagines Herndon’s deathbed autobiography and the “real life” of his partner, revealing secrets about a randy and “rasslin’” Lincoln on his youthful trips to New Orleans, the hidden sources of his depression, and the untold cause of his hatred of slavery.Based on the latest ...

Celebrates and illuminates the legacy of one of America’s most innovative and consequential 20th century novelistsIn 2002, following the posthumous publication of William Gaddis’s collected nonfiction and his final novel and Jonathan Franzen’s lengthy attack on him in The New Yorker, a number of partisan articles appeared in support of Gaddis’s legacy. In a review in The London Review of Books, critic Hal Foster suggested a reason for disparate responses t...

God has a glorious purpose for His people. And those who understand this will rule and reign with Jesus for eternity.God, in the eternal past, planned for mankind to live on the earth and fulfill a great purpose in the eternal future. Bishop Hamon, a pioneer of restoration in the Church, stands firmly on biblical truth as he explores that great purpose: being conformed to the likeness of Jesus. By tracking the eight major reasons God created human beings, Dr. Hamon...

"Insightful...draws from disparate corners of history and science to celebrate our compulsion to storify everything around us."— The New York Times Book ReviewHumans live in landscapes of make-believe. We spin fantasies. We devour novels, films, and plays. Even sporting events and criminal trials unfold as narratives. Yet the world of story has remained an undiscovered and unmapped country. It's easy to say that humans are "wired" for story, but why

In this New York Times bestseller from the world's #1 bestselling author**, two high school students leave their hometown on the West Coast to go on an impulsive cross-country road trip in this moving romance about friendship and the power of love.**Axi Moore is a "good girl". She studies hard, stays out of the spotlight, and doesn't tell anyone that she wants to run away from it all. The only person she can tell is her best friend, Robins...

There are so many fantastic authors and great books out there that sometimes it’s hard to know where to begin. Start Here solves that problem; it tells you how to read your way into 25 amazing authors from a wide range of genres--from classics to contemporary fiction to comics. Each chapter presents an author, explains why you might want to try them, and lays out a 3- or 4-book reading sequence designed to help you experience fully what they have to offer. It’s a fun, accessible, and infor...

The enduring story of a slashing in Penn Station that draws a Manhattan detective back into a case from the past that haunts him, by the bestselling and critically acclaimed master of the gritty crime drama.“A masterpiece, to stand with such earlier Price classics as Clockers and Lush Life . . . [The Whites has] a compelling plot, yet the real joy of the book lies page by page, line by line, in its brilliant chara...

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A transformative guide to reconnecting with and harnessing your authentic self so you can lead a more fulfilled, complete life, from the world-renowned former director of the Jung Institute“A brilliant and absorbing work . . . [James] Hillman dares us to believe we are each meant to be here, that we are needed by the world around us.”—Publishers WeeklyPlato called it “daimon,” the Romans “gen...

USA Today bestselling author Chris Taylor’s gripping new suspense thriller doesn’t disappoint…North Sydney police negotiator Andy Warwick is the best at his job. He's seen firsthand how violence can destroy lives. Still suffering from the nightmares of his past, he yearns for a family of his own.Single mother Cally Savage will do anything for her son. When her house is ransacked, Cally seeks protection from the criminal who’s likely to return. Comp...

The follow-up and companion volume to the New York Times bestselling How to Read Literature Like a Professor—a lively and entertaining guide to understanding and dissecting novels to make everyday reading more enriching, satisfying, and funOf all the literary forms, the novel is arguably the most discussed . . . and fretted over. From Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote to the works of Jane Austen, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and...