Date: 1956 Author: Yasunari Kawabata Kawabata’s acclaimed 1956 short novel is about love’s limitations and the improbability of emotional fulfillment.…

Date: 2008 Author: Julie Hecht Hecht is the Xanax princess of wry, a kind of Gregory House in drag. She’s…

Date: 2002 Author: Philippe Petit Of all the nonfiction associated with the Twin Towers (most produced after 9/11) this is…

Date: 2007 Author: David Malouf Australian Malouf’s latest collection again displays his talent for introducing characters that are simultaneously fully-boned…

Date: 2007 Author: Amélie Nothomb, translated from the French by Shaun Whiteside Nothomb’s parable-cum-parody about voyeurism, reality TV, torture, and…

Date: 2008 Author: Sarah Manguso Illness intrigues. It’s morality’s only available sonata. A Margaret Atwood novel that included masectomies thrilled…

Date: 1962 (1998) Author: Vladimir Nabokov Nabokov’s 1962 novel is the tart (if too clever) standard-bearer for literary/academic grand guignol. It…

Date: 1950 (1998) Author: Ernest Hemingway The misfortune of this book is not its mediocrity but Hemingway’s deeply morbid investment…

Date: 2006 Author: Russell Wangersky A wounding ferocity smolders in journalist Russell Wangersky’s stories. His cleanly drawn Canadian working folk…

Date: 2006 Author: John Updike Updike ill-advisedly sets out to place terrorism on his literary CV and comes up with…

Date: 2006 Author: Lisa Unger This is one of those murder mysteries where revelations are always in italics (e.g. “Gray areas didn’t even exist for Gus…

Date: 2006 Author: Ali Smith One day a mysterious visitor arrives. In Smith’s latest book, this archetypal fable features roughly…