Date: 2004 Author: Jim Crace British author Crace is among the best living writers of the English language. Yet his…

Date: 1996 Author: Chuck Palahnuik If you’ve seen the movie, put it out of your mind. This is the real…

Date: 1988 Author: James Salter Salter’s short stories exist to cast a cumulative shadow. People wake or fall into hurt.…

Date: 2004 Author: Vendela Vida Very much a first novel, Vida often grinds her gears. The front-burner story, and the…

Date: 1838 (2001) Author: Edgar Allen Poe “Journey to the Center of the Earth” meets “Heart of Darkness” meets “2001:…

Date: 2003 Author: Jane Leavy Sandy Koufax was a left-handed pitcher of sublime talent whose reluctant fame operated counterclockwise to…

Date: 2004 Author: Alex Garland Garland has been weaving around since “The Beach.” It’s been a novel here (“The Tesseract”),…

Date: 1998 Author: Sebastian Junger Sometimes, with a little luck, an event comes to a first-time writer bearing a welcome…

Date: 2002 Author: Kevin Brockmeier Abook of fancies that plays metaphysical tricks on rational premises. There’s the unique opening story…

Date: 2003 Author: Heidi Julavits Toward the end of this surreal story, Alice Vickery Plourde (if she’s really Alice) confesses:…

Date: 1957 (1999) Author: Jack Kerouac Read this not for the Benzedrine-fueled road quirks but for its unquenchable yearning. Half-a-century…

Date: 2003 Author: Caryl Phillips Phillips is a wondrous spelunker. His characters are clad in a soft lint of sad…