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June 3, 2008 The stories of Nigerian-born writer Uwem Akpan offer a well-crafted and chilling vision of Africa, from young Kenyan girls prostituting themselves to pay their younger brothers' school fees to a deadly bus ride down the spine of Nigeria.

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June 3, 2008 In this novel, French writer Marek Halter explores the life of David Reubeni, a 16th-century proto-Zionist who lobbied European kings and the Pope on behalf of a Jewish homeland in the Middle East.

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May 28, 2008 The latest 007 novel features a villain with a hairy, ape hand; a psychopathic killer named Chagrin, and (of course) a Bond girl or two.

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May 27, 2008 The temporary textures of lives in transit thread through the short stories in Sana Krasikov's debut collection, which focuses on Russian immigrants and exiles, characters who have been uprooted so often and so violently that their only notion of home is that which they carry within themselves.

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May 27, 2008 This 1971 debut novel by actor-turned-writer Thomas Tryon is a portrait of psychological decay and transference between identical twin boys born, incongruously, on different days (one before, the other just after midnight) and with different Zodiac signs.

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May 27, 2008 The stories in Nam Le's debut collection feature a remarkable variety of voices and tones, with characters ranging from a fourteen-year-old hit man in Columbia to an aging New York painter preparing to see his daughter's debut in Carnegie Hall.

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May 23, 2008 British writer Lavinia Greenlaw writes about the way music — especially rock — propelled her into her first experience of puppy love (with Donny Osmond) and later, her Clash- and Banshee-inspired punk rebellions.

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May 23, 2008 Leonard S. Marcus takes readers from the first children's book to originate in the New World — The New-England Primer of 1689 — up to the Harry Potter phenomenon.

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May 23, 2008 A New York City artist in search of a simple life decides to reinvent himself as a Brussels sprouts farmer. But reinvention is never easy: Enter his estranged brother; an on again/off again lover; a crazed developer and a host of other wacky characters and you have Don Lee's romp of a novel.

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May 23, 2008 In Rick Bragg's third memoir, the author finds a woman to love, but struggles to be a father to her son: Will he follow in the steps of his own drunkard father, or will he forge a new model of parenthood?

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