April 21, 2009 From dismembered toes to leathery tongues, Peter Manseau explores the centuries-old obsession with relics, the body parts of long-dead saints and spiritual leaders.

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April 14, 2009 Emily Fox Gordon skewers the foibles of academic life in It Will Come to Me, a comic novel set on the campus of a large Southern university. The book is the first work of fiction from the acclaimed memoirist.

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April 7, 2009 In John Wray's new novel, Lowboy, a schizophrenic teenager goes off his meds and disappears into the New York subway system. His mission: to save the world by losing his virginity.

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March 31, 2009 A recent issue of the literary magazine Granta included moving stories from two new writers: Daniyal Mueenuddin, author of the book In Other Rooms, Other Wonders; and Justin Torres. The writers read from their works.

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March 24, 2009 In Sowing Crisis, Middle East scholar Rashid Khalidi examines how Cold War tensions between the U.S. and the Soviet Union continue to undermine stability in the Middle East.

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March 17, 2009 Once a popular superhero, Captain Freedom's fame is in decline. In G. Xavier Robillard's satire of our celebrity-obsessed pop culture, Freedom does what any self-respecting superhero would do: hires a life coach and starts searching for his roots.

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March 10, 2009 Physician Abraham Verghese's debut novel, Cutting for Stone, is a big, sprawling story of an Ethiopian surgeon, his family and his craft. The author is best known for his memoir My Own Country.

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March 3, 2009 Writer T.C. Boyle explores the scandalous and passionate turns in the life of architect Frank Lloyd Wright through the perspective of his wives and mistresses.

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February 24, 2009 Drawing on recently discovered letters and photographs, historian Ronald C. White offers a new, highly praised biography of America's 16th president.

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February 18, 2009 When former DNC Chair Robert Strauss said, "There's just so damn much money in it," Robert Kaiser knew he had a title for his book on the multibillion-dollar world of political lobbying.

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