The Publishing Mystery That No One Wants to Talk About
A minimally speaking autistic man just wrote a best-selling book. Or did he?
Fiction
The Paradox of Modern Medicine
Testing has become so advanced that doctors now miss important elements of diagnosis.
What Does Lena Dunham Want to Tell Us?
Her new memoir captures the cost of being an impossibly popular target.
The Eighth Deadly Sin
Humankind has devised a new form of debasement.
Six Books That Simply Must Be Talked About
These six books demand discussion—with a pal, a date, or a book club.
Nine Books to Reset Your View of the World
Each of these titles will widen your perspective, offering you original insight and vision.
Seven Books to Read When You Have No Time to Read
These titles are worth picking up, even if you have only a moment to spare.
Six Books You Can Get Lost In
These novels highlight the power—both good and bad—of unchecked fantasizing.
How to Win an Unwinnable War
His parents were separating, but all Sam could think about was preparing for nuclear holocaust.
Scars
“I don’t want any more surgeries. I just want a little art to help, to make it look a little less deformed. You know?”
The Great Zero
All this—the dust, the tarantulas, the deaths—had not come naturally. “We’ve used the land wrong,” I once heard a farmer say while I spied on my father and his Communist friends.
Someone I’d Like You to Meet
Veblen’s first desire had been to spring the news of her engagement on her mother. Nothing with her mother was ever simple and straightforward— and that was the thrill of it.
L’amour, CA
Isa couldn’t wait to leave the Philippines. But when we pull into an American town of foggy streets and gray, concrete houses, she looks confused, then panicked.
Sold
“I knew that all the things we’d gathered there so many years would be scattered and gone. All that had held it together would come apart and be gone as if it never was.”
Herman Wouk Is Still Alive
Brenda should be happy. The kids are quiet, the road stretches ahead of her like an airport runway, she's behind the wheel of a brand-new van. The speedometer reads 70. Nonetheless, that grayness has begun to creep over her again. The van isn't hers, after all. She'll have to give it back. A foolish expense, really, because what's at the far end of this trip, up in Mars Hill? She looks at her old friend. Jasmine is looking back at her. The van, now doing almost a hundred miles an hour, begins to drift. Jasmine gives a small nod. Brenda nods back. Then she pushes down harder with her foot, trying to find the van's carpeted floor.
The Landscape of Pleasure
The man next to my father at the bar winked shyly at me. I had seen this man before. His name was Russell. He wasn’t a member of our club, but he and my father were friendly. He was a former Army officer, and he restored classic cars. “He’s unstoppable,” my father often said. “That man’s unstoppable.”
Lorelei
Howell was never caught. He lent a certain grace to his grift, even value to whatever he grabbed. The widows never felt cheated. They remembered the dark-haired stranger who drifted into their lives and made love to them like some Manhattan sheik. But Howell had little to do with Manhattan. He was from the Bronx. And because of his own odd chivalry, that ceiling he put on whatever he stole, Howell never grew rich.