Literary Fiction

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First published in 1925, the Argentinian, Lascano Tegui’s novel, On Elegance While Sleeping, was just reprinted and deftly translated into English by Idra Novey, giving an English language

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A good writer can make any scenario dramatic—even short-selling the summer electricity market in Texas in 2005.

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There is a pang that occurs quite naturally when you hear that a friend or family member is about to watch a really great movie for the very first time.

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First impressions can be deceiving. The first chapter of Murray Tillman’s Meet Me on the Paisley Roof is the ultimate turn-off.

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Degrees of Elevation: Short Stories of Contemporary Appalachia brings together 17 gifted writers whose voices are as unique and striking as the region about which they write.

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This is the latest book by the “shuffling old man” of poetry, Charles Simic. And it is terrific.

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Oh, to be a 19th century English aristocrat compelled to take a languorous journey by coach—ship—camel to the mysteries of Egypt, where upon a sturdy square-sailed dahabieh, doting servants attend

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It’s confusing enough to be adopted. To be thrust from abject poverty in one of the poorest favelas in São Paulo into one of the richest families in the country, even more so.

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Nora MacKenzie lost everything.

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Pop Quiz: The title, Isle of Dreams, refers to:

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There exists a fascination with Emily Dickinson, a genius in a tiny bedroom scribbling poems that would become legendary. A mythological recluse writing about life, but not participating in it.

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Even the most enthusiastic admirers of the late Roberto Bolaño must wonder sometimes if there is really a case for posthumously publishing everything that he ever wrote.

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Here is a Southern literary novel that takes the reader back to 1920 and the back hills of the Carolina highlands where horses are still the main means of travel.

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The good thing about anthologies is that it gives readers an opportunity for quick reads, without a lot of the flowery and extraneous prose that often bogs down other novels.

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Dr. Zhivago is a big book, physically and in terms of its themes, multi-stranded storylines and historical backdrop.

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Mason’s in a bit of a bind, though he might not admit it to you.

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The hardscrabble life of Appalachia is well-explored territory, mapped with notable success most recently by the likes of Tony Earley and Ron Rash.

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The promotional materials that accompanied my review copy of James Franco’s debut fiction collection, Palo Alto, set the bar impossibly high for the 30-something actor-turned-writer.

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In the Hebrew edition of Yael Hedaya’s novel Eden the second of three chapters named for the character Dafna begins with the following paragraph:

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In Grim Reaper: End of Days, Steve Alten offers up an ambitious tale of a hero’s journey through Hell.

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Charles Simic has been around for along time and has seen a great deal. He was born in Belgrade in 1938 and his early years were spent, with his family, as displaced people in war-torn Europe.

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Motherlode, the fictional dusty California gold-rush town whose evolution Mary Volmer portrays so charmingly in her debut novel, is a character of its own—a gawky preteen of a sort, a formerly happ

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Katie Kampenfelt is smart, but not educated. She’s sassy, erratic, impulsive, and yet totally honest with the readers of her blog. She types away at her computer telling us the story of her life.

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Vampires are hot. Looking at recent incarnations of them in movies or on television might lead a reader to think this was a new craze. Not true.

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What if Franklin Delano Roosevelt, instead of winning a third term as president, had been defeated by the Republican candidate Charles Lindbergh, the celebrated aviator and “America First” isolatio

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