Books

This ambitious first novel by David Whitehouse features a humongous protagonist at its comic center. Mal Ede, world's fattest man and bed-bound grotesque, finds his reluctant Boswell in his put-upon younger brother. Part parable of contemporary excess,...

Andrew Scott Cooper's absorbing chronicle of US diplomacy in the Middle East yeilds fresh insights gleaned from newly declassified documents about America's decision in 1976 to break ties with the Shah of Iran and turn to Saudi Arabia for cheaper oil. ...

What's astonishing about this ingeniously crafted dual love story -- in which a mysterious letter prompts a young journalist to investigate the fate of an affair forty years in the past, changing her own life in the process -- is how swiftly and effort...

In some alternate universe, it was Carthage, not Rome, that reigned supreme in the ancient Mediterranean. In our world, of course, the North African empire was destroyed, its history relegated to footnotes. Richard Miles lays out eight centuries o...

Daniel Polansky's debut novel dives into China Mieville-style weird noir. Our anthihero, Warden, is a drug-addicted former intelligence agent turned crimelord out to solve the disappearance of a flock of kids from his hood. Blending elemental magic wit...

The singer-songwriter picks books she'd travel a thousand miles to read.

Motherhood and war, life and death. David Grossman's celebrated novel -- newly available in paperback -- employs the landscape and culture of modern Israel, charged with both maternal and destructive impulses, to embody the tensions between one soldier...

Smile, and the whole world smiles with you. But they don't all necessarily mean the same thing. Marianne LaFrance convinces us there's a secret wealth concealed behind that most common of facial expressions. Drawing from the allied fields of medicine, ...

Babe Didrikson Zaharias was not only a pioneer of golf and a founder of the LPGA. She also excelled in basketball and took home gold medals in track and field at the 1932 Olympics. But her outsized Texas personality rivalled her physical gifts, and h...

Three illuminating reads, chosen by the actress and author.

History, myths, and stories of the digital playground.

Rebecca Makkai's The Borrower is one of those rare debut novels that makes an impact through its message as well as its literary achievement. Praised widely for being beautifully written, and chosen by The Daily Beast as a must read, The Borrower chron...