It took over five years for Nathaniel Rich to finish his first novel — maybe because he was writing The Mayor's Tongue secretly, first as a college student, and then while writing film criticism during the day.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

In the first installment of her journals, Susan Sontag exhibits the fierce critical intelligence that distinguishes her work — along with a vulnerability that may surprise. The result is an absorbing chronicle of emotional and intellectual self-discovery.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

With holiday sales down almost 12 percent, Borders has replaced its CEO and it appears the bookseller might be delisted from the New York Stock Exchange. The company has named Ron Marshall as its new CEO; he replaces George Jones.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

In British writer Bernardine Evaristo's new novel, Blonde Roots, African slave traders raid Europe. Evaristo wields language and messes with history and geography with the gusto of someone having a great time with a great subject.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

Fate is the protagonist in Patricia Ferguson's masterful Peripheral Vision, which examines the effects one unhappy accident has on a constellation of characters.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

Norah Vincent spent 18 months living disguised as a man. The experience led to deep depression and a stay at a mental institution. Once she left, Vincent decided to check back into institutions across the country. She tells her story in Voluntary Madness.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

In her new book, Animals Make Us Human, Temple Grandin examines common notions of animal happiness and concludes that dogs, cats, horses, cows and zoo animals — among other creatures — possess an emotional system akin to that of humans.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

In 2005, Dana Canedy's fiance — Charles King — was deployed to Iraq. King started writing a journal to their infant son, in case he didn't make it home. After King lost his life in a roadside bomb attack, Canedy turned King's 200-page journal into a memoir, called A Journal for Jordan.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

A Wovel is an on-line novel written serially, with readers deciding the turns of the plot. Publisher Underland Press is hoping people who already do most of their reading surfing the web will return each week to read the next installment.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

Langston Hughes and Frances Ellen Watkins Harper are prominent African-American poets who wrote about civil rights and whose work still resonates today. Host Liane Hansen speaks with poet E. Ethelbert Miller about Harper's and Hughes' work and what it means in this time of change in America.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

Author Noah Andre Trudeau's book, Southern Storm, is about Sherman's March and what actually happened during this famous Civil War event.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

Language consultant Jeremy Butterfield, author of A Damp Squid: The English Language Laid Bare, talks about the odd words he's come across and the Oxford English Corpus, an electronic database of more than 2 billion words.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

For the last two years, James Fallows has followed China's astounding double-digit growth in a series of quirky essays for the Atlantic Monthly. His stories are now collected in a new book, Postcards From Tomorrow Square.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us