Bookworm

How to Be Good (Riverhead)

Life after Death (Random House)
Carol Muske-Dukes began to write a dark comedy about death. Slowly, she discovered that compassion was reshaping her book, giving it depth and complexity...

(Riverhead)

If in Time, Collected Poems 1975-2000 (Penguin)

Ann Lauterbach believes that one of the primary functions of poetry is the demystification of the world's cliches and the creation of new wonders...

Blake's Therapy (7 Stories Press)

Ariel Dorfman describes his goal: to subvert the techniques of melodrama and thriller-writing in order to penetrate illusion and arrive at reality with a capital R.

The Tether (Farrar, Straus & Giroux); Pastoral (Gray Wolf)

Strongly influenced by the Metaphysical poets, Carl Phillips writes a mixture of erotic and devotional poetry...

The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse (Harper Collins)

Louise Erdrich mixes elements of her German and Native American ancestry to create a collage of history, mythology and good old-fashioned storytelling....

(Norton)

has produced a superb translation of works by the great Holocaust poet Paul Celan...

Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper (Random House)
Nicholson Baker has been on a crusade to preserve intact our books and newspapers. In Double Fold, he exposes the efforts of some of the greatest enemies of paper.

Spring Essence: The Poetry of Ho Xuan Huong (Copper Canyon Press)

Ho Xuan Huong was an 18th century Vietnamese poet and concubine. Poet John Balaban served as a conscientious objector in Vietnam during the war. We explore the complex destinies that led him to learn Vietnamese and to translate Ho's complex, erotic poems.