Bookworm

Kate Wheeler When Mountains Walked (Houghton Mifflin) Prize-winning short-story writer Kate Wheeler describes the ordeal of tackling her first novel. Ordeal it was, bringing her into South American jungles and shattering her Buddhist calm.

Margot Livesey The Missing World (Knopf) With an alarming, but quiet malice and wit, Livesey dissects the dark motives underlying her sinister world view.

Eliza Minot The Tiny One (Knopf) Literary sibling rivalry: Eliza, the younger sister of Susan, offers her slant on a family we've met before in her sister's novels.

Kenward Elmslie Cyberspace (Granary Books) Kenward Elmslie, our wildest poetic genius, takes no hostages when he explodes into cyberspace in this book-length poem-extravaganza.

Richard Slotkin Abe (Holt) The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn starring young Abe Lincoln? What does this exploration into our 16th president's childhood reveal about American literature and heroism?

Timothy Findley Pilgrim (Harper Collins) Timothy Findley insists on Jung's dispassionate anti-humanist attitudes in Pilgrim, his confrontation with the frontiers of madness and history. Why? There is more in heaven and earth than there is dreamt of in your philosophy, Dr. Jung.

David Eggers A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (Simon & Schuster)We approach this anti-memoir about the death of both of the author's parents with an eye on this question of distinction: when does heartbroken facetiousness become heartlessness?

James Quandt, editor of Robert Bresson (University of Indiana Press) The recent death of Robert Bresson, the legendary French film director, provides the occasion for this tribute to Bresson's purity of style and the power of his literary adaptations. James Quandt, film curator and editor of an anthology of essays on Bresson, is our guest.