S.J. Parris
S.J. Parris writes about her inspiration for Heresy, which masterfully blends true events with fiction into a page-turning murder mystery set on the sixteenth-century Oxford University campus.
Adam Haslett
A conversation with Adam Haslett, author of Union Atlantic, a deeply affecting portrait of the modern gilded age, the first decade of the twenty-first century.
A decade ago, The Bonfire of the Vanities defined an era and established Tom Wolfe as our prime fictional chronicler of America at its most outrageous and alive. Now the master is back with a pitch-perfect coast-to-coast portrait of our wild and woolly, no-holds-barred, multifarious country on the cusp of the millennium.
The setting is Atlanta, Georgia--a racially mixed, late-century boomtown full of fresh wealth and wily politicians. The protagonist is Charles Croker, once a college football star, now a late-middle-aged Atlanta conglomerate king whose outsize ego has at last hit up against reality. Charlie has a 29,000-acre quail-shooting plantation, a young and demanding second wife--and a half-empty office complex with a staggering load of debt.
Meanwhile, Conrad Hensley, idealistic young father of two, is laid off from his job at the Croker Global Foods warehouse near Oakland and finds himself spiraling into the lower depths of the American legal system. And back in Atlanta, when star Georgia Tech running back Fareek "the Cannon" Fanon, a homegrown product of the city's slums, is accused of date-raping the daughter of a pillar of the white establishment, upscale black lawyer Roger White II is asked to represent Fanon and help keep the city's delicate racial balance from blowing sky-high.
Networks of illegal Asian immigrants crisscrossing the continent, daily life behind bars, shady real estate syndicates, the cast-off first wives of the corporate elite--Wolfe shows us contemporary America with all the verve, wit, and insight that have made him our most admired novelist. Charlie Croker's deliverance from his tribulations provides an unforgettable denouement to the most widely awaited, hilarious, and telling novel America has seen in ages--Tom Wolfe's outstanding achievement to date.
Book Reviews
The Library Journal
Imagine Bonfire of the Vanities set in Atlanta a star running back from the slums is accused of raping the daughter of a blueblood family even as Asian immigrants sneak into town and protagonist Charlie Croker, a football star turned businessman, tries to get out of debt.
New York Times Book Review
The novel contains passages as powerful and as beautiful as anything written by...any American novelist....The book is as funny as anything Wolfe has ever written, at the same time it is also deeply, strangely affecting.
Time Magazine
No summary of A Man in Full can do justice to the novel's ethical nuances and hell-bent packing, its sweep and intricate interweaving of private and public responsibilities, its electric sense of conveying current events and its knowing portraits of people actually doing their jobs. Who, besides Wolfe, would have thought that banking and real estate transactions could be the stuff of gripping fiction? Who else would have set a scene, the most over the top in the whole novel in the breeding barn of Turpmtine, where Charlie, in a misguided attempt to impress his guests from Atlanta, makes them, male and female alike, witness a tumultuous mating between one of his stallions and a mare?
Kostova's masterful new novel travels from American cities to the coast of Normandy, from the late 19th century to the late 20th, from young love to last love. The Swan Thieves is a story of obsession, history's losses, and the power of art to preserve human hope.
What drives a man to stay in a marriage, in a job? What forces him away? Is love or conscience enough to overcome the darker, stronger urges of the natural world? The Unnamed is a deeply felt, luminous novel about modern life, ancient yearnings, and the power of human understanding.
Someone gives you a dangerous puzzle to solve, one that may kill you or someone else, and you're about to fail... And there is no other option. No one who can help. No one but the Bricklayer.
The tragedy, the sorrow, the loss, is almost too much for me to recommend this; on the other hand Mistry made me believe I knew these characters. I ...
read more
The challenge of writing a biography on Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis is that everyone knows the basic plot: a love of horses, suffered from her ...
read more
I can't quite understand the one bad review, as this is absolutely one of the best books I've read lately...and I've read plenty of good books. The ...
read more
Samsung introduces eReader(Mar 10 2010) Yesterday, Samsung announced the Samsung eReader, a $299 device which allows you to take notes in the margins and share content with other Samsung eReaders....
Full Story
Books overtake games as most numerous iPhone apps(Mar 10 2010) The electronic book passed another milestone this month, with the number of books available on the iTunes App Store passing the number of games for the first...
Full Story