• READING IN COMMON

An Interview with Elinor Lipman

The charming writer of I Can't Complain on self-esteem, second chances, and happy endings.

 

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  • READING IN COMMON

The Interestings

Old friends at the top and bottom of the art world meet in the middle.

 

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  • READING IN COMMON

How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia

A wry take on "self-help" skewers our globalized economy.

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  • READING IN COMMON

Schroder

A prisoner's letters reveal the harrowing and often triumphant life of a fraud.

 

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  • READING IN COMMON

The Inventor and the Tycoon

Two unlikely collaborators project the dawn of film technology.

 

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  • READING IN COMMON

Charmers

A short list of books that are equal parts entertainment and provocation.

 

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  • READING IN COMMON

Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore

A technological adventure story lurks on these shelves.

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  • READING IN COMMON

This Is How You Lose Her

A cheater's guide to love is also a poignant study of what keeps us from understanding ourselves.

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  • READING IN COMMON

There but for the

A dinner party attendee's refusal to leave occasions reflection among his fellow guests.

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  • READING IN COMMON

How to Be a Woman

A British writer's memoir attacks sexism with humor and a take-no-prisoners attitude.

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  • READING IN COMMON

Workers' Compensations

Why a writer's luminous memoir makes inspiring reading for recent graduates -- and their families.

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  • READING IN COMMON

Conversation Pieces

Finding the balance between pleasure and challenge when selecting that group read.

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About the Columnist
Heller McAlpin is a New York-based critic who reviews books for NPR.org, The Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Christian Science Monitor, and other publications.

May 24: Joseph Brodsky was born on this day in 1940 in Leningrad. Brodsky's constitutional skepticism was not compatible with the official Soviet alternatives, and by age twenty-five he was in prison, wrapped in cold, wet sheets as…

Angry robots! Aren't they all? Well, not the line of fine science fiction and fantasy books that comes to readers under the rubric Angry Robot. In fact, their offerings…

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Books, CDs, DVDs to know about now
She Left Me the Gun

Emma Brockes' mother Paula escaped from South Africa with a smuggled pistol and a dark secret.  A daughter unravels her family's covert past -- and a suspenseful legal drama -- in this hard-boiled memoir of survival.

Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking

Expand your memory, puzzle-solving skills, and sense of metaphysical wonder with philosopher Daniel C. Dennett's tasting menu of user-friendly neuroscience and poetic lingual pursuits.

When the Devil Drives

Thespian-turned-P.I. Jasmine Sharp searches for a missing actress and veteran detective Catherine MacLeod tries to solve the case of a murdered one. Their paths intertwine amid the Scottish theater community with uproarious and gory results.