Behind the Beautiful Forevers

An award-winning reporter's "uncompromising and important" new look at daily life in a Mumbai slum.

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What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank

Eight new stories from an emerging master of the form seek "the narrow strait between hilarity and heartwreck."

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The Last Holiday: A Memoir

An unclassifiable musician on a life spent transmuting suffering into music.

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From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant

A wannabe-fashionista becomes a victim of national-security paranoia in this darkly comic novel.

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Spring: A Novel

"Insecurity and uncertainty rule the day" in this portrait of a love affair.

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Carrying Costs

Two new books grapple with teen pregnancy, practicality, and prejudice.

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A Whole Lot of Nothing

Forget about the Big Bang. Why would there be anything to bang at all?

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The Ice Balloon

The little-known story of a bold and tragic attempt to reach the North Pole by air.

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Babel No More: The Search for the World's Most Extraordinary Language Learners

How many languages can one human mind master?

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The Flame Alphabet

A plague of words tears ordinary life asunder in this heartrending fable.

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Raylan

A writer famed for his chattering crooks turns again to his close-mouthed lawman.

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The Wandering Gene and the Indian Princess

An unexpected inheritance meets a family's religious fervor, with calamitous results.

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Life Sentences: Literary Judgments and Accounts

Essays from the novelist that explore "consciousness of many extraordinary kinds."

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The Man Within My Head

The globe-trotting essayist contemplates his greatest influence.

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Pity the Billionaire: The Hard-Times Swindle and the Unlikely Comeback of the Right

How we got to this grim pass in our political and economic system.

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The Last Nude

The true story of an artist and her model inspires a tale of obsession and its consequences.

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The Map and the Territory

The controversial French novelist has a little fun.

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Kayak Morning

A meditation on loss from the author of Making Toast.

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The Table Comes First: Family, France, and the Meaning of Food

Following "the simple path between eating well and feeling happy."

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Next Up: Coming in 2012

Twenty forthcoming works that augur happy reading in the new year.

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The Death of King Arthur and Seeing Stars

The poet's new translation of a medieval Arthurian epic -- and some new enchantments of his own.

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End Times

Cruelty and consolation in the last days of the Roman Empire.

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The Truth about Marie

Mysteries of identity and the shadow of madness haunt the new novel from the author of Running Away.

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Howard Cosell: The Man, the Myth, and the Transformation of American Sports

The voice! The ego! The drama!

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Year's Best Reading 2011: Editors' Picks

Our favorite books of the year -- in Fiction, Nonfiction, and Beyond Category.

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The Art-Architecture Complex

Where image-making and space-shaping meet.

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Getting Real: Best Young Adult Fiction of 2011

Ten great books for younger readers.

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Hedy's Folly: The Life and Breakthrough Inventions of Hedy Lamarr

A Hollywood star's inventive legacy.

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The Third Reich

A study in slow-burning suspense from the author of 2666.

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The Cult of LEGO

How the blocks and "minifigs" have leapt the gap from toy to obsession.

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February 9: Alice Walker was born on this day in 1944. Thirty years after her Pulitzer winner The Color Purple, Walker continues to publish in many genres. Her most recent book is The Chicken Chronicles, a memoir-meditation…

Once held close to the chest and protected by well-understood laws, the valuable information about our lives that we blithely disclose with our every keystroke has the potential…

Books CDs, DVDs to know about now
Alice James

"The moral and philosophical questions that Henry wrote up as fiction and William as science," Jean Strouse writes of her subject's more famous brothers, "Alice simply lived." It took a biographer of sensitivity and brilliance to give that "simply" the profundity it deserves, and the resulting book, now reissued in the peerless NYRB Classics series, is one of the richest life stories you'll ever read.

Midnight in Austenland

The world of Jane Austen's fiction has long been an imaginative playground for writers and readers of a certain stripe. Shannon Hale's Austenland wittily took the next step, setting comic romance in a faux-Pemberly resort for the Darcy-smitten. Her latest returns for more Regency fun, but with a twist: does murder stalk Pembrook Park?

Humble Homes, Simple Shacks...

Childlike retreat? Arts and crafts challenge? Frugal and eco-friendly living option? The notion of the "tiny house" has the surprising potential to fire the imagination. In this exuberant volume of sketches, plans, and commentary, the artist Derek Diedricksen shares his infectious enthusiasm for the idea of the micro-mansion.