Horoscopes for the Dead

Disarmingly amiable, former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins hides an intricate intellectual etiquette behind the easy-going surface of his poems. His works are not only enjoyable, but memorable, too, as this characteristically mordant new collection proves.

June 19: On this day in 1816, the Shelleys, Lord Byron, and entourage gathered at the Villa Diodati on Lake Geneva to tell the ghost stories that would trigger Frankenstein. This most legendary of storm-tossed evenings inspired…

Very few debut novels exhibit the charm, assurance, emotional depth and bravura fabulation which the lucky reader will discover in Helene Wecker's

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