Smut

In his hilarious and moving tale The Common Reader, Alan Bennett deliciously imagined England's monarch as a woman whose mind is set free by a surprising turn to reading. Now, in this pair of novellas, the writer turns his unmatched pen onto the lives of  two women caught up in decidedly less literary concerns. Wicked -- and insightful -- fun.

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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