Don't get Nora Ephron going about women and aging. Oh no, too late. And she's off...

Jonathan Safran Foer does 9/11 in his idiosyncratic way — using a boy called Oscar and a mobile phone that goes dead.

Ali Smith narrator Amber spins many tales at once, and has no patience for talking heads.

Irène Némirovsky's novellas about the French under pressure from the Nazis are deeply impressive.

It's Gilead as in Gilead, Iowa in Marilynne Robinson's saga of the 1950s and family torment.

The "we" is Dave Eggers, and he's hungry to make up fables and myths to then study them vividly.

Cynthia Ozick assembles a wild cast, including destructive fathers and compromised suitors in this 1930s epic.

Francine Prose approaches pre-9/11 America with breezy, comic gusto. But there's a lot that isn't funny.