British novelist Julian Barnes a unique palette to a memoir of personal grief.

J.M. Coetzee conjures a superb modern parable about foreigness and being.

Leaning to accept things as they are goes with the Italian (train) landscape.

Gabrielle Hamilton's remembrance of growing up in (and out of) a crazy, culinary home is top notch.

Emma Chapman's Marta Bjornstad remembers nothing about her life, until the past creeps forward.

Tom Wolfe's latest blasts the American Dream courtesy of porn-iferous Miami.

Irish-Canadian writer Emma Donoghue again gorgeously merges fiction and fact.

If you think the 21st-century world can bypass ancient fears, think again.

Ian McEwan's slow-to-cook "Sweet Tooth" eventually makes for appetizing reading.

"Dare Me," Megan Abbott's taught cheerleader thriller, doesn't let up.

Probing a city that is (and always has been) the sum of nooks, crannies, commerce, and violence.