A Diamond in the Desert

Part history, part memoir, part travel guide, this search for the mysteries behind one of the world’s richest cities is “the best book . . . on the Gulf coast…

Heathern

“An exciting sci-fi stylist . . . Womack’s imaginative projection of our imminent fate is crippling.” –People…

My Life in Heavy Metal

“Almond’s eye for modern types is impeccably, almost academically, sharp, and yet these stories, slight as they sometimes are, never come across as schoolwork.” –Mark Rozzo, The Los Angeles Times…

Second Violin

“Smart and gracefully written . . . It has been Lawton’s achievement to capture, in first-rate popular fiction, the courage and drama—and the widespread tomorrow-we-may-die exuberance—of that terrible and thrilling…

Carry Me Down

“John Egan is a brave, resourceful boy, intelligent and self-aware, yet skating on the edge of madness. The story of John’s thirteenth year is both sympathetic and disturbing. It is…

Remembrance Day

Solitary

The extraordinary saga of a man who, despite spending four decades in solitary confinement for a crime of which he was innocent, inspired fellow prisoners, and now all of us,…

Worm: the First Digital World War, by Mark Bowden

The fascinating story of the Conficker computer worm and the cyber security elites who have joined forces in a high-tech game of cops and robbers to find its creators and…

Within the Context of No Context

“The writing in this book is so extraordinary. It is as if George Trow had dived down in some deep sea and had taken only the most rare, the most…

Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

“Magnificent . . . A tour de force of literature and love.” —Megan O’Grady, Vogue…