Love stories
Love comes in all shapes and sizes and often when it’s least expected. Need examples? Read the 37 interviews in a new book, “All There Is: Love Stories from StoryCorps, edited by Dave Isay and released in time for Valentine’s Day. StoryCorps, a national nonprofit project affiliated with public radio, tapes interviews with ordinary people who often tell extraordinary stories about their lives.
Author explains the science of kissing
With Valentine’s Day right around the corner, kissing may be a hot topic for many. For the curious, Sheril Kirshenbaum, the 31-year-old author of “The Science of Kissing,” talks about her book, which explores the properties of puckering up.
Author Q&A: Dan Chaon
Author Dan Chaon, who has just published his third collection of short stories, “Stay Awake,” chats about secrets, reinvention, the “lullaby of normalcy, and the mystery beyond the borders of a photograph.
Review: ‘The Spy Who Jumped Off the Screen’ by Thomas Caplan
Thomas Caplan has come up with a dynamite premise for a thriller. The world’s top box-office star, Ty Hunter, is recruited to play a real-life secret agent on the assumption that his fame would place him above suspicion. But the author should have handed off this idea to someone who knew what to do with it.
Debut novelist no stranger to the writing experience
“American Dervish” is not Ayad Akhtar’s first novel. Tucked away in a drawer somewhere is the proverbial “first novel,” one that he says will never see the light of day. Akhtar, who also is a playwright, screenwriter and actor, has followed that initial attempt with the critically acclaimed “American Dervish,” in which he opens a window onto the vibrant and complex reality of the Muslim-American experience.
At 200, Dickens remains king of inspiration
On both sides of the Atlantic, Charles Dickens remains a literary force of nature. He’s to writers and filmmakers what Abraham Lincoln is to historians: an endless source of fascination and inspiration.
Review: ‘Hope: A Tragedy’ by Shalom Auslander
Openly secular Jew Solomon Kugel relocates his family from Brooklyn to a rural New York farmhouse, where he finds an elderly and unkempt Anne Frank living in the attic.
Mystery/thriller roundup
“The Face Thief” by Eli Gottlieb; “Dark Revelations” by Anthony E. Zuiker; “The House at Sea’s End” by Elly Griffiths; “The Look of Love” by Mary Jane Clark
