Sylvia Plath's groundbreaking semi-autobiographical novel offers an intimate, honest and often wrenching glimpse into mental illness. The Bell Jar broke the boundaries between fiction and reality and helped cement Sylvia Plath's place as an enduring ... More details on The Bell Jar
It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York. I’m stupid about executions. The idea of being electrocuted makes me sick, a...
The legendary 1951 scroll draft of On the Road, published as Kerouac originally composed it... More details on On the Road
I first met Dean not long after my wife and I split up. I had just gotten over a serious illness that I won’t bother to talk about, except that it had something to do with the miserably weary split-up...
Is it possible to write a sidesplitting novel about the breakup of the perfect marriage? If the writer is Nora Ephron, the answer is a resounding yes. For in this inspired confection of adultery, revenge, group therapy, and pot roast, the creator of ... More details on Heartburn
The first day I did not think it was funny. I didn’t think it was funny the third day either, but I managed to make a little joke about it. “The most unfair thing about this whole business,” I said, “...
"[Quartet's] abiding power arises from [Jean Rhys's] ability to convey the complex vectors of desire and repulsion that move between the characters, distorted by the intractable demands of convention, even in this supposedly liberal bohemian society.... More details on Quartet
WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE
Mario Vargas Llosa's brilliant, multilayered novel is set in the Lima, Peru, of the author's youth, where a young student named Marito is toiling away in the news department of a local radio station. His young ... More details on Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter
In those long-ago days, I was very young and lived with my grandparents in a villa with white walls in the Calle Ocharán, in Miraflores. I was studying at the University of San Marcos, law, as I remem...
Along with his reputation as the enfant terrible of Japanese literature, internationally-acclaimed author Ryu Murakami, one of the "two Murakamis" (along with Haruki), has acquired cult status among readers who appreciate his agile imagination, morda... More details on 69
Nineteen sixty-nine was the year student uprisings shut down Tokyo University. The Beatles put out The White Album, Yellow Submarine, and Abbey Road, the Rolling Stones released their greatest single,...
Loop Group is Larry McMurtry at his contemporary best, a novel that can best be described as Thelma and Louise meets Terms of Endearment , in which two aging ladies set out on a road trip that will take them from Hollywood to Texas, with many adv... More details on Books
I DON’T REMEMBER either of my parents ever reading me a story—perhaps that’s why I’ve made up so many. They were good parents, but just not story readers. In 1936, when I was born, the Depression sat ...
This bestselling Hollywood novel by the witty author of Wishful Drinking and Shockaholic that was made into a movie starring Meryl Streep and Shirley MacLaine.
When we first meet the extraordinary young actress Suzanne Vale, she's feeling like "somet... More details on Postcards from the Edge
Maybe I shouldn’t have given the guy who pumped my stomach my phone number, but who cares? My life is over anyway. Besides, what was I supposed to do? He came up to my room and gave me that dumb stuff...
American Journalist Jake Barnes is desperately in love with the beautiful Lady Brett Ashley. She moves seductively through the seemingly glamorous milieu of American and British expats, loving, living and partying in Paris in the 1920's. They're a he... More details on The Sun Also Rises
Robert Cohn was once middleweight boxing champion of Princeton. Do not think that I am very much impressed by that as a boxing title, but it meant a lot to Cohn. He cared nothing for boxing, in fact h...
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
SOON TO BE A BROADWAY MUSICAL
The iconic novel that inspired the hit movie starring Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway-a gloriously wicked story about the ultimate Boss from Hell and the deals we make with the devil to ge... More details on The Devil Wears Prada
The light hadn't even officially turned green at the intersection of 17th and Broadway before an army of overconfident yellow cabs roared past the tiny deathtrap I was attempting to navigate around th...