Bookworm

Daniel Menaker, author of The Treatment (Knopf). Daniel Menaker on his comedy of morals. It's a New York novel with all the trimmings: psychoanalysis, prep schools and the death of the New York intellectual way of life.

The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton (Knopf). Just one of the implications in this historical novel is that women disciplined their slaves more harshly than did male slave-owners. How has the author come to this conclusion? Jane Smiley on writer's intuition.

The Everlasting Story of Nory  (Random House) The secret of Nicholson Baker's newest novel (a collaboration with his pre-adolescent daughter) is revealed in this interview taped before a live audience.

Rose Tremaine, author of The Way I Found Her (Farrar, Straus & Giroux). An English schoolboy's infatuation with a mysterious older Russian novelist is charted in a novel whose tone shifts from coming-of-age enchantment to uneasy sexual guilt.

John Irving speaks about loss--of marriage, children, parents, love, and explores his work's greatest paradox.

Richard Price, author of Freedomland (Broadway). A high-wire thriller for the peak of the summer. Richard Price brings wild style and dare-devil, Lenny Bruce-like riffs to his urban nightmares. It's a best-seller even an aesthete can love.

The Time of Our Time (Random House) Some of the greatest prose highs of this American century are found in this vast anthology by Norman Mailer.

C. S. Godshalk, author of Kalimantaan (Holt). A startling first novel, set in Borneo, about the wars between order and nature. While the author claims the book is about love, this interview shows it to be equally about disappointment and loss.

Mark Doty, author of Sweet Machine (Harper Flamingo). Mark Doty reveals why his mandarin poetry is becoming, well, sleazier.

Jane DeLynn, author of Bad Sex Is Good (Painted Leaf Press). The urbane Jane DeLynn discourses on the difficulty of everything--from sex to simply breathing.