Bookworm

Role Models (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) and The Possessed (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) John Waters’ gives a passionate description of his favorite books, and for good measure, Elif Batuman gives a lively count-down of her favorite Russian novels.

Isabel Allende's historical novel about slavery and the Haitian revolution becomes a springboard for a conversation about global injustice and the re-emergence of slavery.

The Lost Books of the Odyssey (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) Higher mathematics and logic problems have long intrigued fiction writers, including Zachary Mason. Both Lewis Carroll (the Alice books) and Vladimir Nabokov (Lolita) had a profound love of logic and chess..

Self-Portrait Abroad (Dalkey Archive); Running Away (Dalkey Archive) French fiction had become austere and theoretical until Jean-Philippe Toussaint took it in the direction of the wacky, even goony. His earlier stories focused on characters retreating from contemporary life, but that has given way to work with a light, lyrical approach...

Beatrice & Virgil (Spiegel & Grau) After recognizing that most holocaust literature is centered on personal testimony, Yann Martel decided to create an allegory about the holocaust — a different approach to this traumatic material...

Reality Hunger: A Manifesto (Knopf) and Vanishing Point: Not a Memoir (Graywolf Press) New web technologies (and the ever-increasing availability of information) have made possible a new kind of writing. This prose uses fact and randomness rather than story and structure. Two active practitioners wave the banner for the new.

Solar (Doubleday) Along the way in our conversation about bad morals and good intentions, Ian McEwan dabbles in the background subjects of his new novel...

Nox (New Directions) Anne Carson's brother ran away, and she never saw him again. After learning of his death some twenty years later, she assembled Nox as a form of grieving....

In the midst of all his scandalous anger and shenanigans, it's the shape of a great sentence that keeps Sam Lipsyte's interest in writing fiction at fever pitch.

The Surrendered (Riverhead) Renowned for his novels about repressed, withdrawn characters, Chang-rae Lee new novel explores new ground....