Bookworm

Where I Was From (Knopf) Joan Didion takes deadly aim at the dream of California embodied, for example, in her own first novel, Run River. As she takes a more discerning look, she discovers even less innocence, less altruism than the early settlers could have imagined.

And Now You Can Go (Knopf) and How to Breathe Underwater  (Vintage)

Chuck Palahniuk takes on some rather aggressive questions about American culture and the artist...

Jelly Roll (a blues) (Knopf); Blues Poems (Everyman's Library) Kevin Young, who has edited a terrific anthology of blues poetry, uses blues traditions as the basis for his own recent work...

Gazelle (Knopf) Where will the magical Rikki Ducornet take us next? In Gazelle, the Arabian Nights recur, as a thirteen -year-old girl wanders in 1950's Cairo, reveling in the scents and exotic perfumes that lead to her unusual career as an anatomist of mummies. Ducornet leads us deeper into the realm of the senses than ever before. (Note: This interview will be pre-empted on KCRW by special programming.)

The Dead Circus (Atlantic Monthly Press) John Kaye grew up in Los Angeles. His novel, The Dead Circus, is set in that city and delves beneath the surface of the classic L.A. noir thriller. What effect does all this dread and anomie have on the real people who actually live in the City of Angels?

Due Preparations for the Plague (Norton) Janette Turner Hospital's extraordinary fiction is beginning to gain recognition in America. Due Preparations for the Plague, a thrilling study of an airplane hijacking and its effects on the children of its victims, is overpowering in its intensity--generating terrifying imagery that will not easily be forgotten. In this conversation, Hospital explores how her strict religious upbringing in Australia has affected her worldview: she lusts for danger and the destruction of hierarchy.

Heidi Julavits' first book was a bleak novel. Her second book's vision is lighter, but the subject remains dark: a terrorist training cell…

The Map of Love (Vintage) London-based author Ahdaf Soueif, praised as an "Egyptian George Eliot," describes the impact of middle-eastern and global history on her narratives....

The Romantic (Metropolitan) This very intimate interview focuses on the adolescent desire for magic in romance and the adult discovery that it may not exist. The author describes her own romantic arc and discloses that, both as a writer and as a lover, she depends entirely on intuition.