Bookworm

The Skirt and the Fiddle (Grove) When young Egolf-s first novel, The Lord of the Barnyard, was published, he was compared to writers he-d never read or heard of. Now, his second novel, a breezier, easier book, is being compared to his first. In this conversation, we talk about the vibrant smells of both his books-a tour through the sewers and gutters of bohemia.

Summerland (Hyperion/Miramax Books) A magical conversation with Michael Chabon about children's literature...

The Book of Splendor (Norton) History, hilarity, romance and spirituality find a meeting place in the Prague of 1601. A simple Jewish orphan falls in love with a golem, and an emperor searches for the secret of eternal life: Frances Sherwood explores the path from history to fantasy, from societal regulation to sexual liberation.

The Book of Illusions (Holt) Paul Auster expresses his preference for mysterious clarity over "clever" literary effects in  The Book of Illusions , a metaphysical thriller about a mysterious filmmaker...

In the Hand of Dante (Little, Brown) Nick Tosches , a veteran tough guy, tells us what happens when the original manuscript of The Divine Comedy falls into the hands of the Mafia...

You Are Not a Stranger Here (Doubleday) Viewed together, the short stories in Adam Haslett 's bravura first collection present a fugue of obsessions and concerns: mental illness, surrogate parents, suppressed or uncontrollable desires, and the search for a way to order experience....

Nobody's Perfect (Knopf) We pursue the New Yorker's critic through the dark woods of his literary and cinematic interests, finally emerging into a clearing as Anthony Lane reveals his longstanding love for the world of Jeeves and Bertie Wooster, Mr. Mulliner and Blandings Castle...

Niagara (Serpent?s Tail) The Amazon dominatrix of Warhol-superstardom has become an impressive novelist, specializing in primal Noir fiction. Her feminist archetypes, her dangerous sexualized landscapes, her fantasies of revenge and retribution all reveal the strategies of an artist who transforms rage into visions of liberation.

Having returned to his native Brooklyn after a more than 20 years in California, Gilbert Sorrentino 's new books span the continent with an unrelenting experimental style...

Ben Marcus, a younger member of the avant-garde, talks about some of the devices that have structured his books...

Novelist James McCaourt constructs the complicated personality of a movie goddess in retreat.

My Loose Thread (Canongate Books)In his most vulnerable and emotionally accessible novel, Dennis Cooper explores the mind of a boy who is like one of the Columbine killers. He talks about the world the boy imagines-and our compassion enlarges as the boy-s consciousness shuts down.

Rick Moody explores his dark ancestry, which includes the Puritan minister who inspired a famous Hawthorne story...

Francine Prose 's The Lives of the Muses is a series of "brief lives" of women who inspired famous men: Alice of Alice in Wonderland , Yoko Ono, Mrs. Salvador Dali, the pre-Raphaelites...

McSweeney-s Books Dave Eggers (A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius) has invested in his beliefs and started up a press. He publishes the popular -lit-mag- McSweeney-s and a whole line of books by authors he admires. We explore and evaluate this unusual inventory.

Wherever Oliver Sacks goes, the nature of consciousness is his subject...

Night Picnic: Poems (Harcourt) Pulitzer Prize-winner Charles Simic examines his work under the lens of political terror and the subsequent experience of immigration...  

The Lovely Bones (Little Brown) In Alice Sebold 's eerie and fascinating first novel, a murdered girl reveals a double mystery: the nature of heaven (from where she narrates her story) and the nature of earth (where her family remembers her and her murderer remains uncaught).

Spies (Metropolitan Books) An elderly man reviews his childhood, discovering more than he could have possibly known as a child. Michael Frayn shows us that while children may play at being spies, adults are actual spies who explore the past and unearth secrets that alter their own identities.

Oscar Hijuelos gives us a sentimental rumba-and a return to his first inspiration: Cuban music.

Jonathan Safran Foer's literary debut commanded lavish praise and immediate popularity. 

A Song Flung Up to Heaven (Random House) Maya Angelou has completed her extraordinary autobiography, which began with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings . Here, she speaks about the people she knew when she started out as a writer, how she learned to write (she was a dancer), and who she is now.

Viken Berberian 's first novel attempts to take us inside the head of a failed suicide bomber, exploring his connection to the subject and the models in music and poetry that brought him closer to this dissociated and shattered personality...

Samuel Johnson Is Indignant (McSweeney's) Lydia Davis ' stories are miniatures. Acutely observed specificities are tautly rendered. Such intimate detail provides a keyhole view of how sanity gives way to obsession, and obsession gives way to wild comedy.

Atonement (Doubleday) Ian McEwan explores both the technique and passion of his novel-his extraordinary assumption of a woman's voice and her malicious acts that violate the social fabric.