Bookworm

Charity (Doubleday) An extended metaphor describes Mark Richard 's fiction: the world as a charity ward where the deformed, the anguished and the damned seek rescue--or is it redemption?

The Museum Guard (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) Howard Norman has won awards for his extraordinary, quiet fiction, but he has rarely discussed its meanings...

The Letters of Mina Hacher (Hard Press) Post-modern feminism! Deconstructed Gothic horror! A character from Bram Stoker's Dracula meets the San Francisco literary scene...  

Andrea Barrett, author of The Voyage of the Narwhal (Norton). An Arctic expedition provides the setting for a confrontation between a reticent man of science and a raging egoist.

Michael Byers, author of The Coast of Good Intentions (Houghton Mifflin). This young short-story writer makes a really impressive debut. A look at his landscape (Washington state's coastline) and his influences (&quotsteal; from the best").

This month, at 87, Czeslaw Milosz sees the publication of his newest book, A Roadside Dog .  (Part four of four)

The Captive Mind and the move to California.  (Part three of four)

Genocide, war and the destruction of his homeland bring a dark vision into Czeslaw Milosz's poetry. (Part two of four)

Nobel Laureate Czeslaw Milosz's memories of childhood make for a poetry of ecstasy and initiation. (Part one of four)

Karen Elizabeth Gordon, author of Torn Wings and Faux Pas (Pantheon) . The uniquely crazy lexicographer discusses her fairy-tale dictionary-explosion novels.

In this exclusive interview on the subject of her classic novel Beloved (Knopf), Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison discusses areas of the writer's imagination that can't be captured by the film.

Kenward Elmslie, author of Routine Disruptions (Coffee House Press). Finally--a collection of poems that ranges across wizard-poet Elmslie's career. Be sure to hear &quotGirl; Machine" -- an entire Busby Berkeley musical in a single poem. Hands down, Bookworm's favorite living American poet.

Peter Hedges, author of An Ocean in Iowa (Hyperion). The author of What's Eating Gilbert Grape has written a new novel of childhood angst. Hedges explores his access to childhood memories and the difficulties of being a minister's son.

A selection of stories--classic and new--by Ann Beattie , a woman who changed the emotional color of American fiction...

Almost No Memory (Ecco) Lydia Davis , the author of peculiar miniature prose pieces reads and discusses her explorations of the space between the intellect and the physical world.

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.