One might argue (and this writer does) that episodic writing is more precarious an endeavor than the short story, the memoir, the epic novel, the screenplay. How does one, via the vehicle of the slice-of-life snapshot, engage the reader, capturing him or her and pulling them into the heart of the story, luring readers into that sacred place where one comes to care about a fictional protagonist? This reader doesn’t know how – but does know where. And that is within the pages of Renata Adler’s groundbreaking 1976 novel, Speedboat.

Meet Jen Fain: mid-thirties, journalist, girl-about-town, observer, joiner. Jen’s mind is the one in which readers travel as she makes her way through her life, watching those around her interact and function at parties, in cabs, on sidewalks, in conversation, or in solitude. Men hit on her, she accepts or declines, let’s some upstairs, avoids others altogether. She shares her take on dogs and summer homes, society and flight school, in no immediately discernible order, with no obvious context. But still, the reader comes to know Jen, to start inadvertently dissecting her personality, to like her or not like her. It’s an interesting way to present the content and characters of a novel, without a framework with which to support the meat of the book, with no real commitment to explaining or outlining. It is interesting – and poignant, as our narrator ponders:

“What is the point. That is what must be borne in mind. Sometimes the point is really who wants what. Sometimes the point is what is right or kind. … The point changes and goes out. You cannot be forever watching for the point, or you lost the simplest thing: being a major character in your own life.”

In Adler’s Speedboat, the point seems to constantly shift – not abruptly or haphazardly, but consistently and quietly. As Jen moves throughout the urban landscape that is her world, her experience – clouded by a prevalent liquor-coated haze – resonates still, today. Speedboat is a reminder of the fleetingness of life and the relativity of experience. It is a hazy journey through the life of a woman who could be Any Of Us, but what sets it apart from All Of Us is the beauty of the writing, the ability to narrate both episodically and comprehensively. Speedboat was out of print for years, and has, thankfully, returned to circulation, just in time to inspire all of us to remember that we sometimes just need to forget the point and go with it.

At the core of the definition of the word “trap” is the idea that something is inescapable. If one is trapped, there is no way out. Someone is someplace one probably doesn’t want to be – and has no choice but to remain there. MacKenzie Bezos’ new novel, Traps, plays off of this idea as she presents four women, all trapped in their own ways, each living her life as though there is no way out.

Dana, Vivian, Jessica, and Lynn are strong women who persevere. Yet, they are all trapped by some intangible factor in their lives: Dana, trapped by her own decidedly cold image of herself; Vivian, trapped by choices she made in an attempt to escape a choice that was never hers to begin with; Jessica, trapped by her own celebrity; and Lynn, trapped by the repercussions of choices she made in the past.

When we meet these women, they are each at a crossroads in life; something has happened to upset the usual motions of their current circumstances. Over the course of four days, the lives of these women intersect, bringing those things that trap them to the forefront of both their individual and collective experiences. Love and marriage, family and history, physical and mental health: Equilibrium previously teetering on the precipice of change loses its balance and falls over the edge. And in moments this reader didn’t see coming, each woman receives the chance to confront head-on that which traps her – each fearful the entire time that what doesn’t kill her could destroy her.

In Traps, MacKenzie Bezos has succeeded in creating four empathetic women who inspire frustration as much as they inspire hope. Readers are sucked into their stories, and quickly come to care about their decisions and about their journeys to happiness. Inside all of us lies self-doubt, whether it be just the tiniest smudge or life-hinderingly huge. In addition to Traps being a great story, Bezos’ novel accomplishes the dual purpose of inciting the reader at book’s end to pause for a moment and self-reflect, to consider one’s own perception of his or her life, and his or her self, and to consider that which traps us in our own lives – and which of those traps are completely imaginary.

Editor's Note: In 2007, author Lawrence Wright won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction for his book "The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11." Wright doesn't only pen nonfiction books; he is a staff writer at The New Yorker as well as a screenwriter and playwright, and has also written a novel, "God's Favorite." A graduate of Tulane University, Wright also spent two years teaching at the American University in Cairo, Egypt, and is currently a fellow at the Center on Law and Security at New York University School of Law. Wright's latest work is "Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief." Wright recently sat down with us here at Everyday eBook where we talked about Scientology -- the stunners, the motivations, its future, and more.

EVERYDAY EBOOK: In your research for Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood and the Prison of Belief, was there one thing that shocked you or stunned you the most?

LAWRENCE WRIGHT: The exploitation of children. I was very disturbed, I am still very disturbed by the stories I was told about the way children are pressed into this clerical organization at Sea Org at alarmingly young ages. And they surrender their education, they’re impoverished by their service, and they work them, those kids, mercilessly – all day long. The church claims that it doesn’t violate the child labor laws, but when I read the child labor laws I just don’t understand how that can be the case.

EE: What do you think was the motivation for L. Ron Hubbard? And what is David Miscavige’s motivation? Power? Sadism? Something else?

LW: In the case of L. Ron Hubbard, in the book I compare him to a shaman because anthropologists talk about how schizophrenia is a shaman disease. And in aboriginal cultures, you see people that we would say are mentally unstable. They often have psychotic episodes and then they’re considered in some respects holy. Their mission is to heal themselves and then heal their community. It may seem like a lofty way to approach L. Ron Hubbard given the charlatan aspect of his character, but I really do think that he wrote Dianetics to heal himself. And the idea was he would heal the world. The fact that I think he invented so much of this stuff out of a whole cloth – that’s the part that makes people say he is a conman. But I do think that he believed he was trying to heal the world and I think the same impulse drove him to create Scientology. Despite that, he said, many times, that that’s where the money is – religion; that may have been a factor. David Miscavige is different from L. Ron Hubbard mainly in the fact that he grew up in Scientology. He’s a product of it in a way that Hubbard was not. He joined the Sea Org when he was sixteen, so, virtually, his entire life has been lived inside the strictures of this organization. The product of that is a glaring indictment of the church itself, because if that is what it produces – this totalistic universe, which is what the Sea Org has become, led by a person who dominates it entirely – then I think Scientology has a reckoning ahead of it.

EE: Do you think that will happen in the near future? Is that where you think the future is headed for Scientology?

LW: I think that it’s at a turning point in its history. It’s got a lot of money, and it has a lot of lawyers. And that will hold it together for quite a while. But I think it’s hemorrhaging members. And look at its reputation; they’ve earned the reputation of being the most vindictive, litigious, mean-spirited organization that calls itself a church in the country. And I don’t think that’s an appealing image. It’s not going to draw a lot of people to it, so it’s got to change.

EE: What’s next for you? Any idea where you’re going to turn your attention?

LW: I don’t know! I’m looking for something. I would love to swing through the trees and already have the next vine in my hand, but I finish a project and then I have to go hunting for a new one. And I haven’t found that new one yet. To me the big mystery about creation is not the process – and there are so many workshops devoted to process – it’s, “What do you want to do? What do you choose to spend your life on?” It’s a very central question and there are so many appealing things to write about, but why choose one thing over another? There is some internal bell that goes off and so I’m waiting to hear that sound.

Check out more of what Lawrence Wright has to say on Biographile.com

Everyone does it, but not everyone talks about it. Some do it alone, some with another person. Some do it only at night, and some do it any time the mood strikes them. Some do it with the television on, or their senses muffled by earplugs and eye masks. Some, it’s said, even do it with one eye open. People do it all different ways, sticking with whatever feels best for them. But how often does one peek into the science behind the action? Or, rather, the science under the sheets? And even then, how often do the findings make it to the curious ears of the layperson? Thanks to David K. Randall, chalk one up for pop science with Dreamland: Strange Adventures in the Science of Sleep.

It’s not often people think much about sleep – at least, not until a problem arises. It’s the impetus of sleep abnormalities that introduce many of Randall’s chapters in Dreamland. Anecdotes about dreams, health, habits, and even crimes kick off many of the lessons throughout this all-encompassing study of our nocturnal goings-on. Inspired by his own sleepwalking – and injuries sustained during the act – Randall traces the history of sleep habits in culture back to the 1700s, before the invention of artificial light, back to a time when people generally had both a “first sleep” and “second sleep” each night. (It was Edison’s invention that began to change everything, in case you’re looking for someone to blame for the move away from a practice that sounds like a lovely way to spend the night.)

From there Randall makes a case for separate spousal sleeping quarters, touches on the mostly unscientific study of dreams, the connection between sleep and excellence, the effects of sleep deprivation (it’s not pretty), how one might use their own circadian rhythm to their advantage and to the advantage of their gambling habits, the rise of sleep-aiding drugs, and more. Ultimately, Dreamland won’t tell you the meaning of your dreams, nor will it cure your insomnia. It doesn’t provide exhaustive explanations for everything that happens while one snoozes (because, well, there is no known explanation for all of it yet). But if you’ve ever been curious about some of what goes on while you’re slumbering away, or the evolution of how we came to all aim for the same eight or so hours during the same hours, more or less, David K. Randall’s Dreamland is an interesting walk down that road. Just be sure to take that walk with your eyes open.

What if your only child, your pride and joy, did something truly despicable? What if you and your spouse weren’t both aware of the full extent of his misdoings? What if there were another child involved, the child of your own brother? What if your brother also happened to be your nemesis, and one night, you, him, and your respective spouses sit down to dinner in a public place and begin to hash out the repercussions and how to deal with them? What if? Join us for Herman Koch’s The Dinner.

Paul Lohman is a complicated man. He’s anxious, untrusting, and bitter about living in the shadow of his big-shot politician brother, Serge. Luckily, he has the love of a strong woman, Claire, to help keep him balanced. Still, tension seeps from his pores on a regular basis – and when his teen son Michel partakes in a brutal act of violence, Paul’s anxiety skyrockets. Michel wasn’t alone, though; he was joined in the act by Serge and Babette’s son Rick. And now, the two couples come together at dinner at a pretentious restaurant in Amsterdam under the guise of simply catching up, though all members of this party of four know what they’re really there to address.

Herman Koch lays down each twist and turn and revelation over a five-course dinner. Through each moment of awkwardness or tension, suspense or horror among these four, there are also other factors to consider: the watchful eyes of the other diners, many of whom are aware of the political celebrity in their company; the snooty waiter whose laughably elaborate descriptions of each dish in each course become more irritating as the evening progresses; the slowly surfacing truth about Claire and her son. Paul flashes back over the course of dinner, and through this device the reader is brought up to speed on the full extent of the horror of Michel and Rick's senseless act. Were they just boys being boys? Or is there something more sinister at play here? And now comes the biggest question of all: How should the parents of these teenagers handle the situation? Do they turn their children in? Or try to bury the entire thing? And will they ever agree on what to do next? This all adds up to a torturous dining experience – and a thrilling read.

Herman Koch’s The Dinner is about relationships and family, the human psyche and sibling rivalry. Ultimately, though, Koch’s novel is about the lengths to which one will go in order to protect their loved ones – and how those measures taken are often near impossible to swallow.

You're invited to The Dinner -- read an excerpt here.

February 11, 2013, marks the fiftieth anniversary of the death of poet Sylvia Plath. Plath’s death was premature and tragic – and as most everyone knows, it was self-inflicted. As the story goes, Plath committed suicide after struggling with depression for years. After feeding her children and putting them to bed, she sealed off the kitchen door with wet cloths, turned on the oven’s gas, placed her head inside the oven, and died of carbon monoxide poisoning. What, one may wonder, could lead such a talented writer as Plath to such a demise? One may ponder what went on in her head, not just in the time leading up to her death, but over the course of her entire life. And of course one should wonder more about her experience as an artist, a writer. The answers to all of these are at your fingertips, within the pages of The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath.

Though Plath’s husband, poet Ted Hughes, published her partial journals in the early eighties, he had abridged them heavily. Further, he had sealed other of her journals. Finally, before his death in 1998, Hughes passed all of the material on to the children he had with Plath, and ultimately, the journals found their way to the publisher Anchor Books. In 2000, the publishing house released the unabridged journals to the public. The journals are as thorough a journey into the mind of an American master of poetry as we’ll ever get (though Hughes reportedly did destroy her final journal).

The journals begin when Plath is a mere eighteen years old. She is at Smith College, finding her way socially and scholastically. Her life was seemingly picture perfect; she was editor of the college’s literary magazine and went on to win a prestigious position with Mademoiselle magazine, which brought her to New York City for a full month. Still, it was during her college years that Plath began toying with suicide, inflicting damage upon her own body, finding her way into and out of various forms of therapy, and recounting her thoughts during this time in an unselfconsciously raw voice. The journals follow Plath from here to her relationship with Hughes, their honeymoon, and, of course, the start of their family, taking the reader through professional successes and personal grief the entire way.

The story of Sylvia Plath is an American tragedy. There is much that we can glean both biographically and thoughtfully from the very personal words of Plath. Some of history’s greatest poets were plagued with the darkest of demons, and Plath is no exception. To understand her depression is to understand her work, and in order to do so, dive into The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath and let them stun you.

A world’s fair, a hopeful politician, dirty money, a new-on-the-beat gutsy reporter. Jim Lynch’s Truth Like the Sun has all of the pieces of a really fantastic puzzle. It’s a good thing he also has the talent to bring it all together for us.

True story: In 1962, Seattle hosted the Century 21 Exposition, aka, the Seattle World’s Fair. The landmark Seattle Space Needle was originally constructed for the fair. A monorail was installed, a space pavilion was erected, and a fine arts pavilion was created. Elvis Presley was there, as were Ella Fitzgerald, Roy Rogers, Neil Armstrong, and countless (literally) others.

This is the backdrop against which Lynch places his fictional host with the most, Roger Morgan. In Truth Like the Sun, Morgan is the mastermind behind the exposition. “Loose-limbed, bushy haired, dimpled,” Morgan is quite young, quite charming, and quite ambitious. His carefree way of moving through his life is only offset by his business acumen and his sidekick, the stodgy, grouchy Teddy Severson. The two are buddies and business partners, and their friendship, as we come to learn, lasts from well before the fair’s origins on to their elder years.

Fast forward to the spring of 2001. Helen Gulanos is the newest reporter on the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. She’s a serious-minded journalist who isn’t afraid to ask questions and get to the bottom of the story. As her focus turns back to the World’s Fair and the people behind it, her attention lands on Morgan. Morgan – who has come to be known as “Mr. Seattle” – is now seventy years old, and for the first time ever, has decided he’d like to run for office.

The pace of Lynch’s story is an interesting one. At first, when Lynch introduces Morgan, the reader is swept up in a veritable who’s-who of Seattle’s rise to notoriety. Good luck keeping track of all of the characters, as you feel the same dizziness through you as Morgan does, as you spin along with the top of the Space Needle. These names come back to haunt, however, as Helen’s reporting reveals that all is not as perfectly shiny as it seems in the Emerald City. She uncovers more untruths, more backroom deals, and more under-the-table handshakes than she bargained for, and before long the story sweeps the reader into a whole new kind of whirlwind.

As we step back and forth in time, from the Sixties to the 2000s, Lynch’s tale gains speed, slingshotting the story to an ending you will likely not expect, in a city unlike any other.

Years ago, this writer stumbled on a book called The Newcomer’s Guide to the Afterlife by Daniel Quinn and Tom Whelan. The book, referred to by the authors as “the guide of choice for anyone who plans to die someday,” is partially tongue-in-cheek, partially disturbing, and mostly thought provoking. For instance, the authors suggest that your predeceased loved ones are not, in fact, waiting for you with open arms. If you choose to, however, you can hire someone to seek them out for you. Also, in the afterlife you have to find a place to live – and will likely end up squatting in an abandoned hovel for a time, while you work out those details. Quinn and Whelan aren’t the only authors offering various ideas about and sharing supposed journeys to the great beyond. In this information age, this society of striving to know everything there is to know about everything, many have offered their own ideas – and experiences – on the topic of heaven.

To Heaven and Back: A Doctor's Extraordinary Account of Her Death, Heaven, Angels, and Life Again: A True Story by Mary C. Neal
In the late nineties, Mary Neal was kayaking in Chile. Her kayak went over a waterfall, and in the turbulent waters below, Neal’s kayak capsized and she became trapped beneath it. From there, she says, she started the journey to heaven. Her experience was a bit different than what Quinn and Whelan propose, as upon her death, Neal “was joyously greeted by a group of old friends.” Ultimately, though, Neal’s experience gave her more than a glimpse at what happens to us after we die; it gave her a renewed sense of faith in and understanding of God.

Heaven Is for Real: A Little Boy's Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back by Todd Burpo
Heaven Is for Real is the story of Colton Burpo, a young boy who, at the age of four, underwent an emergency appendectomy and died during the operation, then came back to life. Over the course of the next few months, Colton shared his story with his parents, including details that stunned them. His story, told by his father in this book that has remained on the New York Times bestseller list for more than one hundred weeks, will touch your heart – and leave you thinking quite fondly of a place where “Nobody is old and nobody wears glasses.”

Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon’s Journey Into the Afterlife by Eben Alexander
Eben Alexander’s number-one New York Times bestselling book tells the story of a neurosurgeon, Alexander, who is quite skeptical about heaven and faith. After an illness attacks the doctor’s brain, though, and leaves him in a coma, he has the kind of experience that turns his skepticism completely around, and wakes up recounting his meeting with the “Divine source of the universe itself.”

Heaven: Homeward Bound by Grant R. Jeffrey
Bible expert Grant R. Jeffrey set out in his book, Heaven: Homeward Bound, to answer any and every question you may have about this oft-referred to but less understood idea of the afterlife. Grant was recognized as one of the world's leading teachers of prophecy, and his extensive knowledge as well as his clear articulation come through on every page of this book.

There are few cultures more extrinsically opposite in nature than those belonging to Americans and Arabs. Sophia Al-Maria knows this firsthand, as her formative years were spent making the leap back and forth between the two. In her brilliant coming-of-age memoir, The Girl Who Fell to Earth, Al-Maria recounts these near-surreal experiences.

The Girl Who Fell to Earth begins as a love story: A Middle Eastern man, Matar, makes a pilgrimage to America from his home in Qatar. Alone and clueless as to how to go about finding his way in the foreign landscape of the Pacific-Northwest United States, he is taken under the wing of Gale Valo, a quirky, Washington-born, farm-bred young woman. The two fall in an unlikely sort of love, start a family (enter the author), and get married. Matar finds work driving a big rig and enjoys his life. Yet, three years after arriving in Seattle, he hears the call of home and heads back to the Arabian Gulf. And when our narrator is five, she and her mother and younger sister finally hear from him, when he calls for them to join him overseas.

In spite of the size of Matar’s family, Gale is lonely in Qatar and it isn’t too long before she returns to the states, daughters in tow. All goes well until Sophia is well into the fifth grade. The preadolescent's preoccupation with sex – and her creative way of displaying this preoccupation – cause her mother to lose patience, call her husband, and arrange to have Sophia sent to live with him. Sophia arrives in her new home – a home packed with cousins, the multiple wives of uncles, and more, and moves into her room with her Aunt Falak. And so begins her new life, surrounded by gender divides, abayas, and the unfamiliar dynamics of her new family. For every piece of Sophia’s new world that is different, however, there is another that is the same. There are still adolescent crushes, an inherent desire to compete with the boys, a longing to be accepted, and a bending of the rules.

Coming of age is a universal fact of life, and in Al-Maria’s memoir, she demonstrates this with the keen observations of an anthropologist, the beautiful language of a writer, and the truth and passion of a storyteller. From her first period to her first love, and later to her rebellions and her own pilgrimage of self-discovery, there is one theme that will doubtless ring familiar with all readers: the quest for independence, the independence that comes from knowing who you are and where you are going, no matter where you come from.

Anne Morrow, daughter of a U.S. Ambassador to Mexico and a teacher, was born and raised in New Jersey, and graduated from Smith College. On May 27, 1929, pioneering aviator Charles Lindbergh married Anne, eighteen months after meeting the young woman. A year later, their first child, Charles Jr., was born. Tragically, not two years later, that baby went missing. More than two decades later, Anne published her still-selling book The Gift From the Sea. Aside from these points on the Lindbergh timeline, what more do we really know about Anne Morrow Lindbergh? Melanie Benjamin has taken the time to explore that very question in her new novel, The Aviator’s Wife.

Charles Lindbergh was a legend in his own time, having come to fame via his being the first solo transatlantic flight, from New York to Paris. The accomplished explorer did not enjoy the limelight, and though he spent his life chasing progress and advancement of the biggest sort, he much preferred to fly under the radar in his personal life. It was this desire to avoid the press that led him to move his family from the United States to England, thereby keeping many of the details of his family’s goings-on from the public eye.

But still, one can’t help but wonder: Who were the Lindberghs? Who was Anne really? How did she cope with an oft-absent husband, the loss of her firstborn, life in an unfamiliar country, and later her husband’s infidelity (which resulted in his fathering multiple children born to women other than Anne)? Melanie Benjamin explores the life of Mrs. Lindbergh in a way no one else has. She uses her imagination, of course – it is historical fiction, after all – and also applies a certain logic and intelligence to answer the question, “How did Anne stand it all?”

Melanie Benjamin touches on each major point on the Lindbergh timeline, and also completely, heartbreakingly, and tenderly connects those dots for readers. The legend of the Lindberghs is brought to life in a way it never before has been, and an iconic marriage is explored in a way only a master storyteller could manage. The Aviator’s Wife is a fantastic work of fiction steeped in both truth and imagination.

It’s no wonder the New York Times Sunday Magazine called George Saunders’ latest story collection, Tenth of December, “the best book you’ll read this year.” In this book, his sixth work of fiction, Saunders’ ever-present originality escalates his storytelling to stunning heights, leaving readers nearly blown over by his imagination. Still, the author touches on such pieces of the human experience as class, love, hopelessness, morality, and mortality, creating an air of accessibility around this particular collection. Everyday eBook was able to catch up with Saunders just as Tenth of December became available to readers to ask his thoughts on inspiration, theme, and writing.

Everyday eBook: The stories in Tenth of December are so stunning, so raw, and so complete. Where do you find your inspiration?

George Saunders: Well, thanks. My main source of inspiration is my wife, Paula. She reads all of my work before it goes out and I always know that if I can move her, then the story is working. She has a very high standard but also one that is very human and humane. So imagining her as my audience when I’m writing ensures that the stories are actually about something, and haven’t taken any shortcuts.

EE: What was the last thing that stunned you?

GS: I’m not sure, actually. I mean – we get stunned on a pretty regular basis by tragedies that come to us from outside of our experience. But personally stunned … I’m tempted to avoid the question by the comic technique known as “being a smartass.” And answer, like: “The last thing that stunned me was that stun gun, last night, at that party, just because I tried to kiss that policeman’s horse.”

EE: Of the myriad themes and ideas presented within your collection, which do you think most loudly speaks to readers?

GS: When I’m writing, my main priority is to establish an intense communication between me and the reader. I don’t think much, honestly, about themes or ideas – I think those arrive on their own – but more about getting the reader to lean in, and feel respected and interested.

EE: What, in your opinion, is the most important component of a solid short story?

GS: Heart. That is – it ought to be about something that all of us care about, or have experienced, or feared, or whatever. The great short stories – by Gogol, Chekov, Munro, Wolff, et al – seem to affirm that human experience is at least somewhat shared – that what matters to you probably matters to me too. That’s a pretty optimistic stance, even if a given story is, on the surface, “dark.”

What better time than New Year's Eve to reminisce about a few of our favorite books about partying people and decadence of the most vice-like kind? Authors over the years have certainly nailed down the literary brilliance of laughing and schmoozing, canoodling and boozing. So herewith, before your day-after hangover, some of our favorite eBooks about big parties and the people who frequent them.

Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney
Jay McInerney knows how to write about parties. And with Bright Lights, Big City he demonstrated exactly how to take the tale of one young man, wandering through his life in Manhattan, and turn it into what became known as the voice of a generation. If you fly through Bright Lights wanting more, check out Story of My Life.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
East of Manhattan lies East Egg, holiday home to NYC's elite. It is here that the relatively unworldly Nick Carraway meets a cast of characters including Daisy and Tom Buchanan, and the one and only Jay Gatsby. In Fitzgerald's classic tale, though, a lifestyle consisting of party after party can only lead to disaster, which Gatsby and the rest eventually meet. Bonus: Watch for Baz Luhrmann's film adaptation this spring starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, and Carey Mulligan.

A Ticket to the Circus by Norris Church Mailer
The late Norris Church Mailer turned grief into a timeless tale when she penned her memoir of her marriage to literary legend Norman Mailer. The parties were never-ending for the pair, and the stories that Norris recounts will make you wish that 1) you were there with them, or 2) that she'd lived long enough to tell a thousand more.

Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh
Partying never appeared so grotesque as it did in Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting. Trainspotting, a collection of stories chronicling the lives of heroin-affected Scottish youth, is a little bit cautionary tale, a little bit voyeuristic disgust, and a whole lot of punk. If the book just wasn't vivid enough for you, check out Danny Boyle's 1996 adaptation starring the one and only Ewan McGregor.

The Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Fitzgerald does it again with the beautiful and heartbreaking tale of newlyweds Anthony and Gloria Patch, babes of the golden age, in The Beautiful and Damned. Life is fabulous for the two, who seemingly have everything two young lovers could want in life. But all that is gold is not glittering, as we soon come to learn in Fitzgerald's novel, which some say is based on his life with his beautiful and troubled wife, Zelda.

Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis
What list of party tales would be complete without Bret Easton Ellis? Another '80s literary great, Ellis is the twisted mastermind behind American Psycho – but it's his mid-1980s-penned Less Than Zero that first launched him onto the literary scene. Set in Los Angeles, Less Than Zero is the story of a disillusioned college student who returns from his East-U.S. campus to his home on the West Coast. Partying ensues, as do the resulting lessons involving corpses, prostitution, and addiction. Party on, literati.

There’s a term in poetry called “ekphrasis,” which is defined by Merriam-Webster as “a literary description of or commentary on a visual work of art.” For the sake of creativity, however, it is at times more loosely defined as a “rhetorical device in which one medium of art tries to relate to another medium by defining and describing its essence and form.” In Emma Donoghue’s latest, the story collection Astray, she beautifully employs this practice in each of her tales.

The title of Donoghue’s collection underlines the common theme of the characters present within: All are wandering in some way, shape, or form. One woman drifts through her days, missing the child she gave up years before. A man prepares for a shift in the life he has come to know as the handler of a circus elephant. In one of the most surprising – and satisfying – stories in the collection, a woman comes to terms with her new circumstances following the death of her wealthy husband. With the exception of the last story, all of Donoghue’s tales take place in the seventeenth, eighteenth, or nineteenth centuries. The characters – from a grave robber to an adult orphan to a Klondike gold digger – all encapsulate their relative era, but yet remain delightfully (and sometimes frighteningly) relatable.

But what is most interesting about Astray is the source of Donoghue’s stories. At the conclusion of each piece in the book, she presents a paragraph or two on her inspiration – all culled from old newspapers, history books, articles, or stories found within Donoghue’s extensive travels. Recorded history is indeed art, and from this medium, Donoghue has exercised ekphrasis. She has truly related these stories to the reader by defining and describing their essence and form -- via character development. We’ve all at some point likely wondered about the truth of those people we read or hear about in the news every day, as history is made before our eyes. Donoghue takes this one step further, developing our history’s persons into characters.

Astray is a truly unique collection of truly unique writing. For something different, something thoughtful and something so accessibly intelligent, read Emma Donoghue’s Astray.

Beth Raymer doesn't have a plan. And she's not entirely and consciously sure about what she's searching for. After her job as a youth counselor goes awry, she moves from one sanity-testing gig to another, following the nearest path to quick cash. After answering a Help Wanted ad that makes no apologies for its offer of work, Beth's life post-counseling finds her posing as a nude dancer who makes housecalls. Though the work's moral foundation is questionable at best, the money is good, and so Beth stays on -- that is, until a delusional man with a rifle threatens her life. Beth Raymer's memoir, Lay the Favorite, picks up shortly after, as she's waiting tables at a Las Vegas hole in the wall. And it's here that she first hears the name "Dink."

Dink makes his living in the high-stakes, fast-paced, often dangerous, man's world of professional sports gambling. On the day Beth walks into his office after getting a tip that he's hiring, she's prepared to stretch the truth to whatever length necessary to find her way into the world -- and Dink eats it up. After all, all he's looking for is someone who shows up with an honest work ethic. So begins one of Beth's most exciting unplanned journeys of all.

From the betting office to the Caribbean and back again, Beth accompanies Dink, his omnipresent wife Tulip, and his ragtag group of employees on the roller coaster ride through their world, earning their respect and Dink's confidence. Beth proves her mettle even further during a run through the amateur female boxing circuit. Through it all, Beth and Dink form a unique bond. There is something almost paternal in Dink's treatment of Beth, but yet they still give Tulip cause for pause and mistrust. Drama ensues. Beth's non-planned life proves anything but idle.

In spite of the excitement, the drama, the dirt, and the romance, Lay the Favorite is, at its heart, a story about the search for personal freedom -- and the myriad ways we can mess up along the way. Raymer struggles, makes questionable choices, lies sometimes, connives at others, uses her looks to her advantage -- and the reader roots for her through it all. Because personal freedom is a beautiful thing, even when it's found in the gross underbelly of Vegas sports betting.

Beth Raymer's Lay the Favorite was adapted for the big screen earlier this year, directed by Stephen Frears, screenplay by D.V. DeVincentis, and starring Rebecca Hall, Bruce Willis, Vince Vaughn, and Catherine Zeta-Jones. I, of course, recommend you read the book first.

People have strong feelings about some of our lifetime’s greatest minds, often willing to defend personal opinions to the death (or, at least, to an uncomfortable height of tension during cocktail parties). There are some whose minds, though, are undebatedly brilliant: Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, Stephen Hawking, Marissa Mayer, Maya Angelou, and many others. Add to this list Christopher Hitchens, whose own brilliance remained evident even through his dying days, as he wrote his last work, Mortality.

Leave it to Hitchens to take a diagnosis of death – an incurable, semi-treatable cancer – and turn it into an opportunity for shared reflection, conversation about the afterlife, and a reason to give thanks. With both eyes wide open, Hitchens confronted his fate and in a slim volume published this year, not quite one year after his December 15, 2011 death, shared his unabashedly upfront thoughts on religion, the experience of sickness, the struggle of reconciling one’s pride with one’s condition, and more. Mortality could just as easily be called “What It’s Like for a Man to Die” – though somehow, that feels more morbid than the actual nature of the book.

There’s a moment in Mortality during which Hitchens talks about the joy he and his friends used to find in gathering over great meals to take part in great conversation. So much seemed about the food, the meal, the nourishment. When his esophageal cancer eventually took the pleasures of eating away from Hitchens, his friends still came, and still conversed. It took this experience for Hitchens to realize that it wasn’t actually about the food for his friends – it was about him: his company, his conversation. And how wonderful of a realization is that?

From the awkwardness of being confronted by a stranger who feels compelled to share a “similar” story (Even though it was a cousin. Whose cancer was in the liver. And who went into remission. And then eventually died anyway.) to his fabulous and succinct advice for writers, Hitchens fits so much into a mere 104 pages. Mortality. It’s what so many of us fear, what so many of us speak of only objectively, and it’s what makes all of us human. Mortality. It’s what Christopher Hitchens faced head-on as one of his life’s greatest events. And we, mere mortals, are lucky enough to be able to revisit that event.

Dellarobia Turnbow is a woman left deposited into her life, raising two children, married to a man who doesn’t quite live up to her desires, answering to a mother-in-law to whose desires Dellarobia doesn’t live up. At risk of succumbing to her fate, Dellarobia, in Barbara Kingsolver’s most recent bestselling novel, Flight Behavior, makes a decision: to risk throwing it all away for the thrills sought in the arms of a younger man. Then, she witnesses what appears to be a miracle.

In her rural corner of Appalachia, not much goes on. Sure, there’s the shearing of the sheep, the drama of the resident housewives, the question of to log or not to log – but nothing much excites Dellarobia. Standing at a precipice one day, however, she looks down upon a valley that appears to be engulfed in flames. Though she’s not a terribly religious woman, Dellarobia sees it as a sign to turn around, return to her house and children, her husband and her life. Before long, though, an explanation of the blaze comes to the surface, setting Dellarobia at the center of a national event, breathing life into a town, rumors into the mill, and strangers up to the mountain. The miracle: butterflies. Monarchs. Millions of them. Off-course and present in uncountable masses. Before long, the scientists have arrived to study the meaning of this change in the flight behavior of the order of the lepidoptera. And before long, Dellarobia is drawn into their circle, driven as much by her desire for something different and her attraction to, well, any man that’s not her husband, as she is by the inquisitiveness of her curious son, Preston.

At the start of Kingsolver’s novel, one is not sure whether to like Dellarobia. After all, here she is, sneaking cigarettes in boots that belie her lot in life, ready to turn her back to her children and to the man that works day in and day out to keep a roof over their heads. But as the backwoods life of rural Appalachia is confronted with the question of climate change, deforestation, international devastation – all big issues for a small-town girl – one understands that as much as the butterflies have changed their own flight behavior in the quest for survival, Dellarobia, too, has been waiting for the chance to change course. And here, migrating into her line of sight, she has found it.

When given a real chance though, what will this woman do? What can she do? How far will she go to overcome her insecurities, her challenges, her doubts, and her obligations? These are only a few of the questions that Barbara Kingsolver aims to answer in her highly involved (and highly researched) scintillating new novel, leaving all who read it to wonder: Why do we stick to the course of expected flight behavior?

In his New York Magazine review of “Lincoln,” directed by Steven Spielberg, written by Tony Kushner, based on the book by Doris Kearns Goodwin, David Edelstein said, “By the time the movie ends, you don’t feel as if you know Lincoln – few, in his own time, claimed to know him. But you feel as if you know what it was like to be in his presence.” The sixteenth president of the United States is indeed reputed to have been hard to get to know personally. Thankfully, numerous biographers and journalists have delved deep into the history books and further, working wholeheartedly to uncover not just one of the greatest presidents in history – but also a most interesting man. Here’s a look at a few of those works worth checking out if you're interested in knowing the man behind the presidency.

A. Lincoln, by Ronald C. White, Jr.
Princeton PhD Ronald C. White, Jr. conducted meticulous and expansive research to write his comprehensive biography of Abraham Lincoln, touching on Lincoln’s personal, political, and moral evolution. From who he was at home, in the public eye, as commander-in-chief, and more, White’s biography is where you should start if you’re looking for an all-encompassing portrait of Abe Lincoln.

Lincoln: How Abraham Lincoln Ended Slavery in America, by Harold Holzer
Harold Holzer’s Lincoln is written as a companion to Spielberg’s “Lincoln,” which stars Daniel Day-Lewis, and is appropriate for a young adult audience – but still holds appeal for adults. Holzer is the chairman of the Lincoln Bicentennial Foundation and one of the country’s leading authorities on Lincoln. His book focuses on the months leading up to Lincoln’s assassination – but works backward, too, to tell a fuller story of Lincoln’s life. For a kid-friendly look at the life of Lincoln, Holzer's book is one to read.

Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, by Doris Kearns Goodwin
Doris Kearns Goodwin’s tome, on which the Daniel Day-Lewis-starring “Lincoln” is based, focuses on the politics of Abraham Lincoln. If you’re hungry for an in-depth chronicle of the very dramatic – and wildly interesting – political history and shaping of Lincoln, Goodwin’s biography is where you want to head.

The Lincolns: Portrait of a Marriage, by Daniel Mark Epstein
They say that behind every great man is a great woman. Whether you choose to believe that sentiment or not, the relationship dynamics of power couples past and present are intriguing, to say the least. The goings-on of Mary Todd (portrayed by Sally Field in “Lincoln”) and Abe were no different. Epstein’s portrait of the couple is likely the most honest look you’ll get into the private lives of President Lincoln and his First Lady.

The Life and Writings of Abraham Lincoln, edited by Philip Van Doren Stern
Abraham Lincoln was many things, including a talented writer. His Gettysburg Address – “Four score and seven years ago…” – considered widely to be one of the greatest speeches in American history, is one of many pieces of writing penned by this brilliant man. If you’re curious about his lesser-known works, you’ll want to check out this vast collection of Lincoln’s writings.

“Life is a tale. When I was a child, this is what everyone told me; as an adult I repeated it. Sometimes it starts well and ends badly; at other times, it presages misfortune but brings jubilation.” So says Shaltiel Feigenberg, who sits at the center of Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel’s latest novel, Hostage.

In the mid-1970s in Brooklyn, Shaltiel lives a peaceful life. He is a storyteller by trade, a writer by habit, and a caring husband. The reader, however, meets him on a day unlike any other for Shaltiel, on a day unrelated to anything he has ever been; Shaltiel has inexplicably become the hostage in a kidnapping carried out by an Arab and Italian, whose mission is to bring about the release of three Palestinian prisoners.

As Shaltiel’s blindfolded and bound for days in a dark, dank room and the hours tick by one by one, the world outside begins to reel as word of an innocent man’s kidnapping begins to spread. Suddenly, outside, the masses come to know this Shaltiel Feigenberg through the newswire, interviews with his family and those who know him, and rumors; inside, the reader gets to know Shaltiel as he falls back on that which defines him: storytelling.

At first, the stories are told in the prisoner’s mind. We come to learn about Shaltiel’s childhood during the holocaust and all that followed after. But soon, after what he feels to be forever in captivity, Shaltiel strikes up a dialogue with one of his captors and we learn even more about him. “Speech offers a sanctuary to silence, and silence protects it like a sanctuary,” says Shaltiel in Wiesel’s novel, and here speech is the only sanctuary to silence, a silence – one may come to expect – that haunts not just Shaltiel during the ordeal, but this captor as well.

A true storyteller knows, though, that not all stories are sweet, not all endings are happy. Shaltiel is a true storyteller and does not hold back when trying his craft on his new audience. And as stories turn to conversation – sometimes tense and always telling – Shaltiel and his less-brutal captor begin to connect. All the while, the efforts of those on the outside to find and save Shaltiel build and build, to come to a conclusion that grips the reader in a way that is near-indescribable.

“For the good of all, I say: Be careful, the brutality of the world must not be more powerful or attractive than love and friendship. Celebrate speech instead of scorning it; elevate it to the level of prayer so that up there, the Judge of men will give men an appetite for serenity.” Shaltiel is a wise, wise man, whose simple profundity will leave readers long lost in their thoughts – thoughts about chance, thoughts about history, thoughts about brutality, and thoughts about storytelling. And most of all, Elie Wiesel’s Hostage will leave readers lost in thoughts of their own truths.

Fright is a special thing. Some people embrace it and others avoid it whenever possible. For the former group of people, Halloween is a special time of year. Though costumes have evolved from simply scary (ghosts, goblins, witches) to the humorous, timely, clever guises put together in more recent years, the main artery of the holiday still pulses with creepiness. And sometimes one day of creepiness just isn’t enough, which is why I bring up Stephen King.

Stephen King knows fright. He knows how to tap into the adrenalized page-turning impulses of that group of folks who embrace fear, who savor the quickening pulse, the shortened breath, and the can’t-look-but-can’t-look-away draw of horror. King’s brand of fright, though, goes beyond witches and goblins and ghosts, to suss out our even deeper fears, the fears that make us human, that make us fallible, that make us capable of feeling terror. And to celebrate those fears, herewith, five classic Stephen King books that terrorized me over the course of my life.

Carrie
A teenager who doesn’t feel she belongs, an overbearing mother, questions of faith, and prom: It’s a recipe for terror, sure, but in King’s 1974 debut novel, he brought a whole new horror to high school – by adding a smidgen of telekinesis. If you’ve not yet read Carrie, it’s the one to start with. Bonus: Keep an eye out for the forthcoming adaptation starring Chloe Grace Moretz and Julianne Moore.

‘Salem’s Lot
Following up Carrie was no easy task – but from telekinesis to vampires, King quickly proved his talent for the horrific. In his second published novel, King brings writer Ben Mears to the small town in Maine where he grew up, where he begins work on his next book. Before long, though, a boy’s disappearance coupled with the arrival of a strange pair prove that though you may be able to go home again – things are often not the same.

The Shining
The Shining, quite possibly the novel that launched King to stardom, is a story familiar to most of us, thanks in part to Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 adaptation of the 1977 novel. Jack Torrance moves his family to the Overlook Resort, which will remain otherwise empty for the duration of the winter, as Jack acts as caretaker. The horror that ensues is some of King’s best work – and if you’ve only become familiar with it via film, do yourself (or, your nightmares, at least) a favor and pick up the original work.

Firestarter
Firestarter begs the question: How well do we really know our parents? And further, how much are we truly affected by their actions? This is Stephen King, though, so these questions are not tiptoed around. In this 1980 novel, Andy’s college-age participation in the testing of an LSD-like drug comes back to haunt him as he realizes the powers of the daughter born to him and his wife, who had also participated in the experiment. Oh, and here King adds an additional element of terror: government conspiracy.

Thinner
I can still hear the old gypsy in King’s 1984 novel (published under his pseudonym, Richard Bachman), in the gravelly voice I’d imagined him having, as he utters one word: “Thinner.” The curse was in place: Billy Halleck, fat as can be – and found not guilty of vehicular manslaughter in the accident that caused the death of the gypsy’s daughter – begins losing weight at an incredible pace, wasting away to near-nothing. In typical King fashion, though, the first fright is only the beginning, as Billy finds he’s not the only one cursed – and ultimately, not the only one horrifically affected by his actions.

On June 22, 2012, it was reported that Penn State football coach Jerry Sandusky was convicted of forty-five counts of sexual abuse. Immediately following the breaking of this news, the questions began: How did he get away with it? What kind of person could do such a thing? How could the boys’ mothers not know? What must it have been like for those boys? This fall, Aaron Fisher, aka Victim Number One, released his memoir of the ordeal, and this memoir, Silent No More, co-written with his psychologist Michael Gillum, MA, and mother Dawn Daniels, addresses each of these questions.

Silent No More is written from three points of view: Aaron, Dawn, and Mike. The true story plays out from the perspectives of each of these people. Aaron begins with his perception of the great football coach, Jerry Sandusky, a man who took an interest in him and made him feel like a special kid. Dawn, a single mother trying to do the best she can, is at first appreciative of the role Jerry plays in Aaron’s life. He takes the time for kids, both formally through his charity, Second Mile, and on a more personal level, too: Sandusky brings the kids to a local swimming pool, has them over to play video games. Mike enters the story shortly after Aaron breaks down at school at the age of fourteen, finally coming forth with the truth of what had been happening.

This telling of the gut-wrenching story of a powerful pedophile and predator and his prey is at once matter-of-fact and steeped in the harshest and deepest of emotions. Dawn’s feelings of guilt as a mother who “let this happen” to her son are evident all along. Aaron’s own feelings – fear of how much farther Sandusky would take the abuse, fear of being ostracized, fear of people not believing him, and even fear of the repercussions for Sandusky – are woven throughout his narrative in such a way that leaves room for pity, but plays more so off of a certain hope. Mike’s telling is from the vantage point of someone who cares so much about kids and wants what’s best for them – and also knows all too well the difficulties a kid faces when up against a monster.

We all know by now how the story ends, and Aaron, Dawn, and Mike get us from the beginning to conviction in a way that is as thoughtful as it is straightforward. From the politics that affected the investigation, to the psychological toll the terrible experience took on Aaron, from the cover-ups that had taken place years earlier to the final conviction and sentencing of Jerry Sandusky, Silent No More answers the above questions and more.

There’s the one who got away. There's the one who broke your heart. And sometimes, for the unlucky in love, there’s the one who broke your heart and then got away. It’s neither tragic nor comic, but instead some mixture of both. In Christopher R. Beha’s What Happened to Sophie Wilder, published-but-quite-possibly-mediocre writer Charlie Blakeman is the unlucky-in-love sort and Sophie Wilder is the one who broke his heart and then got away. But … now she’s back.

There’s a certain kind of competition among lovers working in the same field, and it doesn’t always end well. (Take Kathryn Bigelow and James Cameron; John Gray and Barbara de Angeles; Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Phillippe for example.) When Charlie and Sophie first meet in college, they’re both budding writers with big dreams for accomplished literary lives. As much as they bond over their shared passion for the written word, there is unfortunately always one half of the pair (Charlie) who feels inferior to the other (Sophie). And still, he loves her. She then hurts him, and he loves her still. She then disappears, and still, he loves her.

Charlie wanders through his post-collegiate days, living an unstructured life in a Washington Square apartment in New York City, and it’s only when Sophie reappears for reasons not quite clear that his life begins to excite him again. Was he depressed before her arrival? No – simply indifferent. With her presence, he is brought back to attention as her story of the years that have passed between them begins to unfold: a story of a melancholy marriage, the discovery of a dying man, a faith questioned in profound ways.

At one point early in the novel, Charlie and Sophie spend the summer apart. As autumn begins to set in, the two return to campus, Sophie with an armful of short stories she’s written. One of the stories, titled “Visiting Professor,” finds the story’s main character, a college woman sitting at Penn Station, awaiting her train back to the “boy she loves on campus.” The young woman ponders her recent near-illicit visit with the professor, and  thinks ahead to how she’ll describe the evening to the young man that waits for her at university, “wondering what kind of story she wants it to be, whether to make it a comedy or a tragedy or some mixture of both.”

Herein lies the grist of Beha’s novel: Life can be comedy or tragedy, and it’s often in our own re-telling of it that decides the fate of our own life’s story. As dark as What Happened to Sophie Wilder is, it’s in Beha’s telling of it that makes it beautiful, that makes it some mixture of both.

Admittedly, I was first drawn to Peter Kaminsky’s Culinary Intelligence: The Art of Eating Healthy (And Really Well) because of the cover. It’s really quite lovely with its yellow accents and a sprig of greenery. I hesitated when I got to the title. This couldn’t be a diet book, could it? I don’t read diet books. I was distracted from my own hesitation though because of a few key words that leaped out at me: culinary, art, eating, and of course the author’s name, Peter Kaminsky.

Peter Kaminsky’s track record in food is quite impressive. He was the Underground Gourmet for New York magazine for four years and has been a longtime contributor to Food & Wine. He has also written or co-written numerous books on food. The man knows taste. Alas, a half-a-lifetime in food writing brought Kaminsky to his doctor’s office, where he realized his health was starting to suffer. Even in the face of danger, though, one’s passions often persevere – and Culinary Intelligence is the result of Kaminsky’s marrying his own passion for food to his new dietary needs.

Over the course of eight delicious chapters, Kaminsky walks readers through the art of eating. Peppered through lessons on taste and ingredients, eating in and eating out, are Kaminsky’s tales of some of the most fabulous dining experiences he’s ever had. Immediately following a lesson called No White Stuff (a no white flour, no white sugar, no white rice, no potatoes lesson that was the most immediately effective in Kaminsky’s dietary journey), Kaminsky breaks from the rigidity of this rule with another as-important lesson: “Avoiding potatoes as a general rule should not be confused with a divinely decreed prohibition. Life has its special occasions, and I am happy to accommodate them.” Kaminsky goes on to describe an epic “vertical potato tasting” in Peru.

The effect of this back-and-forth don’t-eat-it-but-eat-it is not carb-induced schizophrenia, but instead a deeper consideration of the make-it-worth-it school of thought. Kaminsky talks at length about FPC – Flavor Per Calorie. He talks about semolina versus white flour, what breakfast should consist of, and what types of ingredients one should be looking for in processed foods. He discusses the importance – both in flavor and in cost-effectiveness – of seasonal eating. He delves into the best kinds of salt, the fact that eggs are okay, the importance of portion control, and the qualities of the best kinds of meats. After devouring all of this, one can’t help but to start making smarter decisions when it comes to food.

“Culinary Intelligence,” says Kaminsky, “is not a moral code: it is a way to eat better most days without putting on weight.” Since finishing the book, I’ve found myself choosing snacks in the grocery store based on ingredients rather than cravings. I’ve switched from white rice to brown, and swapped out my four o’clock bag of Skittles for two plums. But I’ve also kept the burrata, roasted garlic on toast, and occasional gelato in my diet. Am I riddled with guilt? No – the opposite, in fact. I find myself that much more appreciative of the flavor per each calorie and enjoy what I eat a whole lot more.

Lance Armstrong encompassed so much of what we want in a hero: a rise up from humble beginnings, a lifetime of dedication, followed by a Phoenix-rising-from-the-ashes post-crisis victory story. The man delivered on all counts. Unfortunately, though, following a return to the sport of bicycle racing after surviving stage-three testicular cancer, rumors of Armstrong’s true methods of winning began to circulate. And earlier this year, allegations against the seven-time Tour de France winner by the United States Anti-Doping Agency sent the sports world reeling. But did he dope or didn’t he? This is the question at the heart of Armstrong teammate Tyler Hamilton’s book, The Secret Race: Inside the Hidden World of the Tour de France: Doping, Cover-ups, and Winning at All Costs, co-written with reporter Daniel Coyle.

For three years, Hamilton and Armstrong were teammates on the U.S. Postal Service Cycling Team. During this time, Hamilton alleges in his book, doping became commonplace in the world of professional cycling. Average riders shot to cycling stardom seemingly overnight, and other, genuinely good riders dropped out of the profession as a result of their unwillingness to use steroids or erythropoietin (EPO). The scenarios Hamilton describes in detail are staggering – from the nonchalant beginnings of an athlete’s dope use, to the extent that team members and team doctors would go to hide the drugs both in their systems and out (think: ducking behind kitchen counters when the cycling authorities came a’knocking). In The Secret Race, though, many of these scenarios didn’t simply happen around Hamilton; he was very much a part of the action. Hamilton’s own professional cycling career came to a halt in 2009, when he (for the second time) failed a doping test and was suspended for eight years. Hamilton was, essentially, pushed into retirement.

The Secret Race is certainly a tell-all of sorts, but it doesn’t have that feel of salaciousness that accompanies the typical dishy tome. The story Hamilton tells is rich with detail, but details that invite we the readers into the inner sanctum of the cycling world. Sure, he names names when talking about where the dope came from, who used it, who shared it, who secreted it away, who supplied it, and who transported it, but The Secret Race is also an opportunity to examine the brotherhood that exists among teammates. The men, while training for the biggest races of their lives, board together, eat together, play together, and train together. The team is a fraternity for adults, one in which the psychology of friendship is complicated by the psychology of competition. Hamilton, with the help of Coyle, spares no detail in pulling away that opaque curtain that has kept the mysteries of the sport shrouded. If you’ve ever wondered what really goes on in the exclusive world of sports cycling, what drives the cyclists to keep on pedaling, and what measures they’re willing to take to do so – or if you’ve ever simply wondered what Lance Armstrong is really like – The Secret Race will keep you enthralled from page one.

Have you ever read a book that takes you so far out of your realm of experience? One that completely consumes you, transports you, and opens your eyes and mind to an entirely different way of life? If you’re a voracious reader, it’s likely you have. But if not, start now. Start with Shani Boianjiu’s The People of Forever Are Not Afraid.

Boianjiu’s novel begins with the story of three young women in a small village in Israel. Like most teenagers, they pass their time in class by trading notes, talking about – or hiding – their adolescent crushes, testing the parameters of their rebellious sides, navigating the tricky waters of popularity and friendship. But at the age of eighteen, mandatory military service sweeps Lea, Yael, and Avishag off to training.

For two years, the young women serve. They stand guard at the base, monitor checkpoints, and learn to handle guns. Faced with situations that test their morals and morale, the three come of age in the heat and dust of a battleground poised for war. Though the girls still gossip and still test the parameters of rebellion and still flirt with inappropriate men, their experiences are now cloaked in camouflage. Not long before a day's education incorporated the basics of math and reading, and now a day’s realization begins with the breathing in of “the gunpowder that was on all of our fingers and the cedar trees of the base. And I just understood that there are people who live for the fight; for the moment before you lose or win. People for whom this world is not enough.”

The author of The People Are Not Afraid, Shani Boianjiu, grew up in Israel and, as law requires, spent two years in the Israeli Defense Forces. It takes a voice like hers – an experience like hers – to bring us the story of Lea, Yael, and Avishag. Theirs is a story of disillusionment and lost innocence, the surreality and the grit of wartime, the harshness of youth and truth. Their story will consume you and transport you, leaving you -- likely for the first time in your life -- considering an entirely different narrative of growing up.

The first time my heart broke as a young reader was at the conclusion of Charlotte's Web. I never saw the passing of that beautiful arachnid coming; it hit me like a slap in the face. I was turned off to tragedy for years, leaving the family room when I sensed impending on-film sadness on family movie night, turning off the Atari when I wasn't happy with the inevitable results of Space Invaders, keeping my feet bare well into autumn. I didn't think I could take any more. But then, as I approached the worldly and savvy age of ten, I picked up Katherine Paterson's Bridge to Terabithia. My mother screened my reading choices as a child, lest I accidentally and prematurely cross the bridge from Judy Blume's Freckle Juice to Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret, and when I brought Terabithia to her in the bookstore, she eyed it warily, remembering the aftershocks of Charlotte's death. But here I was, determined and so much wiser. And then there I was a short time later, heartbroken again.

Paterson's Newbery Award-winning book tells the story of Jess Aarons. Jess has been training on his family's farm in rural Virginia all summer long for one reason: to be the fastest runner in the fifth grade. The school year begins and the first race finally rolls around. Jess is confident that he's going to win. But then, in a shocking turn of events, Leslie Burke (a girl!) finishes first. Leslie is the new girl in town. She and her parents, free-spirited writers, moved to a house near Jess's family's home. In spite of their rocky beginnings, Leslie and Jess soon embark on an incredible friendship. Two loners with big imaginations escape together day after day to the magical kingdom of Terabithia, gotten to only by rope swing, a land in which they rule as king and queen, with a dog named P.T. as protector and jester.

And then fate steps in. On a rare day that finds Leslie heading to Terabithia alone, tragedy strikes, and Jess's world is forever changed. Readers are pulled into Jess's struggle as he grapples with loss. As a young reader, one is introduced to grief -- and yet learns to reconcile grief with gratitude, as Jess finds warmth in his heart for the short time Leslie was part of his life.

There are certain books that we read over the years that stay with us for any of a multitude of reasons. Katherine Paterson's Bridge to Terabithia is one of those books. The reasons? Its lessons: tragedy is manageable, grief is natural, true friendship is special, and imagination is key. The second time my heart was broken was with my first reading (of many) of Bridge to Terabithia. If you've not read it, read it now. If you have read it, revisit it. Read it and revisit it and then share one of the most beautiful heartbreaks you'll ever experience.

There is no easing into Alix Ohlin’s latest novel, Inside. In one chilling, breathless moment, Grace comes upon an unconscious man off the side of the trail down which she’s skiing on a mountain in Montreal. A fallen skier? An unplanned detour? Unexpected injury? No, it’s none of these. It becomes apparent quite quickly that John “Tug” Tugwell has just attempted suicide, and Grace is the first to come across the scene. Saving a man’s life, however, is not enough when you’re a therapist. Grace is compelled to follow up with Tug. She accompanies the ambulance to the hospital, is there when he wakes, and before long, she’s helping him home. From here on out, we the readers are swept along for the ride.

Next, we meet Annie, one of Grace’s troubled patients, a young woman who is anything but patient with the theory of psychology. Annie is everything you don’t wish for in a teenager: petulant, rebellious, caustic with her words and manipulative with her manner. Oddly, however, she is not likely who you will dislike the most. Enter Mitch, Grace’s ex-husband, also an essential player in the story. Mitch is also a therapist, and comes back into Grace’s life in the most unexpected way.

Ohlin strings together the lives of these four richly developed characters with such clarity and sharpness of writing. As the readers, we begin to sympathize, but the characters themselves never become precious; they are too human for that. All over the globe from Canada to New York, Rwanda to Hollywood, the subjects of Ohlin’s novel orbit around one another, making disastrous decisions – yet evoking no sense of hopelessness or pity in us. Instead, Ohlin keeps such a strong hold on her language, remaining meticulously generous in a way that allows her characters to grow from the foundation she has set for them. We can easily imagine that Ohlin simply penned the outline of the story and then set the characters free upon the page to play out the story as humanly possible as they could.

Ultimately, Inside is a story of relationships: those we cherish, those we cling to desperately, those we push away and those we let slip away. Ohlin’s Grace, Tug, Annie and Mitch are the perfect foursome to tell this story.

Related: Alix Ohlin on the essence of a true love story.

Ah, the Olympics – an international union of sportsmanship and patriotism, moments of glory and moments of defeat. For two weeks, this is the primary entertainment in which we’re steeped. Our usual programs are saved for later, for after the final medal has been won, the final podium deserted, the final cheer  shouted, the final tear shed. Alas, we are graced with this intense series of sporting events only every two years (four if you’re a winter or summer elitist). After the flame has been extinguished, our thoughts and conversations glumly return to their regular programming. But wait! Don’t fret! We have just the thing to get you through the post-Olympics lull: Chris Cleave’s latest novel, Gold.

The story begins at the near end of a journey comprised of five intertwining lives: Zoe, hard-ass Olympic cyclist, competitor to the core, solitary, seemingly tough as nails; Kate, Zoe’s number-one competitor, mother and wife, seemingly forever in second place; Jack, Kate’s loyal husband, also an Olympic cycling medalist, struggling with the tautness of the tether between his roles of father and professional athlete; Tom, the coach of the three, whose aging knees – as well as his passion for his trainees – have him forever teetering on the edge of the track with his heart in his throat; and little Sophie, the leukemia-stricken daughter of Kate and Jack.

When the starting gun of Gold goes off, Cleave’s characters are approaching the 2012 London Olympics trials. The pressure is high, the training intense. Every moment of every day counts – but life prevents Zoe, Kate, and Jack from focusing one hundred percent of their attention and energy on the preparations. Stubborn demons, current travails, and past mistakes all come into play as Cleave, the bestselling author of Little Bee, juxtaposes flashbacks alongside present day, carefully filling in the gaps in a story of boundless attachment, complicated connections, and irrepressible drive.

And, of course, there is the cycling. The moments of racing are this reader’s favorite parts of the novel. The descriptions of the feelings – both physical and emotional – felt by cyclists as well as their in-the-moment thoughts and instincts of strategy and technique may likely be the closest most of us will ever get to the experience of being a competitive cyclist. Perhaps you’re thinking that knowing this experience holds no appeal for you. Sure, me too. But then there it was. And there I was. Sucked into the slipstream of the moment.

So, as you wipe that tear from your cheek knowing that another Olympics has come to a bittersweet close, take Chris Cleave’s Gold as your opportunity to eke out just a little more of the drama, sportsmanship, heartbreak, and glory for which we’ve come to fall in love with the Olympics.

Hers was a life lived fully and ambitiously, and cut short tragically; this much we all know is true. But beyond the public persona that Norma Jeane Mortenson put forth, do we really know all that much about the reality behind Marilyn Monroe’s storied thirty-six years on this earth? Upon the fiftieth anniversary of Monroe’s death, feminist and historian Lois W. Banner presents us with a new, all-encompassing study of the star’s tumultuous life and mystery-sodden death, Marilyn: The Passion and the Paradox.

Marilyn Monroe has inspired countless tell-alls, novels, biopics, songs. She is a muse to many and a mystery to most. But exactly how did a girl with questionable origins (no one knows – still – who her real father is) rise up through the ranks to become a legend? And more important, what shaped Marilyn into the woman she was at her core? This latter question is that which Banner explores most heavily in her biography.

Banner’s expertise serves her well in her writing. As she walks us through Monroe’s humble beginnings, she focuses on the foster family experiences that quite deeply affected Marilyn. Her relationships with her mother, Gladys; her mother’s best friend, Grace, who became young Marilyn's guardian after Gladys was institutionalized; and her foster mothers and fathers all affected Marilyn’s maturation profoundly, and Banner reports in intricate detail exactly how. Banner turns a close eye, also, to Marilyn’s sexual self – her self-image, her love of women, her search for the adoration of the men in her life – and the effect of Christian Science on this aspect of her psychology. This particular study of the star is a meticulously researched look into the psyche of a young, stability-deprived  woman. Suddenly, we're left thinking less about the what – and more about the why.

Marilyn: The Passion and the Paradox guides us through Marilyn’s early life to her start in Hollywood and her eventual rise to notoriety-nearing fame. No rumor is left unturned in Banner’s book as the author accompanies us through Marilyn’s marriage to and divorce from Jim Dougherty, her intimate relationship with drama coach Natasha Lytess, her introduction to Arthur Miller, marriage to Joe DiMaggio – and every lover, friend, and enemy in between and since, finally bringing us to her involvement with the Kennedys. We all know the basics of how this story ultimately ends, with Marilyn perishing from a drug overdose. But here, too, Banner presents a fresh foundation to the framework.

Banner’s writing covers the legend of Marilyn Monroe in a brand-new way, with a sympathetic yet deconstructive grip on the story. Fifty years later, Marilyn is part of American history, Hollywood history, women’s history. What better time than now to get all of the details in one comprehensive and well-written read?

Janet Groth had luck on her side. As a budding young writer, the University of Minnesota graduate landed an interview with the elusive E. B. White. During an awkward interview with White, who suffered from near-painful shyness, Groth admitted that she was not a typist. (In fact, she had deliberately avoided improving her typing skills.) So, instead of landing in the typing pool, Groth was placed in the receptionist’s chair on the editorial floor of the offices of The New Yorker – and there she remained for the rest of her time at the publication. The Receptionist: An Education at the New Yorker is Groth’s remembrance of not only her twenty years at the respected magazine – but also the life she lived as a young professional woman in New York City from the 1950s onward.

One might wonder: Did Groth aspire to something more than receptionist at the famed magazine? As she welcomed icons including Woody Allen, John Berryman (who was of the opinion for a time that Groth would be his ideal wife), and Calvin Trillin through the reception door of the eighteenth floor, did she ever move past the realm of pure awe and into the grips of desire for advancement? While surrounded by the cream of the crop, the almighty and most exalted writers, was Groth satisfied with her station within the company? Amid the dish and the drama, the humor and the highs, this question reverberates just below the surface of an otherwise boozy, brilliant romp of a New York City story.

Here was a young woman with the seed of a writing career in her mind, a woman who rubbed elbows with the glittering literati of the late ‘50s and beyond, schmoozing whenever possible, wondering when her lucky break might arrive – the break that would advance her out of the receptionist chair. Parallel to this persona was a young woman living out her twenties in the fantastical era of Greenwich Village’s early rise into that desirable sort of bohemia. She was a woman caught up in the social whirl and twirl of her time and circumstances, and Groth gleefully takes us along for the ride, dropping names of old New York society and holding our hand as she danced from club to club, from party to parlor, and from suitor to suitor during her self-professed promiscuous times.

Seeing Groth at work and Groth at play, you may find yourself losing track of whether her days at The New Yorker bookend her social life -- or vice versa. Considering the richness of Groth's story, each is as entertaining as the other.

Postscript: Though Groth never advanced from receptionist at The New Yorker, she did go on in life to become an English professor, a Fulbright lecturer, and -- yes -- an author.

Pulp noir has landed in Los Angeles. The year is 2010. We are introduced to Don Winslow’s Savages with an expletive directed at the reader. And so the tone is set.

We first meet Ben, Chon, and O in Ben’s condo, situated on a bluff overlooking Table Rock Beach in Laguna. Chon, semi-retired Navy Seal; Ben, child of two hippie shrinks, graduate of Berkeley with a double major in marketing and botany, hell-bent on saving the world one developing country at a time; O (short for Ophelia), daughter of a woman who is living the high life, on husband number six, and more of a mother than O ever cared for. They’re one motley crew. The men have been buddies since pre-school; the female component of the trio is intimately involved with both of them, depending on their mood. The guys run a marijuana operation to rival any other in the world. Ben’s botany degree has helped him cultivate the most sought-after weed on the west coast and his business sense helps keep their clients happy and the money clean; Chon’s SEAL training makes him a natural fit as the brawn of the operation, brawn that’s rarely needed as their business is kept relatively tame.

Enter the Baja Cartel, led by Elena Sanchez Lauter. This new cartel wants to move up from Mexico into Orange County – into Ben and Chon’s territory – and so they offer the men a distribution deal. But Ben and Chon aren’t buying – until the cartel, whose history of violence of the decapitation sort would make the strongest shudder, kidnaps O. The deal is set. O will remain in the custody of the Mexican cartel for three years while Ben and Chon work with them, providing distribution of their high-grade hydro while taking a cut of the sales – or until they come up with twenty million dollars. The men feign cooperation in a plan that results in shootouts, thefts, lies – and suddenly things are near out of control.

Savages is a fast-paced thrill ride of a story, true. But how best to describe the tone? If Quentin Tarantino and Bret Easton Ellis got together to write a book, it might read something like Savages. It’s not for the faint of heart or the weak of stomach. Keep that in mind, too, when the movie hits theaters this summer. Oliver Stone has adapted the book for the big screen, with a screenplay co-written by Winslow and Shane Salerno of “Armageddon” and “Shaft” fame. The film stars Blake Lively, Taylor Kitsch, Aaron Johnson, Salma Hayek, Benicio Del Toro, and John Travolta.

Bonus: If after reading Savages you want more, Winslow’s prequel to the story, Kings of Cool, has just arrived.

July 2, 2012, marks the seventy-fifth anniversary of the disappearance of Amelia Earhart, a woman who was a legend in her own time – and whose legacy is infused with intrigue and mystery. Over the decades since her disappearance, various theories have been explored, one of those being that Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, survived beyond that fateful day, finding residence on a desert island after setting out off the coast of New Guinea. (That theory made its way back into the news recently with the discovery of what might have been a jar from freckle cream possibly used by Earhart.) It is this theory on which Jane Mendelsohn’s novel, I Was Amelia Earhart, is based.

Earhart’s passion for aviation began fairly early in her life, but it wasn’t until her trans-Atlantic flight in 1928, at the age of thirty, that she became a celebrity pilot. As the first woman to fly solo over the Atlantic, her mark was made. With fame came the financial resources to fund her flying career and once she was off, she never looked back. In 1936, after setting numerous flying records, Earhart began planning her around-the-world trip with Noonan. Though their trip wouldn’t be the first circling of the globe by a pilot, it was certainly planned to be the longest at 29,000 miles, beginning in Hawaii. It was on this trip that Earhart and Noonan disappeared forever, somewhere over the Pacific, while en route to a stop on Howland Island. And it is at this moment in time that Mendelsohn’s novel begins.

What if Earhart and Noonan did, in fact, find themselves marooned on an island in the middle of the ocean? What if they made a life for themselves there, learning how to survive on fish and coconut, learning to build shelter and to befriend one another? What if Noonan lashed out at Earhart for being reckless in her fearlessness and Earhart’s resentment of Noonan’s drinking bubbled up to the surface? These are a fraction of the possibilities Mendelsohn explores in a novel that is brilliantly written. The year immediately following Earhart’s disappearance is imagined in detail that is at once concisely presented and immense in its depth. It is riveting, as Mendelsohn weaves together fact and fiction, incorporating precious details of Earhart’s real life into the aviator’s imagined memory-laced reflections.

And still, Mendelsohn creates a whole new iteration of Earhart – the woman after the fame, after the celebrity, whose skin is browned from the sun, whose lips are chapped from the salt air; ultimately, a woman who had perhaps “taken this journey in order to escape the madness of the world,” a woman who “didn’t give a damn if she was alone,” and finally, a woman who would “live the rest of her long and brilliant life on this wild and desolate island.”

Remember middle school? There were few things in life that mattered more than who your best friend was and on whom you had a crush. These two facts were what made your world go 'round. But what if, suddenly – and then slowly – the world stopped going around? What if the earth started rotating on its axis slower and slower while you continued through the routines that any typical pre-adolescent should be going through? Welcome to Karen Thompson Walker’s The Age of Miracles.

As the world slows, the environment is affected. As gravity shifts, birds drop from the sky and the days grow longer. Ocean tides change, turning once-majestic waterfront properties into the homes of sea anemone and starfish. The government takes action, mandating that all people stick to what comes to be known as “clock time.” No matter what the sun or moon are doing in the sky, clock-timers stick to the hour displayed, making their way to work or school blanketed by a black-velvet sky; desperately trying to sleep through sun-soaked nights. And then, of course, there are the rebels, the “real-timers” whose days are dictated by the rising and setting of the sun.

At the center of the novel is Julia, eleven years old and worried only about eleven-year-old things. On the Monday morning following the weekend where the earth began its slowing (at the rate of approximately six minutes per day), her best friend, Hanna, has fled to Utah; her skateboard-riding crush, Seth, still doesn’t appear to know she exists; and Daryl, the bad-ass new kid, the troublemaker, does the unthinkable: He pulls Julia’s shirt up over her head to reveal that – “Gross! Julia’s not wearing a bra!” And as quickly as Walker had pulled our concerns and our imaginations to the fate of an entire world, she just as quickly brings us spinning back toward one tiny painful pinpointed moment in time. Suddenly, we spin on our own axis: The seemingly small becomes life-shaking and the changing universe slips to the background.

Walker transplants us to that post-childhood, pre-teenage era of naïve angst and uncertainty, to that time before we could really grasp the bigger picture, and by presenting it against a backdrop of an event both cataclysmic and catalystic, we can so clearly see from our reader’s perch above it all just how much everything matters – or doesn’t. There are metaphors both clear and convoluted, and a seemingly certain impending fate for all of Walker’s characters, who still, in spite of doom’s breath on the backs of their necks, carry on with the necessities of life. It’s a book into which you’ll likely fall, remain lost for days, and come out on the other side, thinking, for hours – maybe days – after, “Well, what if?” And you’ll never take a sunrise or sunset for granted again.

Read an excerpt of The Age of Miracles. I promise, you'll fall in love.

Gillian Flynn, author of Sharp Objects and Dark Places, sat down with Everyday eBook upon the release of her latest brilliant novel, Gone Girl, to talk about inspiration, the dark side of marriage, playing favorites, and more.

Everyday eBook: Your latest novel, Gone Girl, will create converts to the thriller genre. Getting back to the basics – and with no spoilers – where on earth did you come up with such a wild idea for this story? Further, as wild a ride as it was, you kept it all just this side of believable. How did you keep yourself from going too far?

Gillian Flynn: Well, thank you! I started with a desire to explore marriage this round. My previous two books were told from the point of view of women who were decidedly single – who didn’t really even know how to sustain any kind of relationships, romantic or not. So I wanted to deal with a married couple, and do it as a “he said, she said” kind of narrative, because marriages are, in a way, one long version of a “he said she said” story. No matter how close we are to someone, there will always be a disconnect. I think that’s why, when you go out to dinner with a married couple, there is invariably some story that they start telling, that each of them swear is being told wrong. And they are always so incensed about it, right? “You’re telling it wrong!” But I think it’s because, underneath, we find it alarming, that you are sharing a life with someone and yet can experience the same thing in very different ways. It’s shocking sometimes. So this takes that idea of never entirely knowing your spouse, and blows it up times one thousand. As far as keeping it just this side of believable: thank you. I like to tiptoe right to the edge of gothic. My novels all have that just slightly off-kilter reality. It comes from my love of fairy tales, Lifetime movies, and Davids Lynch and Cronenberg.

EE: The twist in part two of your novel is mind-blowing. Did you know from the beginning of your writing process that this was the direction you intended to take?

GF: I knew the twist, but I had no idea if the twist was the middle or the end. I never know the end of my novels, and often don’t know the middle. I’m not bragging about it; it’s awful. I sometimes think I know, but I never do. In Sharp Objects, the murderer wasn’t even in the first draft. In Dark Places, I had theories as I wrote, but I was never sure. Gone Girl … I sweated a lot. Literally. I would sit in my basement office and pour sweat trying to figure out exactly what I wanted to do.

EE: How does your previous work as a film and television journalist affect your work as a novelist? Do you find you’re more critical of your own writing because, perhaps, you’re also looking at it from the entertained’s point of view?

GF: It definitely propels me. I worked for Entertainment Weekly for ten years, and consumed a crazy amount of pop culture in that time. There are few things that give me a bigger rush than watching or reading something really great. Conversely, the stuff that frustrated me the most (and that, in retrospect, I was occasionally unduly hard on as a critic) were the TV and movies that I felt squandered a really cool idea. Not the stuff that aimed to be average – and there is a lot of that – and not the stuff that aimed high and didn’t quite work. But the stuff that settled on being average when it didn’t have to be. TV shows and movies are different than books – there are so many more people involved, and so there are so many more things that can go wrong. It’s sort of magical when you think about it, when something is really great. So that makes me all the more aware of the position I’m in. As an author, it’s pretty much up to me. I have a brilliant editor, but she can only work with what I give her. It’s a pretty rare position to be in, so I don’t want to take that for granted and settle. I’m not saying my stuff ends up perfect – but at least it’s not lazy. I don’t want to have to look at my book sitting up on the shelf, and think, “Ugh, why didn’t I rewrite page forty-two?”

EE: In addition to issues of trust and love, your novel provides an underlying comment on the ideals we as humans strive for – and the lengths to which we’ll go to reach those ideals. Was this one of your main intentions?

GF: It’s definitely a novel about striving. Economically, personally, emotionally. It’s a novel about wanting, and what happens when we want the wrong things, or when we get the wrong things we want. It’s about the dangers of perfectionism and also of settling, and about that maddening Mobius strip, which is especially heightened in marriage: We should be the best person we can for our spouse, yet the point of marriage is unconditional love, which allows us to often dissolve into our worst selves.

EE: Though we’re not supposed to play favorites, of your three novels, do you have a favorite?

GF: I’m going to be boring here: They are each my favorite in different ways. (I know, I know, but it's true!) Sharp Objects was my first, and I wrote it on evenings and weekends and vacations from my day job at EW, without an agent or any assurances that it would ever be published, so I have a real soft spot for it, and the narrator, Camille, seems to strike a chord with a lot of people, so that’s very meaningful to me. Dark Places has my favorite opening line of all three: “I have a meanness inside me, real as an organ.” That line came to me deep into a very uneven first draft, and once I had that, I had my narrator, Libby Day, figured out and could really start writing: It was the most satisfying a-ha moment I’ve had as an author. And Gone Girl I’m just very proud of, if I do say so myself. It was the most physically, mentally, and emotionally demanding of all three – plus I gave birth to our son in the middle of writing it, so it will always be a real personal touchstone for me. I was either pregnant or in the throes of first-time motherhood for all of Gone Girl. I’d write an incredibly dark scene and then I had the perfect antidote at the end of the day: To return to a land of soft blankies and smiling bunnies!

Do you ever wonder what sparks creativity? Why is it that sometimes ideas just seem to flow like water? Why do some people seem inherently capable of new and original ways of thinking? These are the questions Jonah Lehrer seeks to answer in Imagine: How Creativity Works. And in this pursuit, Lehrer presents three states of being (among many) that can lead to the best ideas.

Daydreaming
In a study unrelated to daydreaming, a neurologist/radiologist stumbled upon a surprising bit of information: When left to rest their minds after a brain scanner-set activity, subjects’ minds were actually far from at ease. Rather, “They were overflowing with thoughts, their cortices lit up like skyscrapers at night.” There are certain parts of the brain that don’t normally interact, as they all have very specific purposes when a person sets their mind to a particular train of thought or task. Left to idleness, however, these parts work closely together, thereby accessing an inner database that produces concepts that wouldn’t otherwise surface, i.e., daydreaming.

Carelessness
People who strive for perfection aim to avoid mistakes and remain within the confines of what is correct and predictable. But while they may be prone to making fewer errors, allowing oneself to make the occasional mistake can lead to discovering new possibilities where they previously were unknown. Yo-yo Ma is the example Lehrer uses to illustrate this. Composer Bruce Adolphe first met Ma at Juilliard when the cellist was only fifteen years old. Adolphe had written a composition that contained a note he was told was impossible to perform. Ma, unaware of the impossibility, just went for it full throttle with nary a thought as to what he was about to do – and in his disregard for perfection, he played the note. It’s this ability to let go of perfectionism and embrace carelessness from time to time that “has turned Ma into one of the most famous classical performers in the world.”

Ignorance
Computer programmer Don Lee had his heart broken in 2005. As many of love’s sad sufferers are wont to do, Lee escaped to his local watering hole. Sad and bored, Lee became fixated on what the bartenders were doing while at work. He became immersed in the activity in front of him, beginning to inadvertently study the ingredients, the techniques, and the tastes. Today, the formerly brokenhearted tech guy is at the epitome of what Lehrer refers to as a person “on the fringes of a field.” With no formal training, Lee has created some of the most interesting concoctions behind the bar -- and has become one of New York City’s preeminent mixologists (currently at Momofuku) simply because he didn’t know any better.

These are among the myriad scenarios and examples Lehrer presents in Imagine. As with all of the greatest pop-science books of late, Lehrer explains the technical and complicated inner workings of the brain in an accessible, entertaining, engrossing, informative manner. Read it, ponder it, and then go ahead – daydream.

Want to know more about the book? Watch a really cool video here on Vimeo.

Update: Please note that this post was written prior to the news about falsifications in the book.

At the heart of every fairy tale lives a moral, a timeless lesson about life or love. But alas, at some point as we grow up, fairy tales lose their sparkle. Magic turns into mortgages, princes to 401Ks, buried treasure becomes buried-by-taxes. Thankfully, there are writers like Eowyn Ivey, whose debut novel, The Snow Child, is a tale so subtly perfect, so utterly enchanting – and so full of grown-up magic.

It is the early 1920s and Jack and Mabel have moved to the Alaskan wilderness to have a late-in-life go at homesteading. As the couple adjust to their new life and let go of the idea of having children, they fall prey to a growing estrangement. As they each settle into their own routines – Jack struggling to keep employed in a time of little demand for the work he can offer and Mabel struggling to find her place worlds away from the cosmopolitan life she knew in the city – the two begin to drift apart, with few words for each other and even less affection. But in a moment of rare, childlike bliss, husband and wife are caught up in the falling snow, in the new accumulation that indicates for them the start of winter. Together, they build a snowman – or snowgirl, rather – dressing her in a red scarf and mittens. The next day, the snowgirl is melted, the mittens and hat are gone – and a wisp of a young, blonde-haired girl has appeared.

Indeed, The Snow Child is magical and asks you for a while to suspend disbelief at a snowgirl-turned-human, but it also delves into the theme of aging relationships, and what happens when things don’t go exactly as planned. Though the novel has a dark (but no less engrossing) start, there’s a thread of hope sewn throughout the story: hope for the child’s indefinite presence, hope for Jack and Mabel’s love, hope for the fruitfulness of the land, and even hope for the survival of a fox and the demise of a moose. The cast of characters that Ivey creates, though few in number, are near tangible, materializing in the imagination and embodying the culture of homestead living. They circulate around Jack and Mabel, inspiring, encouraging, and reflecting -- and leaving readers believing.

The Snow Child will have you reading late into the night, wishing the book could last forever but refusing to put it down. Ultimately, though, is there a moral? A timeless lesson about life or love? There is – but you’ll have to read it to find out what it is for yourself.

One of the many differences between a good book and a great book is that a great book isn’t just a great read; it’s a great experience. It sucks you in every time you turn your eyes to its chapters, keeping you fully engrossed while the outside world fades into a muffled din. You cease to see your surroundings — whether sand or subway or sofa — in your periphery. Your personal thoughts dissipate, leaving no room in your mind for anything but the story before you. Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts is a great book.

From the first sentence — "It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured" — Lin Ford has our attention. Our narrator is a fleeing convict, escaped from a maximum-security prison in Australia, making his way through Bombay. It is in Bombay that he meets Prabakar, an indispensable man who becomes his friend and guide through the slums of the city.

To continue to delve into the plot of the sprawling novel here, in this small space, would not do the book justice. Instead, simply know that it is a story of a search for friendship, for meaning, for love and for identity. It is a search that leads our protagonist through Mumbai, into war in Afghanistan, along the shores of Goa, and beyond. It is the kind of book from which you’ll extract passages worth highlighting and sharing and referring back to. And in addition to all of this, there's an element of autobiography.

Roberts is, in fact, an Australian ex-convict and a recovering heroin addict. He escaped Pentridge Prison in 1980, where he was serving time for bank robbery, and settled in India, remaining there for ten years. Ultimately, Roberts landed back in prison and finished serving his time. In spite of the parallels between Roberts’ life and Lin’s life, however, Roberts insists his book is fiction — and so can take creative and linguistic liberty, which only adds to the book’s beauty.

Ultimately, readers, Shantaram is a book that gets you unstuck. It is likely a different kind of book than most everything you’ve read and different than the kind of book to which you usually gravitate. It’s the book that grabs you and takes you on a journey unlike any you’ve heard of, down a different path than you’ve ever been on, expanding your willingness to read outside "your" genre, as it's done for many. Upon finishing Shantaram, this reader wanted more. Immediately, thoughts of travel to Goa and Mumbai started drifting in; research about the ever-ongoing movie rumors was undertaken.  But nothing — nothing before and nothing since — has satisfied in quite the same way that Shantaram did. Enjoy it.

Statistically, it’s unlikely that most of the world’s population will encounter firsthand a true natural disaster. Of course, likelihood is dependent on proximity to areas geographically prone to a disaster, but for the most part, when one occurs, we will witness it from afar. In Elmer Luke and David Karashima’s collection March Was Made of Yarn: Reflections on the Japanese Earthquake, Tsunami, and Nuclear Meltdown, readers are led by the hand to the scene of a disaster unlike any other, where earth’s mighty hand meets one of mankind’s most mammoth achievements.

It has now been more than a year since the catastrophic earthquake hit the northeast coast of Japan, setting off a chain reaction including a fifty-foot tsunami and major breakdown in five nearby nuclear plants. Those of us stateside watched and read the news – horror-stricken and sympathetic – but still relatively removed. As with anything that happens half a world away, we can only sympathize so much; it’s rare that any among us can truly empathize with what a nation is experiencing during a time of true crisis.

In this collection of both fiction and nonfiction, twenty-two writers interpret their own thoughts, experiences, fears, and hopes surrounding the events and present their interpretations through their writing, where the line between fact and fiction sometimes blurs. The writing is – across the board – beautiful, and there exists within much of it a certain serenity and clarity one might not expect to pour forth from an examination of such a horrid situation.

Though every story in the collection shines in its own special way, it was Hiromi Kawakami’s “God Bless You, 2011” that stood out to this reader. The author revisits a short story she wrote in 1993, revising it to reflect the impact of the events of March 2011. In between the new telling of “God Bless You” and the old, Hiromi pauses for the story of the god of uranium, taking a moment to reflect on what happens when humans “break the laws of nature and turn gods into minions.” The story is one of a bear, a new neighbor, and a walk. The before-and-after treatment of the story results in a piece both heartbreaking and brilliant.

When a disaster such as the 2011 Japanese earthquake occurs, those geographically removed from the incident certainly don’t wish to be nearer. What we -- as collective humanity -- do wish, however, is to find the ability to be more sympathetic, compassionate, and understanding to those affected. The collection March Was Made of Yarn will certainly help us along in that endeavor, providing us with unique, bold, and personal perceptions of those events.

What happens to us after we die? Not in the context of an afterlife or lack thereof, but really, physically – what happens to our bodies? It’s this question that is at the core of Mary Roach’s book Stiff.

Roach’s study begins as she arrives to observe a seminar on anatomy. This seminar is like none that you or I have attended, however. This one has as its focus forty human heads, freshly lopped from their lifeless bodies, perched in what Roach refers to as roasting pans, awaiting the prodding hands of the surgeons registered for the session. Thankfully, Roach wastes no time in injecting humor into her telling of the scenario, and while she does nothing to sugarcoat the often grisly details of what she witnesses, it’s somehow easier to, er, stomach the task at hand.

Roach’s research takes us well beyond the safe confines of a research laboratory. We find ourselves by Roach’s side as she embarks on a guided tour through a forested grove in Knoxville, Tennessee, that brings new meaning to the phrase “field research.” At this medical facility, cadavers have been donated to the study of forensics, each brought out to the fenced-in woods to decay under the watchful eyes of the researchers, who document in detail what each passing minute does to the body, from the initial drop in temperature (1.5 degrees per hour until the body reaches the temperature of the air around them) straight through to self-digestion, bloat, and, yes, liquefaction and putrefaction. (It was somewhere in the pages of this particular chapter that I decided beyond a shadow of a doubt that, for me, cremation is the way to go. Ashes to ashes sounds way better than ashes to muck.)

Roach takes the reader in detail through the various ways people die – car accident, plane crash, gunshots, bombs, and even crucifixion – and what these exit paths physically do to the body. Sound morbid? It is. And it’s also incredibly fascinating. Without Roach’s deadpan humor and interwoven history lessons, Stiff would feel a bit like (really, really) gross voyeurism. But in her unique style of story-telling, her lessons become an incredibly captivating scientific narrative. You want to turn away, but you can’t. And as my beach companions were loath to learn one sunny summer day, you also can’t help spouting out random facts from the book. Finally, Roach wraps up Stiff with a word on various personal postmortem options, as well as her own opinion of donating one’s body to medical science and the reasons behind the shortage of, ah, fresh skeletons.

So if you’ve ever entertained a certain morbid curiosity about cadavers – or if you’re only beginning to entertain that curiosity now – Stiff is for you. It’s not for the faint of heart, mind you, as Roach spares no detail in her descriptions of the various effects that death, and how that death occurs, has on a body. But if you’ve got the stomach for it, it’s wildly informative, enlightening, and most unexpectedly, entertaining.

"If I had only known then what I know now." How many times have you uttered that question? In Life as I Blow It, comedian Sarah Colonna revisits choice moments from her youth, through the years and leading up to her thirties, sharing her stories with what she knows now expertly woven in throughout.

Colonna, who is a writer and frequent round-table guest on the hilarious late-night pop-culture commentary/talk show "Chelsea Lately," brings us back first to her childhood in Arkansas. Less "Footloose" than she'd like it to be, Colonna shares the experience of her family's quirks, her big decisions (drill team over cheerleading because drill team girls "were a lot more fun than the cheerleaders, and by 'fun' I mean 'slutty'"), first job (Hardee's), and first heartbreak (Bucky). With zero sentimentality and loads of snark, Colonna recounts her move from Arkansas onward, to and through her college years, during which time she leaves the nest and moves in with a friend from work.

The college years are quite possibly the most entertaining of Colonna's tales. While in college, she (circumstantially) works hard to hone her bartending career while dreaming of a bigger life in Los Angeles. The reader is taken along for the roller-coaster ride through various relationships, roommates, and shenanigans. After the college years, she moves in with her father and stepfather before eventually moving on and landing on the Los Angeles comedy club circuit.

Her time in L.A. brings Colonna to the eve of her twenty-fifth birthday and the unofficial start of something this writer's generation has come to accept as the quarter-life crisis. Colonna promptly ends her current relationship and, single again, throws herself into her budding comedy career. Struggles abound over the next few years but with Colonna's injection of humor we never pity her. We laugh with her as she introduces us to new friends, including Chelsea Handler, and keep up with her as she tornadoes through her own love life.

Life as I Blow It reads like a two-decades-long coming-of-age story. The beauty of it, though, is its tongue-in-cheek I-get-it-now-but-I-sure-as-heck-didn't-then attitude. Life as I Blow It, ultimately, is the perfect antidote to those days when our own lives feel a little too heavy, a little too much.

Not all who wander are lost. Sometimes, those who wander help create a musical movement for a new generation, pen songs that hit the top-100 list, go on to record a dozen albums altogether, receive the highest honor awarded to an artist by the French Republic (the title Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres), are inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and win the National Book Award. Patti Smith is one such wanderer. Her National Book Award-winning memoir, Just Kids, traces Smith’s footsteps from her Chicago roots to an upbringing in Pennsylvania and then southern New Jersey, to the streets of New York, which is where her real wandering – and her real life – begins.

In the summer of 1967, Smith finds her twenty-year-old self suddenly jobless with few prospects in her vicinity. This, along with her dreams of becoming an artist and a few friends in Brooklyn, brings Smith via one-way bus ticket to New York City. Upon arriving on her friends’ doorstep, she finds they’ve moved and is, instantly, a hobo, left with nothing but a few belongings and insatiable curiosity. But like others of her generation, there is little that rattles her. Instead, after a night spent sleeping on the F train, Smith strikes up a friendship with Saint, “a black Cherokee with one foot in the street and the other in the Milky Way.” Saint keeps Smith company and keeps her fed for a few days, and so begins a long series of wildly interesting characters to whom Smith introduces us throughout the course of Just Kids. At the center of this cast of characters making up Smith’s world is Robert Mapplethorpe.

Smith and Mapplethorpe’s relationship is full of intensity and depth from the beginning. They bond against their homeless circumstances, relying together on the generosity of Mapplethorpe’s friends, until they can save enough money to move in together. They feed off of each other’s creativity and passion, until the need for self-exploration takes them down divergent paths. But a love like theirs doesn’t let two apart for long, and the inevitable reunion brings them to the Hotel Chelsea. In the landmark artistic enclave, in between day jobs and nights sharing dining space with Janis Joplin, Grace Slick, and Jimi Hendrix, Smith’s story becomes one so unique, but so indicative of a generation, a generation affected but unfazed, boundlessly brilliant, gloriously – and dangerously – reckless. Her prose is beautiful and poetic and gritty and her story – unlike any other you’ve ever heard or read. Smith has wandered for decades but she was never lost. She was – and is – simply on her way. How lucky for us that she takes us along for the ride.