It’s easy to write off one author based on a best-seller. Call it jealousy, call it high-end literary disdain, call it whatever you want, but it’s easy to give in to the impulse to distrust something once it’s become popular. This indeed was my reaction to the author Elizabeth Gilbert, who I (as many others) first encountered by way of her memoir-cum-chick-lit classic Eat, Pray, Love. I read her because I felt I had to have hard facts to back up my loathing, and I found facts in spades: her self-indulgent pity, her defensive arguments about the validity of eating pasta and practicing yoga and falling head over heels in love after too much heartache. I wrote her off, and so did many other readers, as fluffy and inconsequential, someone who’d rather gaze at her navel than investigate and report. …more

Kevin Moffett’s Further Interpretations of Real-Life Events is one of the most delightful collections in recent memory. …more

Martha Schabas’ Various Positions is an excellent novel about performance anxiety and sexual development disguised as a young adult novel. …more

If you harbor desires for truly deserved happy endings and sharply drawn prose, then you will relish every page of Liz Moore’s new novel Heft.

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In her new novel, The Adults, Alison Espach tells the story of one girl carefully stepping over that unbridgeable gap between childhood and adulthood, and nearly falling to pieces in the process. …more

Levithan’s rhapsody is an account of the traces desire leaves behind: “When I die, your memories of me will be my greatest accomplishment.” …more

A hedge-fund manager predicts the 2008 financial meltdown, but adds little to our understanding—or our sympathy. …more

Donald Sturrock’s biography of Roald Dahl bridges the gap between the literary impresario and the troubled man. …more