Golden State
What to read this month
Book Review
A Close Read
What makes good writing good
New Fiction
Finds and flops
The Big Shill
Hollywood's need for hits creates a culture of misses
New Fiction
Finds and flops
The Man Who Ended Slavery
Slandered by craven abolitionists as unhinged, John Brown was in fact an eloquent, cool-headed tactician who succeeded in his long-range plan: launching a civil war
Retail Therapy
Five fictional reasons not to pay full price
A Bag of Tired Tricks
Blank pages? Photos of mating tortoises? The death throes of the postmodern novel
Eminent Domains
What to read this month
Tradecraft
Rightly championed for decades by genre and literary readers alike, John le Carré has written a novel that may appeal to neither camp