Fiction Archive

My Parents Open Carry - There’s nothing funny about children dying from gunshots --- and, in the last few years, more than 7,000 American kids under 20 do each year. What’s even less funny is

‘A Christmas Carol’ & Beyond: Shorter books, please! - The writer I used to be would be appalled by the writer I have become. A butcher.   Back in the days before you could get credit at Harvard for taking courses that

‘Gatsby,’ F. Scott Fitzgerald, and the Murphys: Amanda Vaill connects the dots - The budget of the movie was $105 million, and as the May 10 opening of Baz Lurhmann’s 3-D adaptation of “The Great Gatsby” approaches, it feels like another $105 million

“We talked about addiction and pathology in our family” — the nephew of Walter Tevis recalls his visits with the novelist while he was writing “Queen’s Gambit” - "The Queen's Gambit" is one of my favorite American novels. As I noted in my review, I optioned it for a movie and wrote a screenplay. The movie didn't happen;

“You Should Have Known” (on HBO as “The Undoing”) - "The Undoing" is a 4-star HBO production. It stars Nicole Kidman and Hugh Grant. The writer-producer is David E. Kelley, who created "L.A. Law," "Ally McBeal" and "Chicago Hope." The

11 Short Novels, None More Than 225 Pages - Short novels. What I write. What I like best. Some go down easier than others. But all can be finished before midnight. Paolo Coelho: The Alchemist In an unnamed time, a Spanish

2182 Kilohertz - I've just read a stunning news item: So much of the Arctic ice cover has disappeared “that a ship could sail unhindered from Europe's most northerly

A Catalog of Birds - Laura Harrington may have won the Kleban Award for most promising librettist in American Musical Theatre, but I know her only as a novelist. And I came to know her

A Christmas Carol: by Charles Dickens, abridged by Jesse Kornbluth, illustrated by Paige Peterson - A lifetime ago, I left the suburbs of Philadelphia to become a boarding student at Milton Academy, a school so different from anything I knew that it might as well

A Coffin for Dimitrios - Graham Greene: "unquestionably our best thriller writer." John le Carré: “the source on which we all draw." Alfred Hitchcock: “Eric Ambler is a phenomenon.” And perhaps the ultimate endorsement: In the film of

A Dangerous Place - GUEST BUTLER NORA LEVINE owns the literary mystery/thriller corner of this site. That’s my good fortune --- I can’t read everything --- and yours too. Nora introduced us --- well,

A Head Butler Investigation: The Eschaton, David Foster Wallace, and the Decemberists - David Foster Wallace’s “Infinite Jest” was published in 1996. I haven’t read one of its 1,096 pages. The Decemberists released “Calamity Song” in 2011. I just heard it. I got to

A Million Little Pieces - I am old enough to have lost friends to drugs and alcohol addiction.   And I am old enough to have people in my life --- people very

A Month in the Country - It's fair to say there never was a writer remotely like J.L. Carr. For several years, this English schoolmaster taught in South Dakota. His first publications were 3” x 5”

A Sorrow Beyond Dreams - The Sunday edition of the Kärnter Volkszeitung carried the following item under 'Local News': 'In the village of A. (G. township), a housewife, aged 51, committed suicide

A Stranger Like You - Hugh Waters has a problem --- no, Hugh Waters is a problem.  He’s the original nowhere man: dead-end job at an insurance company, childless marriage, gray personality. He took a community

A Visit from the Goon Squad - Jennifer Egan won the National Book Critics Circle Award. Then she added the Pulitzer Prize. You would be entirely forgiven if those awards for “A Visit to the Goon Squad” intimidate you

A Window Opens - In the cookie-cutter women’s crowd pleaser, the heroine is a Superior Being --- a Brainy Beauty and all-around Good Person who must wage a Superwoman battle to achieve wealth and

Abide With Me - Guest Butler Laura Harrington is an award-winning playwright, lyricist and librettist, and the author of Alice Bliss, a novel I love a lot. Her plays, musicals and operas have been

About the Author: A Novel - I like nothing better than to pick up a novel I knew almost nothing about by a writer unknown to me and go nuts for it. John Colapinto’s “About the