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November 22, 2009

Holiday gift guide: Children’s books

Get into The Spirit of Christmas (32 pages, Feiwel and Friends, $16.99, 32 pages). Author/illustrator Nancy Tillman tells her lyrical story using the cadence...

Holiday gift guide: Books $25 and over

Nov. 22, 1963, marked the beginning of the’60s as a cultural unit and the end of the baby boomers’ innocence. The assassination of President...

Holiday gift guide: Books under $25

In A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge (197 pages, Pantheon, $24.95), Josh Neufeld achieves in a graphic novel what may have eluded media outlets in their...


November 15, 2009

Virginia book notes

Slavery and the Civil War, which played such transformative roles in Virginia’s past, continue to reverberate in the commonwealth’s present...

Fiction review: Perfect Life

FICTION Jenny Callahan thought she had the perfect solution to her husband’s infertility: They could have a baby using sperm donated by her intelligent...

Fiction review: Angel Time

FICTION You’d think that given our current state of vampire frenzy—the “Twilight” novels and HBO’s “True Blood”...

Fiction review: A Separate Country

Confederate Gen. John Bell Hood is best remembered by many as a master of disaster in the waning months of the Civil War, marching from defeat to defeat...

Book and Author Calendar

TODAY-NEXT SUNDAY Weinstein JCC Book Fair—Jewish literature, author appearances, gifts and more, 9:30 a.m.-5 p.m. today, 8:30 a.m.-6 p.m. tomorrow,...

Nonfiction review: The Bauhaus Group

NONFICTION Nicholas Fox Weber opens his fascinating new book, “The Bauhaus Group: Six Masters of Modernism,“ with a telling anecdote. It’s...


November 08, 2009

Fiction review: Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!

Ralph Nader, the consumer activist and corporate scourge, is saying nice things about the kind of folks you’d expect him to despise. “Never...

A novelist cooks up a plausible, scary disaster

The whole place was like a doll’s house that had been turned upside down and stepped on.“ This is Margaret Atwood’s startling description...

Nonfiction review: In Search of Bacchus

Thirty-three years ago, George M. Taber set the world of wine on fire with a four-paragraph dispatch about a tasting in France that compared the work of...

Fiction review: The Humbling

Philip Roth’s novels have become downright austere in recent years, with none of the past four cracking 300 pages. They’re chamber works, small-scale...

Nonfiction review: The Bonfire

The burning of Atlanta, with a memorable assist from Hollywood, is one of those events that resonates. Fires that destroy great cities perhaps are always...


November 01, 2009

Nonfiction review: Munich, 1938

For students of 20th-century history, the title of this book is shorthand for tragedy and disaster. It outlines the self-deceptive, smug and misguided...

Fiction review: Labor Day

It’s the long Labor Day weekend in Holton Mills, N.H., in the mid-1980s, and 13-year-old Henry and his mother, Adele, have nothing special planned....

Books and Authors Calendar

TODAY “The Naked Portfolio Manager” by Robert Fischer—Book signing, 1 p.m. at Barnes & Noble-Short Pump, 11640 W. Broad St. 360-0103....

Fiction review: Ladies of the Lake

Sibling rivalry is usually enough to give an edge to most family get-togethers. Throw in a will that insists that the siblings spend the entire summer...

Virginia book notes

Books recounting the histories of Virginia’s counties crop up with regularity, but few achieve the beauty and breadth of Martha W. McCartney’s...

Fiction review: The Invisible

In the long history of novels, love triangles have rarely ended well. The one that drives Paul Auster’s fascinating new novel, “Invisible,“...

Book notes

Novelist Elmore Leonard will receive PEN USA’s lifetime achievement award at a December ceremony. Leonard, 83, has written more than 40 westerns,...

Nonfiction review: American Passage

They used to hang pirates on a small island in New York harbor, near where the Statue of Liberty now stands. Today, after years as a testing station for...


October 25, 2009

Nonfiction review: Revitalizing Retirement

NONFICTION DES MOINES, Iowa Many people entering retirement envision a life of fun and relaxation, but the opposite can be true. Without the social contacts...

Nonfiction review: The Slippery Year

Melanie Gideon believes she’s sleepwalking through life. But it’s much worse than that: She’s paralyzed by a fear of the rogue waves—both...

Fiction review: True Blue

FICTION David Baldacci has a knack for writing best-selling thriller series. Most recently, he has devoted attention to his Camel Club series, as well...

Book review: four mysteries

MYSTERIES For most of us, there’s something in our past—a person, a relationship, a place, an incident—that, forgotten for months, even...

Mantel’s ‘Wolf Hall’ wins Man Booker prize

A tale of political intrigue set during the reign of King Henry VIII has won the prestigious Man Booker prize for fiction. Hilary Mantel’s “Wolf...

Nonfiction review: The First Family

NONFICTION The Sopranos” and “The Godfather” may have domesticated the Mafia’s image. They looked like people we know, and we understood...

Calendar

TODAY “Terrorism In the United States” by retired Navy Capt. Edward M. Brittingham—Book signing 1-5 p.m. at Waldenbooks, Virginia Center...

Best-sellers

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY BEST-SELLERS  HARDCOVER FICTION 1.The Lost Symbolby Dan Brown (Doubleday) 2.A Touch of Deadby Charlaine Harris (Ace) 3.The Helpby...

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