After 78 years of life, 14 collections of short stories, and prizes too numerous to list, it’s not surprising that Canadian writer Alice Munro should turn her attention towards old age and death. The characters that populate the 10 stories of her latest collection are mostly women—though a few are men—who are not yet incapacitated by old age, but who have many more years behind them than they have ahead. Thoughts of mortality have crept into much of Munro’s work over the years; in this case, however, death not only lurks in the dark spaces of her stories, but prowls the better-lit areas as

In his prime, author Knut Hamsun wrote beautifully, poetically, and savagely. And yet the author, personally and politically, was a monster. He berated his friends and cheated on his wives; he could be horrible to his children. Famously, he was a fascist. Less famously, he was a career racist, who allied himself early with the Nazis.

At the beginning of 2000 Little, Brown published “The Tipping Point” by Malcolm Gladwell. It was an auspicious time for both the calendar industry and the publishing world. Mr. Gladwell had a deductive style and a teacherly simplicity that would make him one of the new century’s most frequently quoted and widely imitated writers of nonfiction. He went on to write “Blink” and “Outliers,” and all three books went to the top of best-seller lists. What can this tell us about Mr. Gladwell or about the people who read him?

This week, Mayor Mike Bloomberg used choice language in describing the state of play at the World Trade Center site. Over and against those who complain that the administration has been sitting on its hands for much of the last eight years, Bloomberg demurred, “Larry [Silverstein, the developer] has everybody by the proverbials—he really does.”

He might have been fielding a question from Paul Goldberger. It was only last month the New Yorker architecture critic appeared on Charlie Rose to wax sage on time, space, and the vagaries of building at Ground Zero. “Everything about this project has

Mashing up genres, switching historical periods, and unfolding tales with supple and convincing omniscience, Possession author A.S. Byatt continues to challenge and entertain her readers.

Often praised for her lack of sentimentality, Rachel Sherman doesn’t hesitate to capture her characters’ weird, unbecoming thoughts. She doesn’t sugarcoat adolescent experience, nor does she avert her eyes from painful or explicitly sexual scenes. And sex isn’t the only subject rawly depicted in her first novel, Living Room: grief, cruelty, and claustrophobia are all depicted with great skill.