Carolyn Alessio

A GESTURE LIFE By Chang-Rae Lee Riverhead, 356 pages, $23.95 Doc Hata isn't really a doctor, but the suburb of Bedley Run treats him like one because he once owned...

Novelist Joseph Heller, who died Sunday night at 76 in his home on Long Island, was one of the few writers of this or any age to add a catch...

THE FRACTURE HarperCollins, 255 pages, $23 Simon Winchester, author of the best seller "The Professor and the Madman," offers a vivid, informative history of the Balkans in "The Fracture Zone."...

HOME Edited by Stan Tymorek Abrams, 128 pages, $20 Poets don't always reside in unheated garrets, according to Stan Tymorek, editor of this striking collection of poetry and art. Matched...

A PASSION FOR BOOKS Edited by Harold Rabinowitz and Rob Kaplan Times Books, 353 pages, $27.50 In his essay "How to Organize a Public Library," author Umberto Eco offers a...

LONELY PLANET UNPACKED By Tony Wheeler and other Lonely Planet authors Lonely Planet, 251 pages, $12.95 These "travel disaster stories" move beyond alley muggings and bouts of dysentery. Lonely Planet,...

THE DICTIONARY OF IMAGINARY PLACES By Alberto Manguel and Gianni Guadalupi Harcourt Brace, 755 pages, $40 References to Tolkien and Garcia Marquez abound in this fanciful travel guide to pretend...

HENRIETTA By David Mamet Illustrated by Elizabeth Dahlie Houghton Mifflin, 31 pages, $16 Henrietta is a pig with a plan. Spurned in her attempts to apply to law school (it...

Anyone who read Tuesday's Inc. column knows about the United Center's Quiet Room, where ticketless parents can chill -- for free -- while their kids are attending Ricky Martin's Halloween...

WASTE AND WANT By Susan Strasser Metropolitan Books, 355 pages, $27.50 Until the late 1800s, wastebaskets were rarities because people reused rubbish in creative ways, according to author Susan Strasser....