Carolyn Alessio

`In Cold Blood" caused most of the trouble. Over lunch in the Bertlesmann-Random House executive dining room in Manhattan last October, a group of prominent scholars and authors reflected on...

1185 PARK AVENUE By Anne Roiphe Free Press, 257 pages, $25 An eloquent memoir by the feminist author of "Up the Sandbox" and "Fruitful," "1185 Park Avenue" draws its title...

MEMORIES OF A LOST EGYPT: A Memoir With Recipes By Colette Rossant Clarkson Potter, 176 pages, $20 Even if your cooking skills don't extend far beyond scrambled eggs or grilled...

ELEGY FOR THE SOUTHERN DRAWL By Rodney Jones Houghton Mifflin, 102 pages, $22 Poet Rodney Jones writes about the world with wisdom and self effacing wit. In the title poem,...

EVERGREEN REVIEW READER Edited by Barney Rosset Four Walls Eight Windows, 544 pages, $24.95 Go ahead, defy the cliche and judge this book by its cover: a black and white...

For those of you suffering from a surfeit of century books a la Tom Brokaw, Harold Evans and Peter Jennings, an antidote awaits. "Our Dumb Century" (Three Rivers Press), a...

ME, BY JIMMY (BIG BOY) VALENTE By Garrison Keillor Viking, 152 pages, $15.95 The wry chronicler of Lake Woebegon goes "ghostwriter" to document the life of Jimmy "Big Boy" Valente,...

Author Sue Miller isn't afraid of writing about women who have made mistakes in relationships. Anna, the protagonist of Miller's first novel, the 1986 best-selling "The Good Mother," is willing...

THE HOUDINI GIRL By Martyn Bedford Pantheon, 320 pages, $24 British magician Peter Prestige ("Red" to friends) considers snaring his elusive Irish girlfriend, Rosa, to have been one of his...

THE ARCANUM By Janet Gleeson Warner Books, 325 pages, $23. In 18th Century Germany, a young alchemist named Johann Frederick Bottger endeavored to turn base metals into gold. He never...