Local authors are finalists for LA Times Prize
Two Chicago authors are finalists for the 2010 Los Angeles Times Book Prizes, which will be awarded at a ceremony April 29. Christine Sneed, author of the short story collection...
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Fightin’ words
Boxing is a brutal, hideous nightmare of a sport — but a lilting, lovely and dream-like subject for art. As Joyce Carol Oates put it in her recent review of...
Postmark’s the spot
Reading a writer's letters is like watching Kobe Bryant reach for the salt at the dinner table: For anybody else, it's a routine gesture, ordinary and undramatic. But because motion...
Dashiell Hammett finally gets his say
It only makes sense that the editor of a mystery magazine would get a kick out of doing what his fictional detectives do: solving puzzles, finding lost objects, bringing justice...
‘Sometimes it’s hard not to be cynical’
David Ellis, 43, is the author of "Breach of Trust" (Putnam), his seventh legal thriller and the second to feature Jason Kolarich, a lawyer with a tendency to punch first...
Bullets and bureaucrats
No author in his right mind would kill off a main character in the prime of a promising new series. Intellectually, you know this. How, then, does David Ellis, author...
For Grimes, love of stories no mystery
If she weren't writing mysteries, Martha Grimes says, she might be running a tea shop. You were expecting perhaps an auto-parts store? No, you weren't. Not if you know Grimes'...
For Grimes, love of stories no mystery
If she weren't writing mysteries, Martha Grimes says, she might be running a tea shop. You were expecting perhaps an auto-parts store? No, you weren't. Not if you know Grimes'...
Every witch way but forward
In 2004, a British writer named Susanna Clarke published a curious and magnificent book called "Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell." It is about two quarreling magicians and, fittingly, it is...
Our parents, ourselves
A good book should blindside you. If it's doing its job, a book ought to be unpredictable. As you're reading along, minding your own business, something needs to come zinging...