Julia Keller

Cynthia Morrison Phoel grew up in the Chicago area, so she thought she knew a bit about cold winters. Then she moved to Bulgaria. "I slept in my winter coat,"...

Ray Bradbury's ferocious love of life comes roaring out of "Listen to the Echoes: The Ray Bradbury Interviews" (Stop Smiling/Melville House), compiled by Chicago author Sam Weller, who follows up...

Heroes are boring. Heroes are predictable. Heroes always do the right thing. Ditto for villains: They're a snooze because their evil is always thoroughly expected. What makes the historical novels...

For many authors, a traumatic news event involving the subject of a book they've just written can, perversely, have positive results. But for Stephen Kinzer, whose "Reset: Iran, Turkey and...

In my May 16 column, I agonized over my failure to appreciate the virtues of "Matterhorn," a mammoth novel about the Vietnam War by Karl Marlantes, a highly decorated veteran,...

The cool kids all went for Archie comics. But I was a DC Comics girl, from the top of my frizzy-haired head to the bottom of my dirty Keds. And...

A friend of mine in her early 20s managed to poke a finger through the tissue-thin argument that iPads, Kindles and Nooks are just as good as books, that reading...