This year thus far has brought us many extraordinary stories from Elizabeth Strout’s The Burgess Boys, with its concentration on familial matters, to a narrative that explores youth, sex, love and friendship, among...

“That is the mystery about writing: it comes out of afflictions, out of the gouged times, when the heart is cut open,” reflects Edna O’Brien in her much-anticipated new memoir, Country Girl. Since her 1960...

Without the inevitable march through banality and absurdity, life’s most valuable moments wouldn’t make much sense. Nor would they be as easy to savor. Elementary school swim meets and childhood songs about...

Want to get away? Forget the tagline of a rather large American airline from the past decade. It doesn’t fly anywhere close to where you really want to go. It’s not Venice. It’s not Paris. It’s not Sydney...

Winning an achievement award — be it in the arts or sports — can weigh like an albatross around the neck as the world awaits one’s next great feat. Many, succumbing to the pressure, fail to win the...

Readers of All That Is may be disappointed to discover that James Salter’s latest novel is not quite, as its jacket claims, “an extraordinary literary event,“ but they shouldn’t be. Those of a more...

The ancient Greeks believed an oracle was a kind of priestess that the gods spoke through. And there’s many an actor alive today that believe that their teacher, Stella Adler — arguably the most influential...

The Redgraves, Donald Spoto’s newest biography, is described as a “family epic.” And it is an epic story of sorts — a multi-generational band of actors, living out their lives on stage and off, with the fame...

There’s been much speculation as to whether Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling’s first book strictly for adults would be noticeably different from the series that made her a worldwide sensation. Just a few pages...

“I’m not a bad guy… I’m like everybody else: weak, full of mistakes, but basically good.” That’s Yunior speaking, the hardheaded young Dominican-born protagonist of Junot Diaz’s new book of short...