Modern American Fiction

Whether You're Celebrating Christmas or Hanukkah, These Holiday Tales Exude the Season's Warm and Fuzzy Atmosphere With a Creative Contemporary Edge

Dec 15, 2009 - Rebecca Benoot

Hispanic Novelist Rudolfo Anaya's Character Ultima, a Curandera, Serves a Symbol of the Powers of the Wild Plains, most especially for young Antonio, the protagonist..

Dec 13, 2009 - Richard Fleck

Psychic Landscape Is Evident as Early as Eighteenth-Century Depictions of the "Awesome", but it is forcefully portrayed in Contemporary Literature of the American West

Dec 11, 2009 - Richard Fleck

In Leonard Michael's novel, The Men's Club, a group of men get together, tell their stories and make a mess. The result is an unusual, pithy book with a dismal plot.

Dec 6, 2009 - Clarissa Caldwell

Jimmy Cross is 24 years old. He is in love with a college girl named Martha. He is also a lieutenant in the Vietnam War, and he just lost a man under his command.

Dec 4, 2009 - Jeris Swanhorst

The 20 Stories in the newest collection from the Best American Short Stories series thrill, tease, tempt, and titillate.

Dec 2, 2009 - Natalay Goldstein

Called "an entirely fictional story about a woman whose husband goes down with his plane," The Pilot's Wife is a griping tale of love and betrayal.

Nov 28, 2009 - Melissa Morelli Lacroix

Research shows that laughter is often the best medicine. One of the fastest ways to cure the holiday blues is to read humorous books, where the laughs are guaranteed.

Nov 27, 2009 - Teresa Knudsen

The celebrated American writer William Styron's posthumous collection of short works, The Suicide Run, is hugely relevant today, as well as a must read for Styron fans.

Nov 20, 2009 - Douglas Nordfors

Reading Hunter S. Thompson's most popular book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is still a wild ride almost 40 years after its original publication.

Nov 20, 2009 - Liz Greenbank

A former track star offers a novel with unique insights into the over-the edge mind and body experiences of exhaustive training and the peak experience of the race.

Nov 19, 2009 - Mike Perricone

Modern authors like Stephen King paved their way to status with the short story. It continues to be a powerful voice in literature.

Nov 19, 2009 - Cresta McGowan

James W. Fuerst's novel Huge, his first, is largely well done, but suffers under an albeit unfair comparison with J.D. Salinger's iconic The Catcher in the Rye.

Nov 18, 2009 - Douglas Nordfors

In her first novel, author and artist Audrey Niffenegger writes a story about a love that has to, by necessity, transcend time.

Nov 7, 2009 - Holly Beth Anderle

The nine-year gap is over--Barbara Kingsolver has published another novel. The Lacuna was published on Nov. 3 by HarperCollins.

Nov 6, 2009 - Alicia Zadrozny

The beautiful wife of a politician, is overcome with ennui and takes off in various directions to try and find her missing spirit.

Nov 4, 2009 - Eva Gordon

Do the new representations of American Literature have the same strong hold as our beloved "classics" on the literary forefront?

Oct 27, 2009 - Cresta McGowan

The Road, by Cormac McCarthy, is about love and survival in the aftermath of an apocalypse. Amid horrific dangers, one father and son maintain love and human decency.

Oct 26, 2009 - Laura Bernell

The Bell Jar was to be Sylvia Plath's last written outing. Hailed a classic, its a shame Plath didn't live long enough to enjoy its success.

Oct 23, 2009 - Sara Carroll

There is something voyeuristically fascinating about polygamy: the politics, the sex, the secrecy. And it is a practice creeping its way into books and TV plots.

Oct 22, 2009 - Stephanie Whitelock

Chris Bohjalian's Midwives explores the trial of a midwife charged for murder for performing an emergency homemade Caesarean section on a woman she believed was dead.

Oct 21, 2009 - Rebekah Richards

Fictional characters have been pulling off hoaxes for centuries. Here are three novels with a hoax (or two) as a major part of the plot

Oct 20, 2009 - Marie Brannon

'The Secret History' is a slow-moving and absorbing evocation of the reality - and unreality - of a fictional college campus murder.

Oct 16, 2009 - Alexandra Szydlowska

A college reunion provides the backdrop for old friends to try to resolve three decades' worth of secrets, guilt, desire, anger and shame.

Oct 14, 2009 - Deborah Mack

Seasoned author Bebe Faas Rice takes the reader on a sweeping journey through the trials and tribulations, victories and defeats, and loves and losses of England's people

Oct 10, 2009 - Tiff Coe