TOULOUSE, France (AFP) - When the Irish novelist Joseph O’Connor reads his books aloud he almost sings them. Like his sister, the singer Sinead O’Connor, he is forever searching for “musicality.”　In the famously tumultuous O’Connor household, art was a family affair. 　Joseph, the eldest, began writing at 14 and published his first book at 27.　His youngest sister Sinead was a pop sensation at 21, while his other sister Eimear is a well-known painter and art historian.　But there was price to pay.

April 27, 2016

“The Dinner Party” 　By Brenda Janowitz　St. Martin’s Griffin (288 pages, $15.99 paper)　Sylvia Gold, an upwardly mobile doctor’s wife in Greenwich, Conn., is in a tizzy. Her overachiever med student daughter Becca finally has a boyfriend -- and he’s a Rothschild. Of the Rothschilds, the richest and most powerful Jewish family on earth. And he and his parents are coming for dinner. Not just any dinner, but Passover seder.　Quick, she has to redecorate the entire house, hire a chef, buy new table lin

April 27, 2016

“Lilac Girls” 　By Martha Hall Kelly 　Ballantine Books (496 pages, $26)　Martha Hall Kelly stumbled on the idea that would lead to her debut novel, “Lilac Girls,” when she decided to take a tour of the Bellamy-Ferriday house and garden in Bethlehem, Connecticut　The historic home got the Bellamy part of its name from a reverend who gained fame through his role in the Great Awakening, America’s religious revival of the mid-18th century.　About 150 years later, the 40.5-hectare farmstead was purchased

April 27, 2016

“Life without a Recipe” 　By Diana Abu-Jaber　Norton (272 pages, $26.95)　Diana Abu-Jaber has spent years carving out a life as a successful writer, struggling to reconcile the competing voices in her head, one from a tough-minded German grandmother and the other from her exuberant Arab father.　Through it all, she baked. Cookies and cakes, tarts and scones, a blizzard of confectioners’ sugar blanketing all difficulties, smoothing out rough edges, sweetening the bitter. In the kitchen and in life, s

April 27, 2016

When we first meet Ramona Quimby, she’s only 4 years old and already showing signs of greatness.　She can secretly summon 15 friends to her house without her mother suspecting a thing -- at least until the children start arriving on the doorstep, expecting a party. She can ruin two birthday cakes in a single day, turn the house upside down with only a box of apples, and make herself the center of attention anywhere, any time -- with or without the paper Easter bunny ears she proudly dons for, say

April 20, 2016

“Springtime: A Ghost Story” 　By Michelle de Kretser　Catapult (85 pages, $11.95)　Disturbing ripples run through this novella from an award-winning Sri Lankan author who grew up in Australia. We join the life of lead character Frances as she moves to modern-day Sydney to pursue her studies of elements of composition in 18th-century art. She’s a keen observer of details, researching the significance not only of what’s in a painting, but what’s not.　Her story is both simple and intricate. Our first

April 20, 2016

“Miller’s Valley” 　By Anna Quindlen　Random House (257 pages, $28)　When society’s volume seems cranked to 11, there’s something to be said about a quiet book. Understated almost to a fault, Anna Quindlen’s eighth novel pulls together themes of rural life, Vietnam, mental illness, eminent domain, abortion and ambition in prose that never shouts, yet still explores a family’s depths. 　We meet Mimi Miller as a child growing up in Miller Valley, the family history flowing across the land as surely as

April 20, 2016

Korean writer Han Kang has been shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize for her novel “The Vegetarian,” becoming the first Korean writer to be considered for the prestigious literary accolade. 　The award body announced the six final nominees for this year’s prize on its website on Thursday. The five other nominated works are “A Strangeness in My Mind” by Turkish novelist and Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk; “A General Theory of Oblivion” by Angola’s Jose Eduardo Angualusa; “The Story of th

April 14, 2016

The territorial dispute between Korea and Japan over Dokdo Islets in the East Sea, dates back to the Russo-Japanese War of 1904, explains Park Hyun-jin in his new book, “A Study of Dokdo Sovereignty,” which is by Kyungin Publishing and cost 59,000 won.　Although records show that Korea obtained the original right to the Dokdo Islets during the Silla Kingdom period (57 BC-935 AD), Japan has been attempting to claim sovereignty over the Dokdo Islets after using it as a naval base during the war aga

April 13, 2016

　“The Hole”  By Pyun Hye-young  Moonji Publishing (210 pages, 13,000 won, $11)　　After a devastating car accident, 40-something university professor Oh-gi wakes up to find his wife dead and his own body completely paralyzed in a hospital bed, capable of no other movement than blinking. 　His whole existence seems to have collapsed and disappeared into nothing, he says in a monologue. He is recognizable to himself only through a nametag that a nurse placed at the foot of his bed. 　“The Hole,” the f

April 13, 2016

“And Then All Hell Broke Loose: Two Decades in the Middle East” 　By Richard Engel　Simon & Schuster (241 pages, $27)　In his 20 years of reporting from some of the most volatile hot spots in the Middle East, Richard Engel has survived bombings and uprisings, been kidnapped and spent many nights sleeping on the floor, a mattress shoved against the window in case of an explosion.　Engel’s accounting of his two-decade rise from young freelancer to NBC’s chief foreign correspondent is often as exhausti

April 13, 2016

“Final Chapters: How Famous Authors Died”　By Jim Bernhard　Skyhorse Publishing (296 pages, $14.99 paperback)　A person’s life is always more important than his or her death -- but no one reads an obituary or biography without wanting to know how the subject died. British-educated Texas writer Jim Bernhard gives a respectful nod to the understandable fascination most of us have with death in this collection of essays about the ends authors have come to.　To his credit, he includes in each essay some

April 13, 2016

NEW YORK (AP) -- A book project founded by director-writer Michael Mann has found a home with HarperCollins Publishers.　The Harper imprint William Morrow told the Associated Press on Tuesday that it had acquired three novels to be released through Michael Mann books. The novels, all coauthored by Mann and currently untitled, will include a collaboration with “The Cartel” author Don Winslow on a story based on the lives of crime bosses Tony Accardo and Sam Giancana and a prequel to Mann’s origina

April 13, 2016

If you ever happen to interview Padma Lakshmi, do yourself a favor and let her pick the location. That way, you might just find yourself enjoying a piping hot plate of spicy orecchiette at an unassuming East Village trattoria while the former model converses in fluent Italian with the restaurant’s owner.　To anyone who’s watched “Top Chef,” the popular Bravo competition series that has introduced a generation of American TV viewers to phrases like sous-vide and mise en place, it should come as no

April 13, 2016

PARIS (AFP) -- It is the literary sensation of the year in France. A first novel by a dyslexic author that has had readers crying -- and laughing out loud -- on the Paris metro.　Before he wrote “Waiting for Bojangles” in seven weeks at his parents' home, 35-year-old Olivier Bourdeaut had “failed at just about everything else in my life,” he told AFP.　“I wish I was joking,” said the failed estate agent whose last job was a switchboard operator for an educational publishing company, “surrounded by

April 12, 2016