A Man Without Breath, By Philip Kerr (Marian Wood/G.P. Putnam’s Sons)Through nine Philip Kerr novels spanning the rise and fall of Nazi Germany and the subsequent pursuit and prosecution of some of its creators, lead character Bernie Gunther has become an old friend.Each visit of the always wisecracking, sometimes compromised detective, private investigator and German soldier is eagerly awaited.A year ago, I read Gunther’s then-latest adventure while in the hospital recovering from open-heart su

May 9, 2013

Board StiffBy Elaine Viets (Obsidian)With few exceptions, characters in mysteries change and grow throughout the series. Not only does that reflect real life ― are any of us the same person we were last year? ― but it also allows authors to stretch their storytelling skills. Elaine Viets’ “Dead-End Jobs” series started with her heroine taking low-paying, off-the-grid jobs following a horrific divorce. Viets’ lively plots and broad humor complemented these highly entertaining novels while also sh

May 9, 2013

WASHINGTON (AP) ― While most Americans have never seen Ernest Hemingway’s home in Cuba where he wrote some of his most famous books, a set of 2,000 recently digitized records delivered to the United States will give scholars and the public a fuller view of the Nobel Prize-winning novelist’s life.A private U.S. foundation is working with Cuba to preserve more of Hemingway’s papers, books and belongings that have been kept at his home near Havana since he died in 1961. On Monday at the U.S. Capito

May 9, 2013

After the film adaptation of his 2010 novel “Eungyo”― a tale about a 70-something poet falling for a teenage girl ― created much hype even before its release, author Park Bum-shin in 2011 moved alone to his hometown Nonsan, South Chungcheong Province. He wanted to write in solitude, away from public attention. His latest novel, “Salt,” is a product of Park’s two years of seclusion. A story of an isolated, agonized father and his dysfunctional family, the novel again explores the theme the writer

May 9, 2013

Celebrated author Hwang Sok-yong said he wants his best-selling novel “Yeowoolmoolsori” off the shelves after a TV program accused his publishing house, Jaeum & Moeum, of hoarding copies of the novel. Jaeum & Moeum CEO Kang Byung-cheol has offered to resign from his position. According to news reports, author Hwang said he was shocked and outraged to find out about the alleged hoarding and wants to cancel his deal with Jaeum & Moeum. “I wrote the novel ‘Yeowoolmoolsori’ to celebrate the 50th ann

May 8, 2013

Writer Frank X Walker is driving to Alabama with a trunk full of books.The eight-hour trip is not out of the ordinary for Walker, who is promoting his latest collection of poems, “Turn Me Loose: The Unghosting of Medgar Evers” (University of Georgia Press, $16.95).Another job that will take him on the road starts this week: He is being installed as the 2013-14 Kentucky poet laureate, the first black writer and the youngest person to hold the post, in a ceremony as part of Kentucky Writers’ Day o

May 2, 2013

Have you ever seen a juggler on a moving sidewalk? Ben Greenman, whose latest novel, “The Slippage,” was published Tuesday, ponders this and other wonders of life.A novelist, short-story writer, humorist and magazine editor, Greenman has observed, proverbially speaking, all sorts of jugglers in all sorts of circumstances. The results of his observations earn him the on-spot tagline “a poet of romantic angst in contemporary American life.”“I want to run out onto the balcony of my apartment and ye

May 2, 2013

Hank Greenberg: The Hero of HeroesBy John Rosengren (New American Library)The game of baseball seemed grandly American in the 1930s. Players had cherubic names ― Birdie and Schoolboy, sounding like characters from a Broadway musical. Beneath the good times, though, breathed an awful hatred.In his new book, “Hank Greenberg: The Hero of Heroes,” John Rosengren describes how the New York Yankees used to call up minor leaguers just to harass the Jewish baseball star from the bench.In the South, thin

May 2, 2013

The Humanity ProjectBy Jean Thompson (Blue Rider Press)My friend Beth says that we are all “dented cereal boxes.” Even the best among us occasionally think dark thoughts, make bad decisions, hurt the people we love and turn a blind eye to the suffering of others. With godlike power, Jean Thompson, author of “The Humanity Project,” throws her dented (and entirely recognizable) characters into the crucible of the American recession to reveal what it means to be human: flawed, and yet somehow worth

May 2, 2013

PARIS (AFP) ― Tom Stoppard could call an end to his illustrious career as one of Britain’s leading playwrights, he revealed on Saturday, saying he was considering writing just one more play.“I might write one more play and give up because I am very slow...,” he told reporters at Paris’s Forum des Images cinema.“I am 75, I am 76 in a minute ... My brain cells are dying in their trillions,” he said, adding that he had started work on a new stage play. Stoppard, in addition to his critically acclai

April 28, 2013

Asking Kevin Starr a question is like turning on a fire hose. First there’s a blast of erudition. Then, as his intellect gathers, information rushes out in a deluge. He’s talking, but it’s as if an invisible scholar inside his head is yanking books off shelves, throwing them open, checking the index, then racing off to find the next volume. On the outside, Starr is an avuncular 72-year-old, but his brain is sprinting like an Olympian.Amazingly, it’s possible to keep up.This may be Starr’s greate

April 25, 2013

In a comment on the art of reviewing and interpreting literary works, the English writer G.K. Chesterton wryly notes that “either criticism is no good at all (a very defensible position) or else criticism means saying about an author the very things that would have made him jump out of his boots.” According to Chesterton, criticism either repeats something already said in the literary work, or reads something into the work that the writer never intended. In either case, the usefulness of critici

April 25, 2013

Nothing Gold Can StayBy Ron Rash (Ecco)When a prisoner on a chain gang is sent to the nearest farmhouse to fetch water in the backwoods of North Carolina, author Ron Rash sets the scene for a sterling collection of short stories in “Nothing Gold Can Stay.” They span a range of years and an even wider range of emotions.Rash’s 14 stories are broken into three sections and set in a variety of eras and places. He introduces a would-be hippie in the 1960s; college-bound sweethearts of today and their

April 25, 2013

July 1914: Countdown to WarBy Sean McMeekin (Basic Books)A Sarajevo chauffeur took a wrong turn, and Serb nationalist Gavrilo Princip had his chance to assassinate Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife. In the resulting inferno of World War I, 9 million others died.The conventional wisdom of the last 100 years holds that Germany’s desire for empire and cultural hegemony turned Princip’s deed into an excuse for war. Barbara Tuchman’s famed history, “The Guns of August,” makes the most of this cas

April 25, 2013