Every day was its own life—a marvel at renewed light, a battle against dark moods, fumbling forward, fighting to remember, one step on the path that always began at his childhood home...

Just another chapter in the great American fairy tale. February 23, 1979: George Clare bursts into his neighbors' house, terrified, his little girl in his arms. Coming home from work, he found his wife murdered...

The Caesar salad wasn't great. Bland. Wilted lettuce. Stale croutons. Disappointing. Like life. Alice Love fell during gym class. Concussion. Blackout. When she wakes up, she's convinced she's twenty-nine...

The poplars and alders offered a range of orange—vivid, pumpkin or butternut. The sky cleared, blue appeared, sunlight swept through the trees on the far bank like wind, and the air was loaded with autumn...

To read or not to read, that's the question. After three dark, dense novels, I needed something lighter. What's better than a book about books? Between Sara and Amy, it all started with correspondence...

Think history was written by ordinary men? History is the work of genetic exceptions—the rebels, the stubborn, the relentless. Men who decide to become different from their fathers. The Ohio River doesn't just separate states...

Here's a tag that's been circulating, and I felt like answering it after enjoying responses from Delphine, Nicole, Jérôme, and Noukette. A bit long but fun to do: A is for "author"—the author you've read most...

We're convinced we control our lives, but truly we're blind wanderers moving step by step, constantly rediscovering our own blindness. The day her mother angrily cuts off her magnificent red hair, Grace runs...

He wasn't chasing perfection. He just wanted to express life. And life is imperfection. In 1910 in the small Chinese town of Putian, the carpenter's son is born with one testicle, his birth coinciding with planting season...

The violence we do to ourselves to stay faithful to those we love is hardly better than infidelity. March 11, 2001: in Afghanistan, the Taliban blow up the two giant Buddhas of Bamiyan. That same day, two men 5000 km away...