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Rex Libris by James Turner
We have few badass librarian stories. Joss Whedon gave us Rupert Giles, who can swing a sword as well as shelve a tome. Kelly Link introduced us to Fox, the gorgeous and similarly sword-wielding librarian in the story "Magic for Beginners." The husband of Audrey Niffenegger's The Time-Traveller's...

The Fortieth Day (American Poets Continuum) by Kazim Ali
In his second collection, The Fortieth Day, Kazim Ali proves himself an alternate visionary, one who would summon the troubling questions of loss and existence through the sheer contemplation of what it means to be "spirit." In reference to the Islamic tradition of a second memorial funeral service ...

Dictation: A Quartet by Cynthia Ozick
"I was certain now that no word Essie uttered could be trusted," writes the narrator of "What Happened to the Baby?," the final story in Cynthia Ozick's radiant new quartet of fictions, Dictation. Lies, illusion, deception, self-deception, imposture -- these are the subjects of the collection's...

All Souls by Christine Schutt
Christine Schutt's superb new novel, All Souls, concerns itself with a sick girl named Astra Dell, and the ways in which Astra's illness affects everyone she knows, compelling them to confront -- or fail to confront -- their own insecurities and shortcomings.
All Souls begins "Mr. Dell, in his...

A Curious Earth by Gerard Woodward
In taking up the latest in a given author's sequence of novels, I am too often instructed by jacket copy that the book in my hands may be thoroughly enjoyed entirely on its own. It isn't true, nor should it be. Time is real in every direction, and as Robert Creeley was beautifully inclined to say, "...

Omega Minor by Paul Verhaeghen
"This is, after all, the century of the illusion of knowledge. We firmly believe that the world in which we live is ultimately comprehensible." The setting is Berlin in 1995, and the speaker, Auschwitz survivor Jozef de Heer, is reflecting on the 20th century from the vantage of man who witnessed...

Eye Mind: The Saga of Roky Erickson and the 13th Floor Elevators, the Pioneers of Psychedelic Sound by Paul Drummond
The 13th Floor Elevators, a little known group that broke up forty years ago, might seem ill-suited as the subject of a 400-page book, yet the legendary psychedelic band from Austin, Texas is well worth this exhaustive treatment. Paul Drummond's Eye Mind, the new, definitive biography of the...

The Stone Keeper: Amulet, Book One (Amulet #01) by Kazu Kibuishi
Since Jeff Smith's Bone, few graphic novels have truly captured the imagination of an all-ages audience. It's a difficult task, satisfying the curiosities of youth while pandering to the expectations of adults. Fortunately, Kazu Kibuishi, creator of Daisy Kutter and editor of the acclaimed Flight...

American Music by Chris Martin
With this lively debut collection Chris Martin establishes himself as a young poet with an arresting voice. American Music is a series of light-stepping meditations on city life that manage to be both profound and playful, with an unpretentious freshness that sets it apart from the usual hipster-in-...

Existentialism Is a Humanism by Jean Paul Sartre
Thirteen years ago in a New York Times book review, Anthony Gottlieb wrote "It is almost as if Sartre the philosopher had never existed." Since then, the Times has supported this assertion: its only examination of Sartre since 1994 focused on the philosopher's love life, comparing him to "Hugh...

What's the Use of Truth?
by Richard Rorty
Shining at the Bottom of the Sea
by Stephen Marche
Laura Warholic: Or the Sexual Intellectual
by Alexander Theroux
The Entire Predicament
by Lucy Corin
Fourth Realm Trilogy #02: The Dark River
by John Twelve Hawks
Brave Story
by Miyuki Miyabe
Regards from Serbia
by Aleksandar Zograf
8: A Memoir
by Amy Fusselman
Varieties of Disturbance: Stories
by Lydia Davis
The Salon
by Nick Bertozzi
John Peel: Margrave of the Marshes
by John Peel
Allah Is Not Obliged
by Ahmadou Kourouma
The Neddiad: How Neddie Took the Train, Went to Hollywood, and Saved Civilization
by Daniel Manus Pinkwater
The Cult of Pharmacology: How America Became the World's Most Troubled Drug Culture
by Richard Degrandpre
Fangland
by John Marks
Trial of Flowers
by Jay Lake
Glacial Period
by Nicolas De Crecy
The Evolutionary Mind: Conversations on Science, Imagination and Spirit
by Rupert Sheldrake and Ralph Abraham and Terence McKenna
The Uncomfortable Dead: A Novel of Four Hands
by Paco Ignacio Taibo II and Subcomandante Marcos
Academic Freedom After September 11
by Beshara Doumani
The Flowers of Evil (Wesleyan Poetry)
by Charles Baudelaire
The Mystery Guest: An Account
by Gregoire Bouillier
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