Flood of Fire, Joan Didion, Naomi J. Williams, Philosophy and Laughter, and more . . .

Flood of Fire Amitav Ghosh Excerpt

With all the verve of the first two novels in The Ibis Trilogy, Flood of Fire completes Ghosh's unprecedented reenvisioning of the nineteenth-century war on drugs. With remarkable historic vision and a vibrant cast of characters, Ghosh brings the Opium Wars to bear on the contemporary moment with the storytelling that has charmed readers around the world. Read on...

The Last Love Song Tracy Daugherty On Writers

Joan Didion was enamored not of the ocean but of the "look of the horizon . . . It is always there, flat." If she was no longer physically comfortable in the Central Valley, she needed the solacing feel of her childhood geography. Each day ended fast, no muss - a snuffing of the sun in the sea, a healthy glass of bourbon. She felt Malibu was "a new kind of life. We were living on the frontier, as it were." She had her husband and her sheepdog and her barefoot child getting splinters in her heels on the redwood deck. Read on... More