AUTO Visits NEWS » Items by By JANET MASLIN

Books of The Times: A Texas Babe to Join the Brethren (Any Dissenting Opinions?)

Posted: August 25th, 2008, 4:10am GMT by By JANET MASLIN

An anomalously funny thing happened to Christopher Buckley on his way to the “Supreme Courtship”: nothing funny occurred to him.

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Books of The Times: Thanks to Today’s Global Youth, a Rosy Tomorrow?

Posted: August 11th, 2008, 4:00am GMT by By JANET MASLIN

“The Way We’ll Be” is John Zogby’s blue-sky assessment of our prospects for the future.

Books of The Times: Coldblooded Commerce in Coldblooded Contraband

Posted: August 7th, 2008, 4:58am GMT by By JANET MASLIN

In “The Lizard King,” Bryan Christy dissects the global trade in reptile trafficking.

Books of The Times: A Dead Polygamist Leaves Lots of Wives and One Big Mystery

Posted: August 4th, 2008, 5:22am GMT by By JANET MASLIN

There are many indications that David Ebershoff conducted prodigious research to write his novel about polygamy.

Books of The Times: After a Racial Incident, Redemption or Payback?

Posted: July 28th, 2008, 4:35am GMT by By JANET MASLIN

Unlike George Pelecanos’s two enormously ambitious nail-biters that have preceded it, “The Turnaround” is a more modest but still hard-hitting urban parable.

Books of The Times: A Child With a Problem, a Family With an Excuse

Posted: July 21st, 2008, 3:34am GMT by By JANET MASLIN

Jennifer Haigh has a great gift for telling interwoven family stories and doing justice to all the different perspectives they present.

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Books of The Times: A Scholar’s Sticky Web Includes His Sister, His Secretive Love and His Pal Nixon

Posted: July 14th, 2008, 3:16am GMT by By JANET MASLIN

This book is couched as a paranoid thriller with serious historical ramifications. That’s not an impossible combination, but it’s an awkward one.

Books of The Times: Nowhere Man in His Upper-Crusty Land

Posted: July 7th, 2008, 2:41am GMT by By JANET MASLIN

Michael Dahlie’s debut novel deals quite affectionately with its central character and his frailties.

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Books of The Times: Friends Reunited at a Wedding on Maine’s Rocky Coast, Dashed Hopes All Around

Posted: June 30th, 2008, 4:04am GMT by By JANET MASLIN

“The Romantics” manages to be more entertaining than many other stories without being notably more original.

Books of The Times: Truffle Hound and Trusty Snoop Unearth Grim Secrets

Posted: June 16th, 2008, 3:42am GMT by By JANET MASLIN

Ruth Rendell has ghoulish fun with the assorted elderly, eccentric characters who bedevil Chief Inspector Wexford in “Not in the Flesh.”

Books of The Times: Espionage and Dread, With War Offstage

Posted: May 29th, 2008, 3:47am GMT by By JANET MASLIN

Alan Furst’s instant espionage classics combine keen deductive precision with much deeper, more turbulent and impassioned aspects of character.

Books of The Times: 007 Runs Full-Throttle Through a New Book

Posted: May 28th, 2008, 4:12am GMT by By JANET MASLIN

On the 100th anniversary of the birth of Ian Fleming, the novelist Sebastian Faulks adds another ersatz James Bond title to the shaky bibliography compiled after Fleming’s death.

Books of The Times: Forget It, Comrade. This Is Moscow.

Posted: May 8th, 2008, 4:03am GMT by By JANET MASLIN

Tom Rob Smith’s tightly woven debut novel is a thriller set in a Soviet era when serial killers didn’t exist. Officially.

Books of The Times: Heroines in the Footlights, From All Sides Now

Posted: April 17th, 2008, 3:11am GMT by By JANET MASLIN

Sheila Weller’s three-headed biography of Joni Mitchell, Carole King and Carly Simon combines nostalgia, feminist history, astute insight, beautiful music and irresistible gossip.

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Books of The Times: You Promised That You’d Forget Me Not, but You Forgot to Remember

Posted: March 27th, 2008, 4:50am GMT by By JANET MASLIN

Stefan Merrill Block's improbably upbeat debut novel tells the story of a family's genetic destiny — early-onset Alzheimer’s disease — in a roundabout and fanciful way.

Books of The Times: Just Tell Us Whom You Want to Win

Posted: March 20th, 2008, 3:29am GMT by By JANET MASLIN

William Poundstone is a clear, entertaining explicator of election science. His book asks whether it's possible to devise a fair voting system.