Original SinBy D.P. Lyle (Reputation Books)The dying old man on cardiac surgeon Lucy Wagner’s operating table was bleeding out from an aortic aneurism. As she desperately massaged his failing heart, a chill flowed into her fingers, up her arm and into her chest. And then she fell, collapsing onto the hospital floor. The patient, as it turns out, was John Scully, the pastor of a secretive, snake-handling cult that held services outside Lucy’s small hometown of Remington, Tennessee. As far as Lucy

Unlike Steve Almond and Mark Edmundson, the authors of two terrific new books on football, I did not grow up with a father who loved the sport.My father thinks football is commercialized barbarism ― 22 oversized idiots plowing into one another, following a byzantine set of rules no one truly understands. For me, football is a beloved fall ritual. It’s a season of Homeric contests playing out on my television screen.As the titles of their books suggest, Almond and Edmundson come down on similarly

Comedy is having a moment. You can’t really talk about the vaunted New Golden Platinum Age of Television without reference to Louis C.K., Amy Schumer or Amy Poehler. Political discourse takes cues from Jon Stewart and John Oliver. The Internet, which drives the world, is three-quarters comedy (figure approximate). Tina Fey and Mindy Kaling write memoirs that also serve as manifestos, and the Children of Apatow sew their seeds through the culture, on multiple platforms.We are also in a time when

The Bone ClocksBy David Mitchell (Random House)Count on David Mitchell ― whose novels regularly suggest a Borgesian library ― to invoke one of the most famous literary labyrinths of all in “The Bone Clocks,” his extraordinary new novel:“Half way along our journey to life’s end I found myself astray in a dark wood,” admits one of Mitchell’s protagonists ― invoking the opening of Dante’s “The Divine Comedy” to describe his midlife crisis, which prominently features the decline of his once-promisin

Half of What I Say is MeaninglessBy Joseph Bathanti (Mercer University Press)It’s 1976, and Joseph Bathanti, former North Carolina poet laureate, is leaving his native Pittsburgh in a 1969 VW Beetle that lacks a reverse gear. He is 23 and heading to the mythic South to work as a VISTA volunteer.In this land of extemporaneous prayer and exotic inflections (“On was own.” “Can’t was caint.”), life instantly begins to revise itself for the young transplant. “I was,” he writes in a new collection of

Matthew Thomas’ first novel, “We Are Not Ourselves,” is an epic of small events. By that I don’t mean its story is insignificant but quotidian: the particular struggles of the day-to-day. A family saga, spanning three generations, the book is centered around Eileen Tumulty, a daughter of the Irish working-class in Queens, N.Y. Eileen’s existence is summed up in the first two syllables of that last name ― tumult ― or more accurately, in the drive to push past her limitations, which have been impo

The title suggests the folly of the endeavor: “Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! The Story of Pop Music from Bill Haley to Beyonce.” Really? The whole story? Yeah, that’s what Bob Stanley is going for here. Doo-wop, the Beatles, folk rock, Philadelphia soul, punk and post-punk, Prince and Madonna, grunge, hip-hop, Britpop and so many points in between. All woven together in a semilinear narrative.You can laugh if you want. Then you can try putting it down. Opinionated, digressive, quick to play favorites ― Stan

Merchants of Independence: International Trade on the Santa Fe Trail, 1827-1860By William Patrick O’Brien (Truman State University Press) Out in Independence, Missouri, the ornamental wagon wheel can still be seen in a few front yards.Whatever its currency as kitsch, its authenticity as a symbol of the community’s transportation-based past can’t be disputed.It was the overland transit of pioneer families (along the Oregon trail), prospectors (the California branch-off) as well as commercial frei

I Can See in the DarkBy Karin Fossum (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)Over the years, I’ve read lots of Scandinavian crime fiction, but nothing from Norwegian novelist Karin Fossum. In retrospect, that was a huge oversight.Her books have sold millions of copies worldwide, and a few years ago she was named one of the 50 greatest crime writers of all time by The Times of London.After reading “I Can See in the Dark,” I understand why.This is a taut, well-paced book written totally from the point of view

Renowned South Korean poet Ko Un has won this year‘s Golden Wreath, one of the world’s most authoritative awards for poets, the Korean National Commission for UNESCO said Monday.Ko received the award at the end of an annual poetry festival in the southern Macedonian town of Struga on Sunday for his overall ody of work, the commission said. Poet Ko Un holds up the Golden Wreath Award at the 53rd Struga Poetry Evenings in Macedonia on Sunday. (Yonhap)The 53rd edition of the Struga Poetry Evenings,

Late in his novel “Your Face in Mine,” Jess Row cites a parable attributed to Zhuangzi, a Chinese philosopher from the fourth century BC. “Zhuangzi awoke from dreaming that he was a butterfly,” he writes, “And didn’t know whether he was a butterfly dreaming he was Zhuangzi.” It’s the kind of brain-twister beloved by the ancient masters, but it also has a lot to do with what Row is after in this book.“Your Face in Mine” is his first novel after two well-regarded collections of stories, and it dea

I grew up within sight of the ocean, close enough to hear the boom of the surf as it exploded across the sandbars. My grandfather pulled his living from the ocean, and a great uncle died in it. I spent thousands of hours in the Atlantic and thousands more along its edges. I knew it, I thought.Then I read James Nestor’s fascinating new book, “Deep,” an exploration, layer by layer, of the oceans’ depths. My knowledge barely dipped beneath the surface.Nestor’s journey begins in Greece, on assignmen

All Our NamesBy Dinaw Mengestu (Knopf)At first glance, “All Our Names” seems to be a straightforward immigrant story. A young man, carrying the name of Isaac on his passport, has come from Uganda to Laurel, a small Midwestern town, on a one-year student visa. His case is assigned to Helen, with Lutheran Relief Services. Chapters segue between those in Uganda narrated by Isaac, and those in America, narrated by Helen.The novel partially takes place in Uganda in the early 1970s, after it has won i

Remember Me Like ThisBy Bret Anthony Johnston (Random House) A page-turner of a plot alone usually is not enough to keep me reading long into the night, abandoning my dreams for a writer’s creative imaginings. Bret Anthony Johnston delivers the special something that makes a book worth losing sleep over: a masterfully designed architecture of psychological truths and observations that build ironclad believability.Just a couple of chapters into “Remember Me Like This,” I cared enough about the fa