Erotic fiction is hot right now, with recent novel Fifty Shades of Grey crossing over to the mainstream via Twitter and the New York Times. Characterized as Romance with explicit sex scenes meant to titillate a mostly female audience, fiction erotica has eased its way into public places like Barnes & Noble, Wal-Mart, and the park. more ›

In his first book in almost ten years, Jeffrey Eugenides follows three Brown graduates in the early '80s as they deal with the complications of their relationships. more ›

The Australian born, Michener graduate Domnic Smith's third book jumps back to the 19th Century, just as he did in him amazing debut, The Mercury Visions of Louis Daguerre. In Bright and Distant Shores, Smith weaves an elegant story of Chicago on the eve of modernity, and on the other side of the world, post-colonial Melanesia and the a man who wavers between them both. more ›

This remarkable book, like the hand from beyond the grave depicted on its schlocky cover art, caught us by surprise. In a good way. Penned by seasoned critic Jason Zinoman, who, among other things, covers theater for the New York Times, Shock Value traces the history of what the author refers to as New Horror - a gory, ambiguous, and terrifying brand of the genre that owes less to the over-the-top theatrics of Dracula than to the chilling short stories of H.P. Lovecraft and a remarkable lineage of fine art. more ›

The fifth in TCU's "Literary Cities" series, Literary Houston is an anthology of what seems like everything ever written about the city— 67 pieces of fiction, poetry, journalism, and memoir. The result is what one critic described as “Cubist” in approach and mirrors the city itself: a melting pot amid no zoning laws. more ›

In 1981 The Austin Chronicle invented itself, becoming one of the foremost voices in Travis County while simultaneously offering a counter-cultural rejoinder to the reportage of the Austin-American Statesman. Smart and hungry, the writers of the young Chronicle busied themselves beyond expectation in those early years to cover an emergent culture that was quickly making Austin one of the most livable cities in the country. more ›

Like 99% of what is on Facebook, a majority of the book The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook: A tale of sex, money, genius and betrayal is expendable and clearly designed to attract attention. more ›

In Eating Animals, Jonathan Foer, begins with his grandmother’s chicken soup and memories of their family holiday gatherings. He welcomes the reader to the table. He shares his journey from lapsed to committed vegetarian. Then, in a moderate, but eyes-open style, he examines the uncomfortable-to-think-about side of meat: the raising and killing of animals. Though Foer might be viewed as Moses by the vegan and PETA crowd, leading the way to a meatless promised land, he seems more comfortable forming a circle than a column. more ›

Luckily Karr has succeeded in making Lit just as readable for a secular audience as her previous volumes. In an interview with Terry Gross, Karr herself compares her earliest drafts as a recent convert to the rhetoric of late-night televangelists—an interesting comparison considering how readily she admits to doing it all for the money. But through great care and diligent editing, the final product is thankfully more Anne Lamott than Joel Osteen. more ›

James Hannaham’s God Says No is narrated by the book’s primary character: Gary Gray, a sweet overweight black Christian who loves God, Disney Land, and sweets. He has one big problem, though: a nagging sexual attraction to men. Convinced that his deeply buried homosexuality will condemn him to eternal hellfire, Gary embarks on a quest to convince himself and everyone around him that he is indeed a normal guy, 100% straight.

The title is intriguing. A quick read, however, reveals that while Baltimore’s Fell’s Point is definitely urban, working two jobs, traveling to Bosnia and taking a cross-country trip with friends to Montana, hardly qualifies as a hermit. Instead, it is good marketing. Sam Macdonald, a first-book author with a blurb from his MFA program director on the back cover and a tuna can on the front, delivers a conflicted narrative told with self-deprecating humor. more ›

Short-story master William Sydney Porter (O. Henry) is remembered for his twist endings. Each year, twenty stories published in the US or Canada receive the prestigious award that bears his name. Editor Laura Furman, a professor at UT’s Michener center and founder of Austin-based lit mag American Short Fiction, had the onerous task of sorting through heaps of submissions for inclusion in The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories 2009. more ›

Author Laura Dave will be in town this week to promote her second novel, The Divorce Party, now in paperback. Whereas her first novel, London Is the Best City in America, focuses on the events surrounding a wedding, the action in The Divorce Party takes place within a 24-hour period in which Gwyn, a sixty-something Montauk housewife, throws a fete for her divorce. The novel is divided in four parts, with each part split among the characters of Gwyn and her soon-to-be daughter-in-law Maggie. While Gwyn is facing the end of a thirty-five year marriage, Maggie is coming to grips with her own commitment issues. more ›

In her latest book, Finding Beauty in Broken World, Terry Tempest Williams applies a poet’s sensibility and an unadorned syntax to juxtapose a pair of unlikely subjects: genocide in Rwanda and prairie dogs. Admittedly, that’s an unconventional combination. So is the style - a series of broken narrative and impressionistic paragraphs, braided with reflective comments, a trip to Italy for a class on mosaic construction and stories from her family’s pipeline business. This episodic structure, often found in lyric essays, eliminates the traditional narrative arc; the art arises from the arrangement. No wonder this book took eight years. Although Williams periodically supplies her take, she mostly observes and invites the reader to witness. What keeps the reader engaged is the tender and honest tone. more ›

There are coffee table books, and there are glittering behemoths, good behemoths, that happen to be book-shaped. Comic Book Tattoo, an anthology of standalone comics inspired by Tori Amos lyrics, comes alive in almost 500 pages of startlingly unique tales from over 80 different writers and illustrators. They provide a staggering artistic range – one moment you’re immersed in an oil painting, the next a photo realistic poem, then suddenly you’re smack in the middle of a stark black-white-red cityscape before emerging out of a bright cartoon. more ›

M O N D A Y [ 1 7 ] music · Elizabeth McQueen (of Asleep At the Wheel) and Jason Roberts begin their new Monday night residency at Threadgills - they're sharing a band and splitting the night. (8pm-10pm) music · Ethan Azarian at Waterloo Records (5pm) music · The Sad Accordions with Just Guns at Emo's music · The Drafthouse Downtown screens "Rock & Roll Invaders: The AM Radio DJs" - a documentary... more ›