Search results for

As a Mormon missionary, Ryan McIlvain spent two years ringing strangers' doorbells, even as he experienced doubts about his own faith. He left the church in his mid-20s. McIlvain's debut novel, Elders, tells the story of two young Mormons carrying out their missions.

Russell Banks' latest is an uneven effort to excavate and redeem the dregs of modern society. Critic Maureen Corrigan says the novel — about porn addiction and sexual predators — is compelling in a low-grade, nightmarish sort of way.

Susan Orlean's new book about one of cinema's great dogs argues that Rin Tin Tin wasn't just a dog doing tricks, but an actor who could emote and affect audiences.

Did you know the Count of Monte Cristo was based on a real man? General Thomas-Alexandre Dumas was a hero of the French Revolution. But he's now forgotten by almost everyone except the son who shared his name and used his father's life as inspiration for some of the greatest novels of all time.

Iain Sinclair, the foremost modern practitioner of "psychogeographic" nonfiction, explores the modifications to the London landscape in preparation for the 2012 Summer Olympics. This "scam of scams," as he calls it, is an expression of British state egotism.

A road trip from Michigan to Alabama places the Watson family in Birmingham in 1963, just as racial tensions are roiling. Christopher Paul Curtis draws upon his own experiences growing up in the 1960s for this Newbery Honor-winning novel.

How much do the people who've made it owe to the people who've been left behind? That question is at the heart of Zadie Smith's new novel NW, a nuanced and disturbing look at class issues in a working-class northwest London neighborhood.

J.C. Trujillo, 75, got rodeo fever at age six when he won $10 in a calf riding competition. He went on to become a world champion and is being inducted into the National Cowboy Hall of Fame.

Ben Mattlin was born with a condition called spinal muscular atrophy. Many infants with the disease don't live past age 2, but Mattlin went on to attend Harvard, get married and have kids. "I had this dumb idea from childhood that I could do anything anybody else could do," he says.

Nine artists including T-Pain, Demi Lovato and Charlie Puth have granted Google permission to use their singing voices for the new tool, Dream Track.