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Time and Again spans time, finds mystery, delves into Science-Fiction, grounds itself in Einstein's theories and ultimately, settles into romance fantasy. So what's the problem? Author Susan Jane Gilman explains her guilty addiction to this cult pop thriller.

It wasn't until he was in his 40s that Steve Luxenberg learned of a family secret his mother had kept for years. In Annie's Ghosts, he chronicles his efforts to learn about the aunt he never knew.

There's a little thing author Jeffrey Eugenides does when he can't write. When he's feeling sleepy, when his head is in a fog, he reaches across his desk, digs under the piles of unanswered mail, and unearths his copy of Herzog by Saul Bellow.

Author Alice Hoffman says the world rendered in Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 "is a place of great heart and wisdom, a universe of huge imagination where nothing is off-limits."

The main character in Halldor Laxness' novel Independent People is querulous, contrary, hard-hearted and stubborn — but author Christina Sunley can't get enough of him.

First published 400 years ago, Shakespeare's sonnets might never have been put to press had it been left to the author to decide things. As writer Clinton Heylin explains, Shakespeare's sonnets were never intended for a wide audience.

Author Fernando Pessoa may have been a loner who lived most of his life in a single room in Lisbon, Portugal. But he wasn't alone: He created numerous literary alter egos. Rabih Alameddine describes Pessoa's work, The Book of Disquiet, as one of life's great miracles.

Psychologists seem to have a fancy word for every conceivable fear known to man or woman. Nyctophobia, fear of darkness. Phagophobia, fear of swallowing. Agyrophobia, fear of crossing the street. Blennophobia, morbid fear of slime. And the phobia de jour, triskaidekaphobia. Commentator Paul Hoffman explains.

Author Kamila Shamsie owns two copies of Michael Ondaatje's In the Skin of a Lion so that no matter where she is, she can always slip into the novel's vital, heart-stopping world.

Novelist Zoe Heller has a soft spot for selfish characters. But, the author says, just because her characters are unlikable, doesn't mean they are without virtue. Her new novel, The Believers, uncovers a tangled web of secrets inside a lefty New York family.