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A native of Beijing, author Diane Liang sometimes simplifies some of the Chinese names and details in her books for the benefit of her foreign audience. Nevertheless, her fiction is still steeped in the sights and sounds of her homeland.

When Henry Ford bought up a Connecticut-sized chunk of land in the Amazon River basin in 1927, he wasn't just planning to build his own vertically-integrated rubber plantation — he also envisioned the small-town America of his youth, reborn in the jungle.

Morris Dickstein's dazzling new cultural history of the Great Depression, called Dancing in the Dark, is one of those "everything but the kitchen sink" kind of books — that really works.

The Kindly Ones, by Jonathan Littell, is the fictional first-person memoir of a cultured German who loves Bach, cherishes great literature — and also happens to be a former Nazi exterminator.

Kirstin Downey's biography of FDR's Labor Secretary Frances Perkins paints an inspiring and substantive portrait of the woman who ushered in the 40-hour work week.

By refusing to serve up even one likable main character, Zoe Heller's new novel raises implicit questions about readers' expectations about fiction. Reviewer Maureen Corrigan calls The Believers a "smart, caustic novel."

Set in various fantastic and creepy landscapes, Dan Chaon's latest book, Await Your Reply, weaves together three separate narratives in what reviewer Maureen Corrigan calls a "spinning nebula of a novel."

In a kind of supermarket Cinderella story, a cashier in France has become a literary sensation. Anna Sam has turned her ungratifying job into a humorous memoir. Now, her book has been translated into 16 languages and turned the 29-year-old into the author she always wanted to be.

Lorrie Moore puts her penetrating prose and sly observations to work in her latest novel, A Gate at the Stairs. Critic Maureen Corrigan calls the book "a literary cyclone."

Jane Gardam has spent her long career writing dry, honest books about British life. Her new novel, The Man in the Wooden Hat, showcases the regrets of a woman never quite sure that marrying her husband was the right choice. Critic Maureen Corrigan calls Gardam the best British writer you've never heard of.