The Best Literary Love Stories
A satisfying literary love story doesn’t need to end happily ever after—but one does need to be left with a sense that two characters belong together, advises the novelist Lily King . . .
Thomas Mallon’s Theory of the Diary
“The New York writer and editor’s diaries of the AIDS era presents a curious case of what we are supposed to expect from private documents that become historical sources.”
Before they become historical documents, diaries start out as ordinary ledgers, a frame-by-frame accounting of the moments and events of a person’s days. With the help of time, scholarship, and critical interest, they become history in miniature, an up-close look at how a life was formed and shaped by the times the diarist lived in.
Sheila McClear looks as Thomas Mallon’s The Very Heart of It: New York Diaries, 1983–1994, as “he detailed daily accounting of a young, hopeful gay man finding his way as a writer during the AIDS crisis.”
What Fictional Violence Teaches Us About the Real Thing (and Vice Versa)
Writer Jennifer Fawcett explains, from personal experience, how writing about a fleeting act of violence allowed her “to look back and see the connections of cause and effect, like a row of dominoes, one leading inevitably to the next.”
She explains how different witnesses to the same event can have wildly different memories of it. But “Stories are how we make sense of the world,” she writes. “We look for patterns, for logic.” Writing about violence doesn’t justify it, but writing—and reading—about it can help us “gain perspective.”
11 Uniquely Structured Mystery and Thriller Novels
I’m fascinated by narrative structure and the way authors use it to create enticing stories, and I’ve written on this topic before (How Narrative Structure Works in Fiction and 5 Novels With Unusual Narrative Structures.)
Here’s a list of more recent novels (with only one overlap with my examples) that use narrative structure effectively.
Mark Twain Wrote the First Book Ever Written With a Typewriter
Josh Jones takes a quick look at Mark Twain’s relationship with an early Remington typewriter. Although Jones’s piece is short, it includes a link to a longer article in The New Yorker about the history of the typewriter.
Exclusive Cover Reveal of “Night Owl” by Aimee Nezhukumatathil
I know I’m in the minority on this subject, but I choose books on the basis of a description of their content, not on an attraction to their covers. I therefore thought I should read this article, which explains how the cover of a poetry collection to be published in March 2026 relates to the content.
It’s a beautiful cover, but I’m still more interested in what’s inside.
Simon & Schuster seeks $1.275 million from famed mystery writer Nelson DeMille’s estate
“Publisher Simon & Schuster wants to recoup $1.275 million it claims to have paid out to famed mystery writer Nelson DeMille for a planned novel he never got to finish,” the New York Post reports.
I jumped on this news story hoping it would be as interesting as the battle between Tom Clancy and his ex-wife over custody of the fictional character Jack Ryan.
It’s not.
How Monsters Went from Menacing to Misunderstood
“For most of human history, monsters were repugnant aberrations, breaches of the natural and moral order. What’s behind our relentless urge to humanize them?”
Manvir Singh, a contributing writer at The New Yorker and assistant professor of anthropology at the University of California at Davis, examines how our concept of monsters has changed over the centuries. Ancient cultures saw monsters as creatures who were to be feared because they were outside the boundaries of what can be considered human; in other words, they were obvious, unchangeable representations of “the other,” outside the boundaries of human existence. However, over the centuries, a “sympathetic turn” has occurred, making us think of monsters as not “the other,” but as aspects of ourselves scarred by trauma or poor life choices. This sympathetic turn has changed wickedness “from an external contagion into an inward condition.”
I found the main portion of Singh’s article, mainly a literary and anthropological analysis, fascinating. But I was less impressed by the ending, in which he turns to discussion of these ideas as they apply to the current state of politics in the U.S.
The Dogged, Irrational Persistence of Literary Fiction
Retired book editor Gerald Howard examines the periodic recurrences throughout history of lamentations about the impending death of serious novels.
I in no way intend to make light of the structural and cultural headwinds that are making literary publishing a difficult and chancy enterprise. The grip of commercial blockbusters and genre novels on the best-seller lists is as depressing to me as it is to other commentators. Yet the dogged vitality of the habit of reading — evident in the passionate commitment of literary fiction’s fan — is a source of hope.
An oral history of A Little Life, 10 years on
Hanya Yanagihara’s 2015 novel A Little Life has a spot on My Top 5 Novels of All Time.
Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life turns 10 this year. Here, the author’s agent, editor, publicist and others look back at how the novel about the loves, lives and tragedies of four friends in New York came to be published – and became a cultural phenomenon.
© 2025 by Mary Daniels Brown
