Wildlife by Richard Ford. Exquisite prose, a clear-eyed depiction of a kid watching his parent's marriage unravel. Brilliant. The Outs...

My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell. the seminal book on the making of a naturalist and also a very funny look at one of the odd...

Athletic Shorts: Six Short Stories by Chris Crutcher. Meet six different guys, some who've been in Crutcher's earlier books, and ...

Blind Side: Evolution of a Game by Michael Lewis. an amazing exploration both of how football has changed, and how it changed the life of ...

His Majesty's Dragon (and sequels) by Naomi Novik. If the Napoleonic wars were fought with dragons for battleships... Good Omens by N...

The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien . One of the most significant books about war ever written and a devastating portrait of the Vie...

The Puppet Masters by Robert Heinlein. Old-school rock-n-roll science fiction: fast, noisy and nuts with the fate of the world at stake. A...

Brian Jung has been, variously, a college English Instructor, a slush pile editor for a fantasy magazine, a high school teacher, a subs...