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Philip Roth’s new novella, The Humbling, begins thus: “He’d lost his magic. The impulse was spent. He’d never failed in the theater, everything he had done had been strong and successful, and then the terrible thing happened: he couldn’t act.”

Like many readers, I enjoy keying the books I read to the season. Long hot summers just seem to call for noir novels of passion and double-cross, like those of Raymond Chandler and James M. Cain, or for cynical tales of remittance men slowly going to seed in the tropics -- one of the specialties of Somerset Maugham -- or even for the occasional ethnographic travel classic, such as A.W. Kinglake’s Eothen, Claude Levi-Strausss’s Tristes Tropiques, or Wilfred Thesiger’s Arabian Sands.

The author of The Secret Life of Bees and her daughter pen an unusual memoir of travel and self-discovery.

A tale of human trafficking and revenge, seen through multiple perspectives.

A childhood seen through the high-precision lens of Asperger's syndrome.

A new memoir from a daughter of a tragically brilliant union; an elegant critic; and the joys of crime by gaslight.

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A new collection of longer and shorter works from the award-winning novelist and poet trades in heartfelt sorrow and wicked humor.

A boy's life in a famed Tudor castle -- haunted by spirits of the past, and the present.