While they tend towards traditional rather than edgy, the stories in Fresh Complaint will remind readers what they like about Eugenides' writing: His sensitivity and compassion for flawed people.
Both books vividly capture the dizzying highs of mania and the shattering lows of depression that mark the disease. Mental's approach is comprehensive, Gorilla and the Bird's more intimate.
Journalist, writer and musician James McBride discusses his collection of short stories, Five-Carat Soul, his first work of fiction since winning the 2013 National Book Award for The Good Lord Bird.
The New Yorker cartoonist channels her affection for the city into a new tongue-in-cheek guidebook, Going Into Town. "It's just fun," Chast says of New York. "Everything seems to suggest stories."
Scalia Speaks is an anthology of the late justice's speeches on everything from the arts, turkey hunting, games and sports, faith and judging — and even the "Italian view of the Irish."
Lulu Garcia-Navarro talks with Masha Alyokhina, a member of the band Pussy Riot, who was sentenced to two years in prison after playing a protest song in a Moscow cathedral in 2012.
"You get it going and then you have to shut it down," Eugenides says. "And I am a novelist by inclination." His new short story collection is called Fresh Complaint.