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Authors tote their wares to area bookstores

A new story collection from Dan Chaon and new novels from Heidi Julavits and Adam Johnson are just some of the delights in store for Boston lit nerds.
Road shows
By EUGENIA WILLIAMSON | December 30, 2011

Summer treats

From Andean to zydeco, pick your flavor and there's a summer music festival ready to serve it up.
Whether classical, jazz, pop, or folk, 'tis the season to get out and enjoy the music
By CLEA SIMON | June 18, 2010

Tired sleuth

Has Walter Mosley gone off crime fiction? With the creation of Easy Rawlins in 1990, Mosley perfected the African-American side of the genre — along with a poetic and insightful take on post-war LA up through the 1960s — in 11 consistently solid books, t
Can Walter Mosley kick the crime-novel habit?
By CLEA SIMON | March 19, 2010

Wolf man

A lone wolf lopes across a border, searching for food.
Henning Mankell stalks globalization
By CLEA SIMON | February 12, 2010

Sterling-Cooper sells the season

The Guide to the Season isn’t about any particular gift, just like it’s not about any particular holiday. It’s a feeling. A sensation. A supplement.
Behind the scenes of the Phoenix' s Gift Guide, starring the cast of Mad Men
By CLEA SIMON | December 11, 2009

What would Joan do?

In the pilot episode of AMC's Mad Men , Peggy Olson told Joan Holloway: "I'm from Bay Ridge. We have manners."
Gifts to show off your taste
By DEIRDRE FULTON + CLEA SIMON | December 11, 2009

Updike does death, R. Crumb does God, Vanity Fair does Proust

Trying to reach as broad a range of tastes and pocketbooks as possible, we this year scavenged everything from the front pages of the Onion to R. Crumb's genesis, to valedictory Updike. Stuff to read, stuff to look at, glossy pages and matte. Remember
Gift books to savor
By PHOENIX STAFF | December 11, 2009

What Would Joan Do?

So you've got a party coming up, a gift due, or a difficult-to-please significant other.
Jackie or Marilyn, Pete or Roger — they are what they eat. so, who are you?
By CLEA SIMON | December 11, 2009

Get into gear

A new season brings new toys, and snow sports fanatics are nothing if not gearheads.
Hit the slopes in style with the coldest season’s hottest innovations
By CLEA SIMON | November 20, 2009

Victorian jewel

What price beauty? That's the question lovely Grace Hammer has to answer as her world begins to fall apart.
A fictional setting that never fades
By CLEA SIMON | September 11, 2009

Undercover

Ana Grey is the fearless heroine of April Smith's dark and thoughtful thriller series. But reading these fast-paced books shows the question to be more complicated. Ana Grey is, after all, not only a brave FBI agent, but also the cowering daughter of a
April Smith's mystery/thrillers delve in darkness
By CLEA SIMON | June 12, 2009

Trail of tunes

The best summer music festivals take something from the season: the smell of the surf, the sight of the mountains, fireworks, lawn seating — or, at least, fried dough.
Music al fresco at summer fests
By CLEA SIMON | June 12, 2009

Ready to roll

Whether you've been slogging through the streets on two wheels all winter, or are only now retrieving your bicycle, dusty and cobwebbed, from the basement, the extra light, the warm air, and the promise of snow-free roads are calling.
How to give your bike a proper spring cleaning
By CLEA SIMON | May 08, 2009

Bytes of knowledge

Once upon a time, we thought it was novel to be able to buy books in our bathrobes.
Getting the most from an online education
By CLEA SIMON | May 01, 2009

Rare treats

They've dined you, they've wined you with meals both wonderful and offal.
There are foodie consumers and there are foodie creators, but they all appreciate something unusual
By CLEA SIMON | December 08, 2008

Sex and food and Abraham Lincoln

We put out a call to our contributors to suggest appropriate holiday gift books and what do we get back?
Gift books for every (perverse) taste
By PHOENIX STAFF | December 02, 2008

Interview: Jill Lepore and Jane Kamensky

Long-time friends Jill Lepore and Jane Kamensky didn't set out to write Blindspot, a novel complete with murder, scandal, slave stealing, and some very hot sex.
Two historians pen a bodice ripper
By CLEA SIMON | December 02, 2008

Technically improved

Snow sports shred the space-time continuum this winter, with new styles that push technological boundaries for form and function.
Ski and snowboard gear refined, not redefined
By CLEA SIMON | November 18, 2008

Murder, she wrote

"It’s always more fun to write people who are really messed up or really vicious."
Interview: Tana French's deep crime novels
By CLEA SIMON | August 05, 2008

Spy games

The gray afternoon, the loveless assignation, the endless bureaucracy.
Alan Furst’s “Night Soldiers” novels
By CLEA SIMON | June 09, 2008

Flying high

There’s nothing new about the complaint as literature, says author Jonathan Miles.
Interview: Jonathan Miles’s airport novel
By CLEA SIMON | June 02, 2008

Shaping the Crescent

Even before Katrina wreaked its havoc on New Orleans, a popular T-shirt proclaimed the city “Third World and Proud of It,” and numerous more-literary types have long referred to it as the “northernmost Caribbean city.”
The making of New Orleans
By CLEA SIMON | April 29, 2008

General Tso’s way

Behind every dish lies a story, and behind a cuisine, well, there may be a book.
The path of a Chinese foodie
By CLEA SIMON | March 12, 2008

Shrink-wrapped

If ever a thinker stood for the idea of questioning authority, it was Carol Gilligan.
Carol Gilligan steps into fiction
By CLEA SIMON | January 22, 2008

Free speech

Twenty-six-year-old author (and Harvard grad) Elizabeth Little has had a lifelong love affair with language.
Elizabeth Little’s word games
By CLEA SIMON | December 31, 2007

Laotian dreams

Dr. Siri Paiboun has a sense of proportion.
Colin Cotterill’s Dr. Siri novels
By CLEA SIMON | September 04, 2007

Bound and gagged

Girl meets boy; girl loses boy; girl wins boy back. It’s an old story, and it usually works, even when it’s set halfway around the world and the girl and boy are 17th-century Qing Dynasty aristocrats.
Lisa See gets tied up in the Qing
By CLEA SIMON | July 18, 2007

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