Fourth Estate

'I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day of January 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of l974.' So begins the breathtaking story of Calliope Stephanides and her truly unique family secret, born on the slopes of Mount Olympus and passed on through...

Adapted into a critically acclaimed film by Sofia Coppola and starring Kirsten Dunst, this is the story of the five Lisbon sisters - beautiful, eccentric, and obsessively watched by the entire neighbourhood. The boys that once loved them from afar are now grown men, determined to understand a tragedy that has always defied explanation. For still,...

A magnificent, beautifully written biography of cancer -- from its first documented appearances thousands of years ago through the epic battles to cure, control and conquer it, to a radical new understanding of its essence. In The Emperor of All Maladies, Siddhartha Mukherjee, doctor, researcher and award-winning science writer, examines cancer...

For the British, "Who are we?" is an oddly difficult question. Although self-assessment usually notes a number of good points (we're inventive, tolerant and at least we're not French), it lists a torrent of bad ones too. Our society is fragmented and degenerate. Our kids are thugs, our workers ill-educated, our public services abysmal. We drink too...

Peter and Rebecca Harris: mid-forties denizens of Manhattan's SoHo, are admirable, enviable contemporary urbanites with every reason to be happy until her much-younger look-alike brother shows up for a visit. Like his legendary, Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, "The Hours," Cunningham's masterly new novel is a heartbreaking look at the way we live...

Like his legendary, Pulitzer Prize winning novel THE HOURS, Cunningham's masterly new novel is a heart-breaking look at the way we live now. Full of shocks and aftershocks, BY NIGHTFALL makes us think and feel deeply about the uses and meaning of beauty and the place of love in our lives....