The New York Review of Books

A New York Review Books OriginalIn 1905 the young Swiss writer Robert Walser arrived in Berlin to join his older brother Karl, already an important stage-set designer, and immediately threw himself into the vibrant social and cultural life of the city. Berlin Stories collects his alternately celebratory, droll, and satirical observations on every...

One cold Moscow night, Comrade Tulayev, a high government official, is shot dead on the street, and the search for the killer begins. In this panoramic vision of the Soviet Great Terror, the investigation leads all over the world, netting a whole series of suspects whose only connection is their innocenceat least of the crime of which they stand...

A Novel About John Wilkes BoothDavid Stacton's The Judges of The Secret Courtis a long-lost triumph of American fiction as well as one of the finest books ever written about the Civil War. Stacton's gripping and atmospheric story revolves around the brothers Edwin and John Wilkes Booth, members of a famous theatrical family. Edwin is a great actor,...

';What's new. What else. What next. What's happened here.' Pitch Dark is a book of questions, a book of false starts, red herrings, misunderstandings, and lightning revelations. It is a book about love. Kate Ennis is poised at a critical moment in an affair with a married man. The complications and contradictions pursue her from a house in rural...

A revolution is under way at a once sleepy New England bank. Forty-five-year-old Frances Fitzgibbons has gone from sweet-tempered loan officer to insatiable force of nature almost overnight. Suddenly she's brazenly seducing the high-school drum major, taking over her boss's office, firing anyone who crosses her, inspiring populist fervor, and...

Don Carpenter's Hard Rain Falling is a tough-as-nails account of being down and out, but never down for gooda Dostoyevskian tale of crime, punishment, and the pursuit of an ever-elusive redemption. The novel follows the adventures of Jack Levitt, an orphaned teenager living off his wits in the fleabag hotels and seedy pool halls of Portland,...