Luck, Hemingway said, is a fluid, elusive force that could come right up to us and still go unnoticed. But that definition doesn’t begin to explain the unusual things people do to bring luck, nor does it hint at the superstitions... Read More

Hunger drove humans to first eat fish, and creativity to develop the use of hook, line, rod, and reel, but genius certainly inspired the sporting pursuit of the most elusive species with beautifully hewn floating lures of pheasant... Read More

When a girl is raised on a farm, she gains superpowers. There is nothing she can’t do with a tractor, hoe, or kitchen stove—except, perhaps, be a lazybones and sleep in the sun. Wonderfarmer Jessica Robinson seemingly absorbed the... Read More

Lake Superior in winter is a vast sheet of ice, white and implacable; its rocky shores, tall pines, and moody silences are the perfect backdrop for award-winning Norwegian mystery writer Vidal Sundstøl’s Minnesota Trilogy. The third... Read More

Josep Pla (1897-1981), one of the most influential and controversial Catalan authors of the twentieth century, has a sensibility he declared to have been “notoriously influenced” by his admiration for the Dutch genre painters. In... Read More

Parisian bookseller Laurent Letellier, on his way to enjoy a double espresso and study his notes for an upcoming book signing, discovers a mauve leather handbag, in excellent condition and obviously not empty, sitting upon a waste bin... Read More

When Hélène Chambon, great-niece of author Daniel Roche, pen name H. R. Sanders, moves to Paris to study archeology, she encounters a mystery much more engrossing than her studies—one that not only involves her enigmatic, eccentric,... Read More

Sultry, seductive Alexandria is filled with secrets, seething resentments, and hidden tensions, and the Egyptian Jews who live there, though enamored of the city’s charms, are coming to see that their lives are precariously balanced... Read More