It is 147 years since the death of The President who deflowered me on his wife's bed, so I have decided, after a struggle with my conscience and an advance the size of Brazil's GNP, that it is time to unburden myself of the secret I have long hidden from...

There's always been a rich history of women who like to raise a glass. Even though the most famous books about alcohol have been written by men-Under the Volcano, The Sun Also Rises, Tender is the Night-plenty of women writers have approached the subject and bellied up to the bar.

Since the world is ending on Saturday - I'm not sure of the time, the reason, or the parking situation, but enough people seem to agree on the date to have convinced this recovering Catholic - I suddenly find myself needing to make a number of choices: What to wear...

These are thrilling days for holiday book-givers. Why, this lovely publication itself told us only recently that we're buying up books as fast as if we were being told by QVC that there were only sixteen left at this price and that once they were gone, they'd be gone.

Of...

Not that I'm bitter, but the most successful contemporary books are not always the best contemporary books, and this explains why most midlist authors believe there is no God.

Selling by the thousands every day, however, are those volumes focused on seventeen-year-old narrators whose most profound accomplishment is that they...