I was watching the Dolphins hang a loss on the Vikings when the phone rang. "Paul, hurry! Someone's breaking into the house next door."

It was Steve, my neighbor up-the-hill, wired, his voice tight. His house had been burglarized the day before by thieves posing as moving men.

"Call...

"Dear Mr. Levine: Twenty years ago, you predicted the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, or nearly so."

That's the opening of an e-mail I recently received from a woman in Tennessee who had just read the e-book edition of Night Vision, my 20-year-old legal thriller....

The debate over dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima -- just how many American lives did it save? -- has always been more personal than numerical to me. The devastating attack surely saved my father's life, no small consequence to someone born three years later.

On August 16, 1945,...

In 17 years as a trial lawyer, I never saw a judge bang a gavel or shout "Order in the court!" But that hasn't stopped me from writing scenes in which the judge silences an unruly mob, the gavel echoing like a rifle shot.

I've taken liberties,...

I was standing in a circle of Chardonnay sippers at an art show in Santa Monica when the conversation turned to the future of reading. As a novelist, I had skin in the game, so I grabbed a canape, sidled over, and eavesdropped.

"I'll never buy one of those...