Meredith Maran

We live in a nation that loves a rags-to-riches bootstrap story, and no wonder: the myth that "anyone can make it in America" is, paradoxically, an effective tool for keeping...

You know you're reading an exceptional book when, approximately two sentences into it, you start panicking at the thought of its ending. Be forewarned: This is likely to happen to...

Some of the best novels start with the most unlikely and most unappealing premises. One case in point: the runaway best-seller-turned-movie "The Lovely Bones." Imagine author Alice Sebold pitching the...

Here's the good news about "White Dresses" by Emmy Award-winning news producer Mary Pflum Peterson. In recounting her family history and its impact on succeeding generations, Pflum Peterson probes more...

"Writing" is a big word, containing many worlds. A technical manual, a poem, a postcard, a textbook, a novel. "Book" doesn't narrow it down much; there are so many kinds,...

After 40 years as an English teacher in Northern California — 30 years in a high school, five years in a college, and five in a prison — in 2003...

Readers approach memoirs with skepticism these days, and for good reason. The lure of the tell-all is fueled by the schadenfreudian urge to minimize one's own problems by comparing them...

Pop quiz: Which is more unusual? (A) A debut memoir that Stephen King calls "The best memoir I have ever read ... (by) the Emily Dickinson of memoirists," or (B)...