The Anatomy Lesson by Philip Roth. The conclusion of the Nathan Zuckerman trilogy finds Roth's comic writer-hero disillusioned with fiction and headed for medical school and more trouble.
Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel García Márquez. The 1982 Nobel laureate mixes imagination and fact into a suspenseful novella of honor and revenge in a Colombian town.
Ironweed by William Kennedy. In the third novel set in his native Albany, the author traces a bum's progress through the late Depression and his old upstate New York haunts.
Pitch Dark by Renata Adler. A...