Though Charles Portis is best known for his fiction writing, he is also a prolific essayist, travel writer, and newspaper reporter. Collected here in "Escape Velocity," edited by Jay Jennings, is his "miscellany" -- journalism, short fiction, memoir, and even the play "Delray's New Moon," published [...]

Jane Austen is a mystery. The first incontrovertibly great woman novelist, she is, among other things, one of the finest prose stylists in literature. In this guide, the author goes in search of this enigma through her words as well as her times, including a short biography, an overview of the novel[...]