From the archives of the venerable literary magazine come these 16 conversations with some of the greatest voices in 20th-century literature. All-stars like Ernest Hemmingway, Truman Capote, Elizabeth Bishop, T.S. Eliot, Joan Didion, and Kurt Vonnegut set aside the pen and brilliantly discuss their craft (with more than a few satisfying divergences down other, unexpected roads).

-SD

In Adrian's ambitious second novel, the world is submerged after a downpour of biblical proportions. A hospital floats intact and alone on a limitless ocean, and a post-apocalyptic fairytale unfolds as the surviving inhabitants try to make sense of what has happened, and what will. Expect multitudinous angelic apparitions.

-SD

Steven Johnson's The Ghost Map tracks the 1854 cholera epidemic in London, which at its height killed 70 people in a single day. With his engrossing anecdotal style, Johnson examines how the dense social web of the 19th century capital gave rise to this scourge, but also how that selfsame interconnectedness ultimately saved London in its darkest hour. The captivating, day-by-day narrative transforms this epidemiological case history into a fascinating detective story.

-TW

Shot between 2002 and 2004, Tim Davis' photographs present an ironic view of our political landscape. Inspired by Lee Friedlander's The American Monument and Walker Evan's American Photographs, Davis let his eye wander past the rallies and campaigns to the signs and ephemera. Through his viewfinder, we get past presidents reduced to cardboard props, Martin Luther King promoting tacos, and tourists viewing the White House through a hole in a fence.

-PL

Irene Nemirovsky's exquisite, moving, and damning comedy of manners captures the pathos of wartime France, from the panic of those fleeing the invasion, to the personal dramas of those caught in occupied France. These two novellas were essentially written during the events they describe, and just months before their author's deportation and death in Auschwitz. Unearthed by Nemirovsky's daughter, these two novellas — in Sandra Smith's pitch-perfect translation — are nothing short of the literary rediscovery of the year.

-TW

One night in Kearney, Nebraska, Mark Schluter's truck suddenly flips — an accident that will impair his memory, leaving him convinced that his sister is an impostor. MacArthur fellow (and now NBA winner) Powers weaves profound revelations about the nature of the human experience and cognition into a propulsive story that culminates with the chilling truth of what really happened that night on a backroad in Nebraska.

-LD

One of the luckiest artists alive, Richard Prince has made a career and a fortune on re-photographing magazine advertisements and retelling jokes in his paintings and drawings. Equally gifted at designing his exhibition catalogs, Prince fills this book with his free-spirited figurative hippie drawings, which are accompanied by Richard Brautigan's offbeat poem The Galilee Hitch-Hiker.

-PL

One sleepy Sunday afternoon in Paris, a long-suffering writer receives a call from his ex-girlfriend, who's inviting him to a party. Part memoir, part satirical exposé on the mind of an over-analytical, jilted man, The Mystery Guest is a witty read about the endearing, if absurd, hopes one man hangs on to for a lost love.

-McM

Stocked with images and descriptions of manmade curiosities across the US, this handy guide presents the work of the Center for Land Use Interpretation, a research group that produces public programs about our built environment. From simulated villages, where Los Angeles police and firemen train, to a building shaped like a basket and creative landmarks such as Spiral Jetty, CLUI documents the variety of ways we interact with nature.

-PL

Adichie unveils an intimate, familial saga happening alongside the 1960s Nigerian civil war — creating a masterful, historical work narrated, in turns, by a British man in love with an Igbo woman, academics rallying for an independent Biafra, and a houseboy who left his village behind for a new Nigeria.

-McM

In the tradition of John Berger, Weschler considers unlikely visual pairings, looking for themes that unify seemingly disparate images. The pairings in this handsomely assembled volume traverse the comic (Monica Lewinsky reinterpreted as the Mona Lisa), the cosmic (the paintings of Jackson Pollock held against intergalactic photographs), and the deeply moving (numerous images from Ground Zero juxtaposed against everything from Vermeer to Grant Wood). These images become jumping-off points for lucid and searching essays that open their subjects in the tradition of the best intellectual inquiry.

-MS

A young academic stumbles upon an obscure book that transports its readers into an alternate reality. This daring looking-glass conceit takes the reader on a brain-scrambling adventure that culminates in an intellectual mystery of the highest order. Thomas is equally comfortable juggling Heidegger or quantum physics, yet this novel has a surprisingly light touch.

-TW

This international round up of female graffiti and street artists is high on visuals, and highly informative in few words. Graf writers include the American legend Lady Pink, the Dutch crew Bitches In Control, and South Africa's Faith47. Among the street artists are Barnstormer Maya Hayuk, the stenciling Popdesign from Rio, and NYC's talented Swoon, who pens a forward to this colorful book.

-PL

Spiotta's incandescent second novel turns the spotlight on a former radical on the lam from a failed bomb plot in the '70s, now raising a teenage son in suburbia. Imagine if the Weathermen had kids. Spiotta weaves her drama out of the collision of the mother's drive to start over and her young son's desire to know the truth. Eat the Document soars on sparkling prose and a kaleidoscope of narrative perspectives.

-TW

In Falconer's stunning new novella, Captain Frederick Benteen reflects on his experiences during the Indian campaigns that culminated in the atrocious defeat at Little Bighorn. This mournful topic yields a book that is both a profanely humorous reflection on the folly of war and an ode to the American West.

-JR

Stuart is the anti-biography. Instead of praise for a Great Man, it's a portrait of someone who fell through the cracks. When Masters encountered Stuart Shorter, he was a violent, junkie sociopath. In a collaborative work closely attentive to Stuart's rough hewn voice, Masters reconstructs his story. Masters tells it backwards, from his subject's brutal adulthood to an even more painful youth, all in search of an answer to Stuart's question: "what murdered the boy I was?"

-TW

Tamas Dobozy's stories can be bleak but they're always engaging. Smartly written, with a pitch-black sense of humor, Last Notes delivers a series of compelling tales: from a portrait of a husband and wife who settle their disputes through boxing to an excavation of the complicated pasts of diasporic Hungarians. A worthy collection of work by this under-recognized talent.

-TW