An Irish scandal comes into elegantly restrained focus in a winner of the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction — Nearly a decade ago, a historian made public her horrific discovery that 796 infants had died and were buried in secret graves near an Irish home for unwed mothers and their babies between 1925 and 1961. The shocking finding sparked worldwide outrage. It led Ireland to set up a national…

Why two gentle amphibian friends still enchant young readers — Arnold Lobel called Beatrix Potter his artistic mother. If that’s true, he deserves a Son of the Year award for Frog and Toad Are Friends. Potter casts a long shadow over stories about animals who act and dress like humans but retain characteristics of their species. Artists often try to…

The vices of my region are spreading. Its virtues aren’t — Each time I vote in Alabama, I see two kinds of tables I never saw at polling places in my native New Jersey. At the first, someone checks my required photo ID. At the second, volunteers hand out free bottled water and snacks, such as Nutri-Grain bars, bags of Fritos…

7 secrets to the success of a writer whose books outsold the Bible last year — Colleen Hoover’s novels are often called “trauma porn.” This is unfair to porn. A typical porn catalog has films about people of varied ages, races, and sexual tastes. Hoover’s novels are about young white women who fall for young white men. …

Why critics love the game and its new HBO adaptation — Critics are turning cartwheels over The Last of Us. Just this week, Time called the game “high art, perhaps the greatest video game ever created” and the new HBO series based on it “the best game adaptation ever.” What makes The Last of Us unique? The premise of the series…

One of the world’s finest novelists shows why awards judges have showered her with honors — In a good novel, every sentence pulls its weight. In a great one, every sentence pulls two or three times that: It reveals character, advances the plot, and evokes a time or place, or otherwise does double or triple duty. Claire Keegan’s fourth book isn’t a novel but a story…

A common answer is that we like to see evil-doers punished, but a well-known critic says it’s not so simple — For decades, mysteries were the most popular genre in American fiction, followed closely by romance novels. In the Harry Potter era, science fiction and fantasy have overtaken them on some lists. But mysteries, particularly detective novels, still have a high and often soaring appeal, as the James Patterson juggernaut has…

A Scottish earl’s daughter recalls a father who smashed up Jaguars and blamed his crashes on their poor design — British aristocrats were embarrassing their families long before Prince Harry wore a Nazi costume to a party and suggested in his memoir that Prince William egged him on. Consider Hugh Campbell, the 6th Earl Cawdor and 25th Thane of Cawdor. At the age of 30, he inherited his titles and…

‘20 Days At Mariupol’ gets a standing ovation at Sundance ahead of its PBS / ‘Frontline’ airing — Last year Associated Press journalists smuggled bodycam footage out of Mariupol on a tiny data card hidden in a tampon. The reporters were the last international media in the besieged Ukrainian city, and to escape with the card, they had to get it through 15 Russian checkpoints. Three AP journalists…