Can the abundant amenities of the city make up for the nagging feeling that everyone else is having much more fun than you?

Throughout literature, supernatural creatures have a way of disturbing safe havens

The world's most famous ruin has been getting a facelift

The pleasure of reading archetypally English books while abroad

Henry Miller's The Colossus of Maroussi is reprehensible but shows his love of Greece

Moving to the city where democracy began

In her latest collection of essays, the New Yorker staff writer Janet Malcolm is at her empathetic, clever, shining best

At times in Levels of Life, Julian Barnes at his dizzying best—it is writing from his informed, proud and devoted heart