RECENT & READABLE

The Mermaids, by Eva Boros. A minor magic mountain on whose emotional crags a few people suffering from TB--and from life--act out a perceptive, beautifully written love story (TIME, Nov. 26).

Venice Observed, by Mary McCarthy. A wise writer and brilliant stylist on a fascinating guided tour through the Floating City's haunted past and present (TIME, Nov. 26).

The Muses Are Heard, by Truman Capote. A literary hummingbird in the tundra writes a funny and occasionally gripping report about the Porgy and Bess troupe in Russia, and how jive and Marxism failed to dig each other (TIME, Nov. 19).

Doubting Thomas, by Winston Brebner. An artfully simple parable about an agent of a nightmarish, Orwellian superstate who yearly dons the mask of a clown and, as a kind of "fool in Christ," gradually rediscovers the frailty, dignity and rights of man (TIME, Nov. 12).

Compulsion, by Meyer Levin. Leopold and Loeb's 1924 murder of a 14-year-old boy, reconstructed in a novel that has all the hypnotic fascination of a name tag on a slab in the city morgue (TIME, Nov. 12).

Gay Monarch, by Virginia Cowles. How that sportive voluptuary, Edward VII, played his princely role behind mother's back, and, later, the part of King, with more diplomatic distinction than Queen Victoria could ever have imagined (TIME, Oct. 29).

Six Feet of the Country, by Nadine Gordimer. Out of the bitter South African soil, a choice harvest of short stories in which white wars with black, man with woman, and sensibility with self (TIME, Oct. 15).

The Letters of Thomas Wolfe, edited by Elizabeth Nowell. The confessional of an unchained literary Prometheus--dithyrambic, apostrophic, tumid--yet deeply touched with the mighty American spirit (TIME, Oct. 8).

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.