Nathaniel Hawthorne

Fortunately or unfortunately, Salem, Mass., is known around the world for its infamous past. It was the macabre location of the Salem witch trials of 1692, which resulted in the deaths of 20 innocent people and the imprisonment of hundreds more. Today,...

Fortunately or unfortunately, Salem, Mass., is known around the world for its infamous past. It was the location of the macabre Salem witch trials around 1692, which resulted in the deaths of 20 innocent people and the imprisonment of hundreds more....

I have no idea how I feel about John Edwards' extramarital sexual dalliances. The Icarus-like tumble that powerful men take in such cases is a strange and disturbing thing to behold; like a lot of people, I am still sorting out my emotions. No such...

Let's make the wild assumption that you can afford to travel somewhere for your next vacation, and also let's make the not-so-strange assumption that you, as a reader of the Spotlight book feature, have an interest in authors. Given that, there is a book...

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Is Philip K. Dick the father of the paranoid style in American fiction? "Every pay phone in the world was tapped," a character thinks in "A Scanner Darkly." "Or if it wasn't some crew somewhere just hadn't gotten around to it." As it happens, that...

When George Carlin died last week, the comedian and social satirist was fondly remembered for having identified - even liberated - what he called the "seven words you can never say on television." Such audacity went all the way to the Supreme Court, to...

My Sister, My Love: The Intimate Story Of Skyler Rampike By Joyce Carol Oates Ecco / 562 pages / $25.95 Social commentary has long been the hallmark of the best fiction. Many literary classics, among them Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter,...

Puritans breaking into power ballads makes heady sense in Mark Governor's rock musical "shAme," adapted from Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter." And not just because opposites -- in this case, repression and rock music -- attract. The story of...

School is almost out and that means one thing: It's time for summer reading lists. But this year, students who dread the idea of plodding through Shakespearean verse to learn the tales of star-crossed lovers and ruthless rulers can take heart. Wiley...

How we love it. How we adore these delicious tales of the mighty and prideful, knocked from their high perch by a branch they wield themselves. How we relish the notion that a spectacular rise may contain the seeds of a tumbling fall. When a spotless...