Nabokov chronicles the aimless and unremarkable life of Martin Edelweiss: his Swiss-Russian background, his parents' divorce, the death of his father, his mother's remarriage, his years at Oxford, and his love affair with the fickle Sonia. Uninterested in a career after university, Martin wanders Europe, working at odd jobs. Then, suddenly, he decides to take the drastic step of returning to Russia, which he was forced to flee with his mother in 1919.

A true-crime story of Danny Starrett, a handsome husband and father who was a pillar of his community--and a serial killer. In this book, his mother tries to understand how she could have brought up a son who committed horrific crimes.

Naipaul's third book to deal with India is an optimistic look at the state of the country in the late 1980s. Returning after many years away to view India's economic and social achievements, Naipaul finds a new spirit of freedom and pride, even among the poor--whose situation, he emphasizes, is still desperate.

This biography analyzes how Nobel Prize-winning mathematician John Nash's eccentric personality helped him to develop revolutionary mathematical processes, and chronicles the transformation of this prolific eccentricity into a 30-year bout of paranoid schizophrenia and eventual recovery in 1990. Nasar provides insights into this illness and its devastating effects through Nash's letters, interviews with his colleagues, and her own compilation of research in the field. A New York Times Notable Book for 1998.