Genre: Not Genre-Specific

Supporting local bookstores may have just gotten a little easier. A new digital tool called CityShelf allows users to search the shelves of independent bookstores in select cities throughout the country from their mobile devices. 

With so many good books being published every month, some literary titles worth exploring can get lost in the stacks. Page One offers the first lines of a dozen recently released books, including Jonathan Franzen’s Purity and Salman Rushdie’s Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights, as the starting point for a closer look at these new and noteworthy titles.

Last month, the City University of Hong Kong’s highly respected MFA writing program abruptly shut down. Joanna Scutts investigates the program’s sudden closure, which has prompted protests and political speculations from students and faculty around the world.