Ah, Cloud Atlas. One of my most favorite books EVER (if you look closely at my profile pic you can see it's at the top of the book pile). I agree with Nancy it's a good idea to stick with Mitchell; in addition to Ghostwritten, I'd suggest The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (for the historical fiction angle), and also Black Swan Green, which is a coming-of-age story involving a teenage stammerer growing up in early 1980s Britain. It may sound like it's not your cup of tea from that description, but one of the characters from Cloud Atlas makes an unexpected and delightful cameo appearance in this book.

As for other authors and novels that are similar to Cloud Atlas, that is a tall order. I often suggest Haruki Murakami to David Mitchell fans – like Mitchell, Murakami has a experimental, playful side to his writing that I think would appeal to Cloud Atlas fans. His books are usually set in contemporary Japan, but a very surrealist version of that place, where odd things can and often do happen to the main characters, who often find themselves suddenly on a quest or engrossed in solving a mystery that they literally stumble into. Since you mentioned you read a lot of mysteries, you might want to start with A Wild Sheep Chase, a very oddball mystery involving a flock of mythological sheep. But also check out Kafka on the Shore and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (which many Murakami fans consider his best work).

Another book that I think you might enjoy is Gould's Book of Fish by Richard Flanagan. The historical sections of Cloud Atlas (especially the first and last ones) reminded me a lot of this book, not only for the similar setting (19th -century South Pacific Islands) but for their dark humor and the way both authors address the impact of British colonization on the natives of New Zealand, Australia, and other islands in the vicinty. Plus Flanagan's book is a literary tour-de-force on a par with Cloud Atlas. (Yes I know tour-de-force is a huge book reviewing cliché. But in this case, it is an accurate statement).

Since you mentioned liking the futuristic sections in Cloud Atlas (I'm assuming you're referring to “An Orison of Somni-451” & “Sloosha's Crossin'”), I would like to point you to a few earlier Questionland requests for good dystopian/post-apocalyptic novels. I think you'll find quite a few good suggestions in the responses to this post and this one. And this one.

However, if none of these suggestions work for you, don't forget that you can always Ask a Librarian and get a hand-crafted, personalized reading list from some amazing SPL librarians! Tell 'em Questionland sent you.

Happy reading,

Abby

I've read Messiah, which I thought was good. The Children of Dune miniseries came out before I got around to reading the book. I thought the miniseries was great, so I might not even bother reading the book.

The accepted wisdom among sci fi fans seems to be that the first three books are good; anything after that is crap and only gets worse as you get into the books written by Frank Herbert's son.

I kept my blogspot address for about a year, but when I decided to make business cards I figured it was time for my own url. It's cheap and kind of fun to have your own. Also far easier for other people to remember it that way. My blog name/address doesn't make an ounce of real sense, but people remember it better than they had previously.

I heartily agree with Jim’s suggestion of The Wind-Up Girl. It’s a fantastic and thought-provoking book that paints a scarily believable future for the human race, in which globalization and large-scale climate change have wreaked major havoc on human societies around the world. Bacigalupi has also written an excellent teen post-apocalyptic novel called Ship Breaker, which takes in a future Gulf Coast that is ravaged by oil spills and gigantic storms called “city killers.” It’s a little easier to get into and more fast-paced than The Wind-Up Girl, but still full of very interesting ideas and well-realized characters.

In fact, post-apocalyptic novels are all the rage right now in teen fiction, due in large part to the success of The Hunger Games. If you’re not averse to reading a few teen books, I’d suggest the following: The Hungry City Chronicles by Phillip Reeve (first book is called Mortal Engines) about a post-apocalyptic, steampunk-ish future in which most highly advanced technology was destroyed in a nuclear war, and cities are now clanking, mobile entities which “eat” each other in order to survive (a practice known as Municipal Darwinism). Susan Beth Pfeffer’s Last Survivors series (starting with Life As We Knew It) describes what happens to Miranda, a teenage girl, and her family when a meteor knocks the moon out of its orbit, with disastrous consequences for earth’s inhabitants.

You’ve probably already read The Road by Cormac McCarthy and Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood. If you liked those books, you might also want to try The Pesthouse by Jim Crace, or Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler. Nick Harkaway’s The Gone-Away World is another great one, which my colleague David Wright has talked up elsewhere on Questionland. If you like graphic novels, check out Brian K. Vaughan’s Y: The Last Man, about a mysterious plague that destroys every male on the planet except for Yorick Brown, a small-time escape artist and his pet monkey.

There’s some other great suggestions  for post-apocalyptic and dystopian fiction on the Seattle Public Library’s blog, Shelf Talk, here and here. [update: I see that David also posted links to the same posts. Sorry for the redundancy, but we just can't stop promoting the library. It's a compulsion for librarians! :) ]

If you’ve read all of these already or want more suggestions, you also always Ask a Librarian for more good books to read. We’re happy to help!

Take a trip on Amtrack and pay the little extra for biz class. You'll get a ton done.

I really like 3quarksdaily.com. I'm not sure how I came across it, but it's great, and has been running for years. It's definitely a filter blog -- posting things from around the web on a daily basis -- but focuses on the arts, literature, sciences, etc. Though there is some discussion of politics, it tends to be international and historical in scope, rather than breathless up-to-the-minute outrage.

I've never found another blog like it. I find it's a little TOO intellectual at times for me to dip into in down moments at work, but I think that's a good thing rather than a bad thing.

For Spain:

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon: This is a literary mystery that starts in a rare books room. I still remember reading this in Barcelona while sitting on the roof of the Gaudi apartment building.

Or for a hardboiled mystery set in Barcelona, Dog Day by Alicia Gimenez Bartlett

I really enjoyed these two international bestsellers that are set in Paris:

Hunting and Gathering by Anna Gavalda: A story about broken people who find one another.

The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery: I wrote about this one here.

Happy travels!

King, Kaiser, Tsar: Three Royal Cousins Who Led the World to War.

Catton is great, but I really believe the new standard for Civil War histories has been set by James McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom which is just plain remarkable. Seriously: I read it in a single marathon 48-hour stretch, barely moving the whole time; and then immediately read it again.

But you've already read about the Civil War...

Have you read The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman, about WWI? Brilliant, untoppable. They will make you want to read her The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War, 1890-1914 and The Zimmermann Telegram (about the US entry into the war) immediately after.

The best book ever written about WWI, though, isn't strictly speaking history at all; it's The Great War and Modern Memory by Paul Fussell. This might be the best book I've ever read -- so powerful, so illuminating, so unexpected. It will blow your mind. Even if you don't give a damn about English poets like Sassoon and Owen, you'll come away from this book believing that WWI was the pivotal stupidity of the entire stupid century of evil.

Another essential book on war that strays a bit from your question but gives much-needed perspective on the real horror of it is The Face of Battle: A Study of Agincourt, Waterloo, and the Somme by John Keegan, which is about the soldier's experience, everything from boredom and regimentation to terror, injury and death. Again, you will come away aghast at the repulsiveness of WWI.

Sorry in advance for the length of this reply, but I also enjoy medieval-set historical fiction, though as someone who got my B.A. & M.A. in medieval studies, I have a hard time finding ones that don't make me cringe with inaccuracies :-)

* The Sunne in Splendor/Sharon Kay Penman (Richard III of England)
* Here Be Dragons/Sharon Kay Penman, followed by Falls the Shadow & The Reckoning (12th & 13th century England & Wales)

I have not enjoyed subsequent books by SKP nearly as much, but for what it's worth she has a series on Eleanor of Aquitaine & Henry II, a series of medieval mysteries, and a couple of other books also set in medieval England/France/Wales.

* A Vision of Light/Judith Merkle Riley, followed by In Pursuit of the Green Lion & The Water Devil (14th century woman dictating her life story to a disapproving monk)

* The Daughter of Time/Josephine Tey (might not be ideal for you, as it's about a modern-day detective looking into Richard III & the princes in the tower, but it's phenomenal)

* Queen of Swords/Judith Tarr (Melisande, the heir to the kingdom of Jerusalem during the 12th century-- Crusades, in other words)

Judith Tarr has also written other books set during the Crusades, but they have more of a fantasy bent, which may or may not appeal to you. If that sounds interesting, start with The Hound and the Falcon, an omnibus edition of the trilogy (the other books are prequels/side stories)

* The Good Men/Charmain Craig (Cathars and the Albigensian Crusade in southern France)

* The Treasure of Montsegur/Sophy Burnham (ditto)

* Jerusalem/Cecelia Holland (story of Templar knight during the 2nd Crusade)
* The Firedrake/Cecelia Holland (Norman conquest of England)

I only recently started reading Cecelia Holland, but so far she's fantastic. She has quite a few freestanding historical novels, many of which have medieval settings, as well as a recent series set during the Viking era.

* Morality Play/Barry Unsworth (14th century England)
* The Ruby in Her Navel/ditto (12th century Norman Sicily)

* Katherine/Anya Seton (late 14th century England; tells story of mistress of one of the sons of Edward III)

If you like historical fantasy at all, I'd also recommend Guy Gavriel Kay. Many of his books are set in fictionalized versions of medieval Europe. Unlike a lot of historical fantasy, his books are very well researched-- he seems to fictionalize the settings more so he can tweak details/time frames to suit his plot, instead of just out of laziness with the actual historical facts, if that makes any sense. At any rate, here are the books of his I'd recommend:

* The Lions of Al-Rassan (El Cid & the Reconquista in Spain)
* A Song for Arbonne (Cathars & Albigensian Crusade in S. France)
* The Last Light of the Sun (Vikings in "Dark Ages" England)
* Sailing to Sarantium/Lord of Emperors (5th c. Byzantium)

Okay, must stop now before I want to reread my *entire* bookshelf. Enjoy!

From what I understand (from a friend who is a book editor for a well-known sci-fi publishing house), the real core of editing happens once a book is written or mostly written. At the very least, a full outline of the book (including all of the various sub-plots) needs to be planned out.

What an editor can really help you with is making sure that your novel has a tight narrative flow, is consistent (ie, you don't have the same character described has having green eyes in one scene and blue eyes in another), and makes sense. Some editors have a *very* heavy hand and have as much an impact on the final product as the author does, especially when it comes to sharpening the tone and focus of a novel.

If you've never written a novel before (and have never published anything), you should probably wait until you've written the whole novel (or the majority of it) before engaging an editor, in large part because the editor frequently works with a publisher to get a book ready for publication.

Hey there. Yes - this is Torey Hayden's book Ghost Girl: The True Story of a Child in Peril and the Teacher Who Saved Her. The author of several books about severely abused children, Hayden is one of the leading voices in what the UK's Bookseller magazine snarkily but aptly referred to as 'misery lit,' together with Dave Pelzer, Jeannette Walls, and Frank McCourt. 

I did a two-part book list of related reads titled "Magical Misery Tour" for the NoveList Plus database, which you can access via many libraries, logging in with your library card. (This is a really nifty database, btw, filled with helpful information for readers, and lots of neat book lists and articles and things - check it out). There are a lot of other interesting titles on there of child abuse, drug abuse, and cetera. The title I myself especially like in this general area is Frank Conroy's 1967 memoir Stop Time.

A really good memoir should open up a person and show the reader what makes that person tick, not just show off what a person has seen or done in their lifetime. That's the most compelling part of every entertainment in the world- really good books, plays, movies, t.v. shows, and even relationships satisfy our curiosity about the "other"- who are they really? And why? And what does that tell me about myself? It's why little brothers the world over read their big sisters' diaries, why reality t.v. got so popular, why everybody likes pop psychology and why our culture has such a weird obsession with serial killers.

A really bad memoir creates a persona that the person himself does not possess. It cheats us out of the window into his life that the memoir promises. Whether this is done through bending the truth, pushing an agenda, or hiding behind a contrived voice ("I'm so folksy and wise" is my personal least-favorite), it makes the whole concept of the memoir useless.

The Source by James A. Michener?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Source_%28novel%29

That's great that your wife is getting into graphic novels! There are so many different stories being told in this format now; it's a pretty exciting time to be discovering comics. 

In addition to all the great suggestions below, I'd add the following that haven't been mentione yet: 100 Demons by Lynda Barry, funny yet sometimes hearbreaking look at the author's personal demons -- from head lice to the 2000 election, Berlin: City of Stones by Jason Lutes, which chronicles the fall of the Weimar Republic through the eyes of its citizens of all classes & backgrounds, Aya by Marguerite Abouet & Clement Oubrerie, a light-hearted look at the lives of three young women growing up Abidjan, Ivory Coast in the late 1970s, Local by Brian Wood & Ryan Kelly about a young woman named Megan McKeenan who roams the country trying to find herself and her true home -- each chapter is set in a different city in a different year of her life.

I think you can't go wrong with Los Bros Hernandez -- especially the early Locas & Palomar stuff -- especially if your wife is looking for strong, three-dimensional female characters who grow and develop over time. And I totally agree that Sandman is a great entryway to graphic novels for many comics newbies.The new Absolute Sandman editions are a little cumbersome, but gorgeous.

Since you mentioned she's not afraid to try a little fantasy, I'd also suggest she try Castle Waiting by Linda Medley which is less a novel than a set of interconnected stories that take some of the more sexist conventions of fairytales and turn them on their heads. Another fun fantasy comic series is Fables by Bill Willingham, about classic fairytale characters like Snow White and the Big Bad Wolf who are forced to make their home in modern day NYC after an evil Adversary takes over their storybook homeland.

If she likes dystopic, post-apocalyptic science fiction (think The Road) and doesn't mind violence, swearing and some gratuitous nudity, she might like Y: The Last Man by Brian K. Vaughan about Yorick, who wakes up one day that a mysterious plague has wiped out all males on earth except him & his pet monkey. Accompanied by special agent 355 he goes on a quest to find his girlfriend Beth & discover why he alone has managed to survive. 

You can find more suggestions on a list of great graphic novels for adults put together by librarians at the Seattle Public Library.

If your wife wants more suggestions, she should email the librarians at SPL and tell them a little bit more about what she does and doesn't like to read -- favorite authors, books she loved (or hated), etc & they'll make up a list just for her. 

Hope this helps you out!

I don't wanna become a one-trick pony here, but the dedication to 'The Abortion', while not as sincere or lofty as any of the ones mentioned so far, got me to read the book in the first place:

Frank:
come on in —
read novel —
it's on table
in front room.
I'll be back
in about
two hours.
Richard

And, yeah, the Little Prince.

The Selfish Gene, hands down. It does an amazing job of explaining gene-centered evolution, and how genes adapt and interact within an organism and environment. By doing so it clarifies how such complex traits like reciprocal altruism can arise through evolution. I make it required reading for my evolution students.

I'm not as much in for some of his "yay atheism" books, but the selfish gene is by far one of the greatest non-technical books on evolution out there.

For similar reasons, I also love The Blind Watchmaker.

What is it about Dean Koontz? I won’t make value judgments on him as an author, but I will say that there seem to be an inordinate number of readers who stick with him and will read nothing else, which seems… unhealthy? shall we say. Non-nutritious? Kind of like people who eat only Domino’s pizza – I get the appeal, but trust me – there’s other kinds of pizza out there that are really goooood. Sometimes this wierd brand loyalty of Koontz fans kind of gets me down.

To which end, maybe it is best not to go jumping to filet mignon, but just to start with some other really good non-Dominos pizza.

For instance: John Farris – just in general – Phantom Nights, Solar Eclipse, Soon She Will Be Gone, You Don’t Scare Me… Farris is a great read for Koontz fans – very similar appeal.

Another horror writer who might appeal is Bentley Little – a really good atmospheric writer whose stories have a wonderfully nightmarish feel – I especially like his The Ignored, about a man who seems to be almost invisible at his job, which drives him kind of crazy. And T.M. Wright’s Laughing Man – really really freaking terrifying and weird. And finally John Saul, who is also on the suspenseful end of the horror spectrum – try The God Project or Creature.

Moving a bit farther afield, how about Greg Bear – something like Blood Music or Dead Lines, both of which are very gripping and thrillerish in a way Koontz fans will appreciate, with the added bonus of being a great way to tiptoe into the more thought-provoking reaches of speculative fiction – and into the Science Fiction section of the library / bookstore. In a similar vein, perhaps Blue Light by Walter Mosley – a Koontzish fable that may tempt him on to Mosley’s other - frankly better - work in a variety of genres.

Then there's Bad Men, by John Connolly. Here is a supernatural thriller in the best tradition of Koontz (it is set in Maine, so I can’t help thinking of Stephen King as well), written by a really gifted Irish-born writer who has done some good mysteries and literary fiction.

They’re Watching, by Gregg Hurwitz. HIGH octane suspense – creepy, mysterious, supernatural? Very well done. Similarly, Blackout by Guy Smith – a good horror thriller.

And finally, The Lost Girls, by Andrew Pyper. Here is a terrifically creepy, uncanny suspense novel by a Canadian author – and I think a very good read for Koontz fans.

I haven't read Stoner yet, but now I will have to. It sounds like it's probably a good idea to read more by Williams or to go for the Cather as well, but if you need more...

For more academic settings and/or professors, try A New Life by Bernard Malamud (set in a fictional Oregon town), Straight Man by Richard Russo (which everyone thinks is very funny--and it is--but I think is truly tragic as well) and The Rebel Angels by Robertson Davies (first book in the Cornish trilogy).

For a elegaic school boy coming-of-age, try William Maxwell's The Folded Leaf.

For books with a similarly melancholy tone, try two other NYRB reprints, The Go-between by L. P. Hartley or Hard Rain Falling by Don Carpenter, which is sad and brutal of the school-of-hard-knocks variety.

It was originally printed in a book by publishers Price/Stern/Sloan in 1973, as by Albran with two "collaborators", Martin A. Cohen and Sheldon Shacket, and in the copyright entry for the book Albran is listed as a pseudonym of those two men.

Indeed, the page you found it on includes the original dedication from the book, which states "The Author is deeply indebted to Martin A. Cohen and Sheldon Shacket for conceiving this book, writing it and drawing the pictures.".

Sheldon Shacket appears to have only ever written one other book, "The Complete Book of Electric Cars". There are umpteen Martin A. Cohens on the web; I have no idea if this is the Jewish historian, the lawyer, the doctor...

PSS was and is a publisher of comedy books -- they are responsible for the "Mad Libs", for instance. Price and Stern were writers for the old Steve Allen TV show along with a million other TV and cartoon projects (including Mad Magazine).

I'm curious to hear what people say - I have not read it, though owing to a quirk of fate I wound up with TWO copies of it, as it was a selection of both the Rumpus Book Club and Indiespensable. Like you, I'm trying to figure out whether I want to even try - I'm a fairly slow reader, and so I am a lot more adventuresome with novellas than with doorstops.

could it be Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives by David Eagleman?

If the writing warrants it. However: It'd be received much better as a piece of journalism.

Why not sell it in installments to a major news outlet/paper/magazine? That would pass the "I'd wanna read it THEN" test, for a lot of people.

As a lesser ave, you could Blog it to provide 'true' Gonzo ala Thompson's ideal: instant, unedited, prankish reporting - ex: you could fictionalize the timeline and post the installments as if real-time, for example.

Last resort: don't fictionalize a thing, include the classified stuff, and send it to wikileaks!

True Gonzo is good, but damn hard to pull off if you're not Wolfe, Thompson, Plimpton, Bangs, et al (and/or arguably Robbins, Ellis, Mencken, Twain et al.)

Good luck.

For its strong sense of place, I recently enjoyed River House by Sarahlee Lawrence, a memoir of building a house by hand with her father in Central Oregon. I wanted to jump in the car and drive down there the whole time I was reading it.

Fiction-wise I'd second The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, along with just about anything by Haruki Murakami, just for the quality of his writing. His novels are set in Japan but are replete with references to western culture and music. Personally I prefer Jay Rubin's translations of his work.

A favorite essay collection is The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner. It's a collection of essays about a variety of countries, all focused on happiness and why some cultures seem more content than others. It's funny and fascinating, and two years after reading it, parts of this book are still lurking in the back of my mind.

What a tasty question – I look forward to seeing what people suggest. You’re probably already familiar with the Literary Review’s Bad Sex in Fiction Award, just given the other day Rowan Somerville’s The Shape of Her, for such choice phrases as “like a lepidopterist mounting a tough-skinned insect with a too blunt pin he screwed himself into her.” Shudder. 

I am reminded of one anthology called The Naughty Bits: The Steamiest (and Most Scandalous) Sex Scenes from the World's Greatest Books. That might lead you in some interesting directions. (A similar earlier collection was The Literary Companion to Sex, which also includes poetry).

I’m afraid the examples that first spring to my mind are both on the disturbing side. First is Georges Bataille's Story of the Eye, which is filled with truly incredible, bizarre, grotesque sexual imagery. Be warned.

The other is an extraordinary novel which begins with two highly erotic sections, and the gradually transforms itself into a different kind of novel altogether. To reveal more would be a crime against the book, but I can HIGHLY recommend D.M. Thomas’s The White Hotel, if you enjoy a book as provocative to the mind as to the privates, and one that is more than a little disturbing, this is one you won’t soon forget.

For a rollicking good romp in the hay, Andrei Codrescu’s Casanova in Bohemia is good, and certainly well-written by almost any definition.

Some other titles for your consideration:

Allison Fell’s The Pillow Boy of the Lady Onogoro.

Nedjma’s The Almond: The Sexual Awakening of a Muslim Woman.

Ana Castillo’s Peel My Love Like an Onion.

The Calligrapher, by Edward Docx.

Damage, by Josephine Hart.

Hi there,

I think it is still a little too early for a comprehensive history of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath that contains everything you mention, but there are some really good books out there on the storm and its devastating impact on New Orleans and the Gulf that are definitely worth reading. Douglas Brinkley’s book, The Great Deluge, was published a year after the disaster and remains one of the nonfiction accounts with the broadest scope of any of the Katrina books. Brinkley is a New Orleans resident and historian who uses multiple narrative threads to tell the story of the storm and the government’s woefully inadequate response.  City Adrift is an eye-opening investigation by seven top journalists into various pre-existing environmental, social, and economic factors that contributed to the disaster. The staff of the local newspaper, The Times-Picayune, won a Pulitzer prize for their Katrina coverage, and you can see evidence of their reporting skills in metro editor Jed Horne’s Breach of Faith. There's also been a slew of first-person accounts and memoirs of Katrina by New Orleans residents and survivors too numerous to mention here.

Other books I think you might like if you liked Zeitoun and Ninth Ward: A.D. New Orleans After the Deluge by Josh Neufeld, a graphic novel that recounts the true stories of seven Katrina survivors from different walks of life, and Hurricane Song by Paul Volponi, a gripping teen novel that provides a fictionalized account of the horrors experienced by storm survivors in the Superdome.

I know you’re looking for books, but there are also two excellent documentaries on Katrina: Spike Lee’s When the Levees Broke and Trouble the Water.

Hope you find something here that will tide you over until the definitive account is published. I’m guessing that won’t come out for another 10 years or so. . .

Here are a few ideas for your consideration:

The Quincunx, by Charles Palliser – a big complex Dickensian multiple mystery dense with atmosphere, gothic flourishes and a truly puzzling plot that is a blast to figure out. His The Unburied is also really good although about half as long, if you’d rather have something shorter. Also in the same universe is The Dress Lodger, by Sheri Holman. Another densely detailed Victorian mystery – grim and grisly fun. Or you could return to the source and read Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White. Just to throw out a few more in this vein. Ex Libris, by Ross King, The Syracuse Codex, by Jim Nisbet.

Mr. White’s Confession, by Robert Clark. This depression era literary mystery about a photographer who seems the perfect suspect for a series of murders will have you guessing until the very end, and then you’ll want to talk about it to compare notes. Beautifully written, surprising, and curious.

Zeitgest, by Bruce Sterling. Wild jam-packed funny thrilling hypersmart thing, circa Y2K, and on a par w/ Robbins & Stephenson. Also Jack Womack’s Let’s Put the Future Behind Us.

American Gods, by Neil Gaiman. The old gods never died – they’ve just gone into hiding, but now a new race of American gods – television, credit, internet, plastic – are taking over, and the old gods make their stand. Rollicking, thoughtful, fun. (Which reminds me of The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break, by Steven Sherrill. The minotaur is working in a rib shack, trying to live a normal life and find love outside the labyrinth) Likewise, you might enjoy James Morrow’s Towing Jehovah, about what happens when the corpse of god (who is dead, or hadn’t you heard) lands on earth. Morrow is smart and irreverent and fun to read – it is the first of a trilogy.

Oh Pure and Radiant Heart, by Lydia Millet. A librarian starts a world peace cult three famous nuclear physicists who have travelled from the past. It sounds hokier than it is – what it is, is brilliant and moving and fascinating.

(I recently suggested to another reader Dan Simmons’ The Terror and Kathryn Davis’ The Thin Place, and think you two just might like those as well).

A: 1. put out an ad. Do you have money to hire an artist? (If not, and please let me stop you if you're hoping for a volunteer/'you'll get paid when I do' collaborator - you'd be asking a lot; too much. )
2. take art classes so you might do it yourself.

Look up "The Drawing Board" online community -it is a good start. Lurk for a bit before jumping in with your sales pitch, please.

Denny O'Neil (a decent writer of considerable fame) has an excellent book on the subject called "the DC guide to writing comics" which nails your followup Q's on workload balance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Writeforcomics.png
The short answer is: every team is different, and the split entirely depends on the skills/desires of the players involved - if you are into cinematic camera-angle descriptions and high-detail, then find an artist who gets off on getting that info. On the flipside, Stan Lee used to just shout short bursts of 'oratory storyboard' at Steve Ditko and he'd just about run with it from there.

Richard Price’s books might work for you – I’d especially suggest his Lush Life, which is a remarkably complex and impressively convincing look at crime and how it reflects our society. In fact, a number of authors featured in this list of titles for readers who enjoyed HBO’s The Wire do a similar job with both fiction and non-fiction. Certainly George Pelecanos.

Andrew Vachss might be another one to try: his world is very dark indeed – a world in which the criminal underclass work together to police society’s most depraved transgressors. Those are the Burke books, but you might also try a non-series novel such as Two Trains Running, which is a riveting and bloody account of a corrupt Midwestern town in 1959.

Likewise Loren Estleman’s Gas City is that good – even better than Ellroy in some ways. Ace Atkins’ Devil’s Garden, in San Francisco, or the Florida set White Shadow. Michael Simon’s Dan Reles series. David Peace’s Red Riding Quartet.

I wonder if you might enjoy Walter Mosley's Easy Rawlins crime novels, that cover a range of decades in Los Angeles, with a very thoughtful critique of race and social relations backing them up. Likewise Ken Kuhlken’s California Century series. An interesting recent Hollywood noir sort of book is Joseph Kanon’s Stardust. Megan Abbot is also good that way.

If you really want to get darker than dark, I recommend Derek Raymond’s Factory Novels, or Tom Coffey’s Blood Alley.

For non-fiction, Charles Bowden’s Down By the River: Drugs, Money, Murder and Family, which looks at the Mexican drug wars; Edward Bunker’s Education of a Felon; Norman Mailer’s Executioner’s Song.

For depth, complication, and all-around trickiness, the best SF has to offer is Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun. It was originally published in four volumes and is now available as a two-book set. Ursula Le Guin called him the genre's Melville, if that carries any weight.