In Persuasion Nation

George Saunders should be well-known to readers of mags like The New Yorker (hey look it's a video of him reading at the New Yorker Festival in October), Harper's, and Insanely Awesome Short Story Monthly. He knocked me out right from the start (the unforgettable CivilWarLand in Bad Decline) and his most recent collection should provide ample "yeah really" for his recent MacArthur "genius" fellowship. Combining an uncanny knack for public-relations speak with a total disregard for boundaries like mortality, physics, or sanity, many of his stories take place in a disturbingly plausible near-future where teens are sold into market research camps and torn corners of candy wrappers become false gods. But inside all the frizz (and don't worry, some stories are just about, you know, normal people), a truthful heart beats, and it beats for you.

No Country for Old Men

Cormac McCarthy knows a thing or two about violence and hard-bitten men. Just reading this book makes me want to cut my verbiage down to five words a day, and drink more black coffee. Not as epic as some of his past work, but then few books are. Still, he does treat us to sentences like "The man slid soundlessly to the ground, a round hole in his forehead from which the blood bubbled and ran down into his eyes carrying with it his slowly uncoupling world visible to see."

And the Coen boys are making the movie, which is bound to make Fargo look like Mother Goose.