Let me begin by saying that I am one of those naturally wary people who considers the verb 'return' a kind of insidious threat.

Well, get this: you can’t be sure. You’ll never be sure. In my book, sure’s for everyone who doesn’t care enough.

By almost every account he’s a fine young man. I’m simply trying to figure out why I should care that he’s three centimeters taller than he was in May.

I want to tell this right. I was thirty-eight years old. I had spent my entire adult life reading meanings into other people’s stories, finding the figure in the carpet, the order in things. God in the details and no place else.

Beyond the terrace, a light breeze stirred the reeds at the edge of the pond. Looking out at this intimate vista, one could see the reeds and a stone lantern and the brightest of the evening's stars floating on the gloaming mirror of the pond. Then the breeze came again to crack the water's surface, and the picture was flooded.

It is one thing to recognise certain potentially useful affinities, and another to act on them.

Certain experiences you never forget, no matter how old you become.

Anyone who loved Tuesdays with Morrie should delight in reading The Five People You Meet in Heaven. Mitch Albom has populated his larger-than-life tale with memorable characters and filled it with the abundant warmth and wisdom that we've come to expect from this gifted storyteller.

I have long admired the visceral storytelling and moral complexity of John Vaillant’s brilliant non-fiction about humankind’s tragically ambivalent relationship with the natural world. Now he brings his abundant literary gifts to a debut novel set in a very real borderland in which human beings are themselves treated like animals. The Jaguar’s Children is a beautifully rendered lament for an imperiled culture and the brave lives that would preserve it. You should read it.

The Jaguar's Children is a beautifully rendered lament for an imperiled culture and the brave lives that would preserve it. You should read it.