In Daniel Espinosa's "Life," an international space station orbiting the Earth intercepts an automated capsule returning from Mars with samples: rocks, dust and, as it turns out, a tiny...

Jason Matthews is a retired CIA officer who now writes spy novels, focused on Russia. He was working on a book last year that ordinarily would seem a little far-fetched, but which proved too close to...

Rodney Crowell was headlining a music festival recently, speaking from the stage to a large, admiring audience, when he confessed with a chuckle that songwriter's block sometimes lasts a decade or...

Not since Marlon Brando in "Apocalypse Now" murmured of "the horror" has such a brooding beast lurked deep within a war-ravaged jungle as the King Kong of "Kong: Skull Island." Yes, the big...

Former newsman Brad Parks has enjoyed a successful run with a series of entertaining, well-crafted crime novels whose protagonist is a sharp-witted reporter at a Newark, New Jersey, daily that's in...

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Don't believe the title of Ed Sheeran's new album. He doesn't want to divide. His math this time is all about compiling, accumulating. On "Divide," the British singer-songwriter shoots out a...

In 2015, former Talking Heads front man David Byrne staged an unconventional show in which he paired up 10 contemporary musicians and performers with color guard teams - those baton and saber twirling...

"The Idiot," Elif Batuman's beautifully written first novel, is a wry, funny coming-of-age story set at the dawn of email among a group of Harvard brainiacs too nerdy and self-involved to even think...

  The year is 2064 and Europe has been rent asunder by political divisions and cataclysmic climate change. Air travel and global telecommunications networks are long gone, and borders have...