Giordano Bruno

“Prophecy” by S.J. Parris, Doubleday, 375 pages, $26.95. It is 1583 in London. Queen Elizabeth I is on the throne. One of her maids of honor is found murdered with astrological symbols cut into her flesh. Giordano Bruno is investigating. The...

Last week I visited Jet Propulsion Laboratory during its annual open house. I was told by JPL media relations that about 30,000 to 40,000 visitors attended the event. I was in high school the last time I attended a JPL open house, attending as part of an...

Even its irreverent name, an odd mix of upper- and lowercase letters, suggests the whimsy of the duoMo hotel. Noted industrial architect Ron Arad headed the design team for this futuristic hotel in Rimini, hometown of Italian director Federico Fellini....

There's something inspiring for old-fashioned book lovers out there about an early scene in Deborah Harkness' novel "A Discovery of Witches" (Viking: 579 pp., $28.95). Magical creatures suddenly gather as a woman opens a legendary lost book. Never mind...

Act of Passion A Novel Georges Simenon New York Review Books: $14.95 paper Though successful at his work and family life, a doctor grows dissatisfied and restless and thinks a casual affair is the perfect answer—until the consequences are far...

By Ed Park Though 20 years have passed between the publication of the start and finish of John Crowley's tetralogy "Aegypt" -- time enough, in publishing terms, for the oeuvre to take on the luster of the "Corpus Hermeticum" whose implications it relates...

I admired [Robert Louis] Stevenson; I did more than that. I did what we are not supposed to do with the characters we encounter in books -- I identified with him. --John Crowley, "Robert Louis Stevenson and the Dilemma of an Uncritical Readership" I...

This past weekend I visited Jet Propulsion Laboratory during its annual open house. I was told by JPL media relations that about 30,000 to 40,000 visitors attended the event. I was in high school the last time I attended a JPL open house, attending as...