Jay McInerney's "Model Behavior" is a retelling of a certain eighties novel about Manhattan high life -- but with book critics as villains. Mere coincidence?

In "Ecology of Fear," Mike Davis takes cruel pleasure in describing the disasters -- natural and man-made -- awaiting the Pompeii of the Pacific.

In Richard Powers's "Gain," capitalism itself is the main character, and selling soap has never been so interesting.

Just when it seemed his "Border Trilogy" had thundered out of control comes Cormac McCarthy with a novel that lassoes the first two neatly.

"The Time of Our Time" is Mailer's compelling, exhausting anthologized account of Mailer's boxing match with history.

There's wit and good writing aplenty in Nick Hornby's "About a Boy." But the plot is a well-worn homily of emotional growth.

The products have forsaken the consumers in Douglas Coupland's oddly old-school dispatch from the McAbyss.

In her strange new novel, "Spending," Mary Gordon has taken the themes of Jackie Collins and transposed them to the Upper West Side.

In "Night Train," Martin Amis wanders into a dark alley: His novel about hard-bitten American detectives is a stiff.