Diversions

NextGov Column: The latest NASA Rover will be heading to Mars with some new gadgets and gear, namely a set of high-definition ears that will let us hear what the Red Planet sounds like, and an experimental helicopter that could greatly enhance future visits.

The Library of Congress is inviting fifth and sixth graders in the Mid-Atlantic region to share the books that have shaped their lives in an essay contest. If you know a student who reads, let him or her know about this contest, being held in conjunction with the National Book Festival.

The plot has become a cliché, which can mask the hilarity, bombast and humanity of this great play.

One of Dickens’ best-known and best-loved books, a great mystery and a story of redemption—for Pip, his benefactor and his tormentor.

The granddaddies of action adventure stories. But beyond the carnage and monsters there are characters that make these classics worth reading.

Halberstam brings all of his reporting talent to bear on one idyllic season of the National Pastime and a pennant race between perennial rivals the Yankees and the Red Sox.

The Master reexamines Pontius Pilate and Jesus, Margarita must decide what she is willing to do for love, and Satan punctures bureaucrats, hypocrites and thieves in Soviet-era Moscow.

A romantic adventure set in the Scottish borderlands and Northern England in 1715. The colorful outlaw and rebel Rob Roy MacGregor steps in to defend Scotland, the underdog and true love.

Both Gene Fowler and H. Allen Smith were journalists who went everywhere, knew everybody and wrote about all of it. This is Smith’s laugh-out-loud biography of his friend.