Jane Smiley

An abundance of big, provocative novels has burst forth this spring and while one could save them for summer doldrums, this critic advises: Don't wait. It's difficult to conceive "In the Fall"(Atlantic Monthly Press, 560 pages, $25) as a first novel -- the saga's complexity and the faultless grace of Jeffrey Lent's language bespeak a seasoned writer. From mysterious prologue to searing ending, this epic tale of interracial relationships spanning Civil War through Depression startles, engages and compels.

"The second croc charge is more serious. With its mouth open, teeth bared like a rabid dog's, it motors toward the bow. Then there's a bang as it surfaces right under my feet, just below the inflated floor of the raft."Read in any medium, river adventurer and author Richard Bangs' account of a crocodile attack on Ethiopia's unexplored Tekeze River would be riveting.But the involvement goes up a notch when we can log on to the Internet and read about it just hours after Bangs experienced it, wondering, while he and his team are wondering, if anybody will become reptilian shore lunch (the answer, happily, is no)

WASHINGTON -- Melissa Bank finishes reading an excerpt from her new book, "The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing," and looks out at the small-but-rapt audience hanging onto her every word despite the lunch-time din of Olsson's Books. It's time to take questions, she knows. But she also knows no one ever wants to ask the first question.So she starts. "Am I Jane?" she says of her main character, who links most of the stories in this collection. "I'm not."Yes, she is a witty, 30-ish, single New Yorker who has worked in advertising and Jane Rosenal is a witty, 30-ish etc., etc., etc. But what begins in truth and autobiography will take on its own reality, especially if you work and re-work the material.

It all looks so real, and so inviting: the overflowing mug of cold beer, the takeout Chinese food - snow peas and shrimp with rice noodles, the green tea ready to be poured. The table is elegantly set, and you can practically taste the food. If only you lived in this Columbia townhouse, this could be your life. Except that it's all fake, even the food, which is made of plastic. The townhouse is a model home, one of five in the new community of Snowden Overlook. It has been carefully designed by the builder, Ryland Homes, to appeal to "active adults" 55 or older.

London -- "You can't drink wine with crabs?" asks Julian Barnes.No."Really?" says the acclaimed English novelist.Absolutely. In Baltimore, you order wine with crabs, and waitresses start looking at you like you're from Washington. Crabs. Beer. End of discussion.Mr. Barnes absorbs the advice with a sigh and a smile as he makes final preparations for his trip to Baltimore, where he will spend the fall semester as an instructor at the Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars. In the next three months, the author with a global reach and reputation will supervise two classes of writers, start on a book set in England, live in a West University Parkway apartment, and sample the pleasures of a brawny city with its own literary niche.

In 1984, a 30-year-old local news personality left Baltimore's WJZ-TV to try her hand at hosting a morning talk show in a bigger market, Chicago. Within a year, A.M. Chicago was renamed for its new host, and by 1986 it had begun national syndication. Today, The Oprah Winfrey Show marks its 20th anniversary, and its star is one of the most powerful women in the world, a 51-year-old media mogul and billionaire whose influence reaches into nearly every nook and cranny of contemporary life.

It was August 1984. Exhausted from running Gary Hart' presidential campaign, Bill Shore was leafing through a newspaper when an article stopped him short. The headline read: "As Many as 200,000 to Die of Starvation in Ethiopia."He suddenly felt a keen sense of outrage, which, in turn, filled him with unexpected inspiration."I remember thinking that I was thinking on my own. That I was feeling something again," recalls Mr. Shore. "When you work for a senator for a number of years, you condition yourself to think about what the senator's position would be on different things.