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Emma Donoghue's latest follows a nurse in 19th century Ireland who agrees to monitor a famed fasting girl. But both the unsympathetic nurse and the credulous villagers are hard to like or understand.

Christine Mangan's new novel, set in Morocco in the 1950s, centers on the sinister tension between two ex-friends — but the dusty, detailed Moroccan scenery sometimes gets in the way of the story.

U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald said the charges against Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich "would make Lincoln roll over in his grave." Blagojevich was arrested Monday on charges he tried to sell Barack Obama's vacant Senate seat.

One Portland, Ore.-area running store owner is exhibiting a runner's calm about news that barefoot running may put less stress on feet, saying Americans are not set up to run barefoot. But companies such as Nike are releasing minimal shoes that that are supposed to simulate barefoot running and other companies are taking advantage of the growing movement.

French graphic novelist Julie Maroh — author of Blue is the Warmest Color — is back with an earnestly sweet collection of vignettes about love, kept from being saccharine by her skill with faces.

Activist Bill McKibben answers his own call for topical fiction with Radio Free Vermont, a gently surreal tale about a septuagenarian troublemaker who inadvertently sparks a secession movement.

Award-winning comic book writer Paul Jenkins tries his hand at the novel with Curioddity, but this quirky tale of imagination and innocence regained is smothered in smirking self-consciousness.

Sydney Padua's rollicking graphic novel about computing pioneers Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace transforms punch cards and little brass cogs into the stuff of legend, says critic Etelka Lehoczky.

Sometimes, lightning does strike twice: The latest novel by Giles Foden — author of The Last King of Scotland — is an absorbing, elegant and thoughtful read. Turbulence, which dramatizes the Allied effort to use meteorology for military gain during World War II, follows a young meteorologist who must convince a brilliant pacifist to contribute to the war effort.

Unions in France held another day of action on Thursday, but there are signs that their attempt to stop an increase in the retirement age might have been defeated. Both houses of parliament have approved the measure, which now only requires the president's signature to become law. Meanwhile some fuel refineries have reopened, and transport and garbage collection services are reported to be getting back to normal.