"The Candy House opens with the staggeringly brilliant Bix Bouton, whose company, Mandala, is so successful that he is 'one of those tech demi-gods with whom we're all on a first name basis.' Bix is 40, with four kids, restless, desperate for a new idea, when he stumbles into a conversation group, mostly Columbia professors, one of whom is experimenting with downloading or 'externalizing' memory. It's 2010. Within a decade, Bix's new technology,...

"Japanese literary sensation Fuminori Nakamura's latest novel is as a dark look into human psyche--what turns someone into a killer? Can it be something as small as a suggestion? Turn this page, and you may forfeit your entire life. A confessional diary implicates its reader in a heinous crime, and reveals with disturbing honesty the psychological motives of a killer. With [this novel, the author] has constructed a puzzle-box of a narrative that delves...