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Novelist Colson Whitehead is also a devoted poker player. And in 2011 Grantland gave him the assignment to write about the World Series of Poker — by playing in it.

After Pearl Harbor, about 120,000 Japanese Americans were uprooted and forced to live for years in federal camps. Internment changed the traditional Japanese diet and erased the family table.

Raymond Gunt is profane, rude, heartless and truly the Worst. Person. Ever. Author Douglas Coupland says he's not exactly sure how the character, with no redeeming qualities, came into his mind.

The Ballad of a Small Player is set in the murky underworld of Macau's casinos. Reviewer Tash Aw calls the novel a masterful and thrilling collision of old Asia and 21st century glamour.

The announcement of the winners and finalists for the Pulitzer Prizes gives us an opportunity to herald great journalism that illuminates matters relating to race, ethnicity and culture.

Author Antoine Wilson suggests bypassing Proust in favor of a far shorter choice: Nicholson Baker's 1988 novel, which shares the internal monologue of a businessman on an escalator. Shoelaces, drinking straws and the corporate culture of men's bathrooms undergo thorough analysis in this slim book, which Wilson calls "relentlessly perceptive."

The memoir Eat, Pray, Love turned author Elizabeth Gilbert into a phenomenon. Now, she turns again to fiction with The Signature of All Things, a novel that reviewer Lizzie Skurnick calls "one of the best of the year."

Dana Goodyear's new Anything That Moves is an eyes-(and-mouth)-wide-open trip through America's foodie subcultures, from raw food enthusiasts to underground supper clubs. Reviewer Jason Sheehan says Goodyear is a "fair guide to the underbelly," but doesn't exercise enough critical judgment when it comes to the crazier dishes.

Nicole Mones' new Night in Shanghai follows an African-American pianist making his way in the city's nightclub scene on the eve of World War II. Reviewer Alan Cheuse says the story really swings.

Jason Mott's novel The Returned is now an ABC television series called Resurrection, which premieres this weekend. The plot was inspired by a dream Mott had about his mother.