Jon Sweeney reviews "Lessons in Hope: My Life with John Paul II," "Milosz: A Biography," and "This Long Pursuit: Reflections of a Romantic Biographer."

Very few professors become best-selling authors, but it happens.

So what defines a Catholic novel? I am still struggling with that question. But I know that that which asks most of us is most worthy of us.

'The Relic Master,' by Christopher Buckley; 'The Man Who Loved Birds,' by Fenton Johnson; "The Thing About December,' by Donal Ryan

'Hellbreak Volume 1,' by Cullen Bunn and Dave Stewart; 'The Best American Comics 2015,' edited by Jonathan Lethem and BIll Kartalopoulos; 'Poetry is Useless,' by Andrew Nilsen; 'Blankets,' by Craig Thompson

'The Letters of T. S. Eliot,' by T. S. Eliot, and 'The Collected Letters of Robinson Jeffers, with Selected Letters of Una Jeffers,' by Robinson Jeffers

'Moral Agents,' by Edward Mendelson; 'Our Only World,' by Wendell Berry; 'There Is Simply Too Much to Think About,' by Saul Bellow

St. Francis of Assisi visits New York

'Aimless Love,' by Billy Collins, 'Blue Horses,' by Mary Oliver and 'Dylan Thomas,' edited by Hannah Ellis

The African novel has come of age in the early 21st century North American diaspora Straddling homelands histories myths looking for values and identity somewhere in between mdash those are the grand topics of the African novel ldquo Novelists are sorted by the language they wrote in rdquo St