The Perils Of Staying Inside

Though his time in the national spotlight amounted to only about a decade, Clerow "Flip" Wilson was one of the great comic voices of the 20th century, a compact fireball whose early-1970s NBC variety series embedded characters such as the Reverend Leroy of the Church of What's Happening Now and Geraldine Jones (a self-assured bundle of sass whose catchphrases were "The devil made me do it" and "What you see is what you get") in the national consciousness.

The Sacramento region is well-populated with retired and active military personnel, who happen to be well-read fans of military-centric literature and fiction.

The Burn Palace is an unsettling mix of sharply observed small-town New England life and a supernatural abduction-and-murder spree. The story begins at Morgan Memorial, a 50-bed hospital in Brewster, R.I. After the frisky Alice Alessio, known more commonly as Nurse Spandex, concludes her tryst with Dr. Balfour, she hurries back to the nursery and, instead of finding the Summers boy in his crib she finds a harmless but scary corn snake. It turns out that the baby is the result of an experience his teenage mother, Peggy, compares to Rosemary's Baby.

In Hope Against Hope, veteran education reporter Sarah Carr takes a penetrating look at what happened to schools in New Orleans after the city was ravaged by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Delta Air Lines president Edward H. Bastian had good news for analysts gathered for a recent industry conference sponsored by JPMorgan.