I was reminded just recently of the writer Jerzey Kosinski - the reference was to Being There, but his best book was The Painted Bird, about an abandoned orphan in Russia leading up to WWII. This is outsider fiction the way art brut is outsider art. Kosinski got into some trouble later on in his career, after he got successful enough to excite envy I suppose. In any case, for the umpteenth time, YOU CANNOT COPYRIGHT A PLOT !!!

More nonfiction; Mop Men: Inside the World of Crime Scene Cleaners by Alan Emmins. Emmins took a job with a company that does just what the title says. Not for the squeamish, but interesting.

For nonfiction, Jennifer Finley Boylan has written a memoir called "I'm Looking Through You: Growing Up Haunted", which covers both haunted houses and transgenderism intelligently and amusingly (Jennifer used to be James). I would put this in the same category with Running With Scissors.

Chris Cleave wrote a very good book (that actually came out some time ago) about the Al-Queda bombings in London called Incendiary, where the narrator is the wife and mother of two of the victims. Survivor fiction - I should have mentioned it before, it was a very good book. Anyway, he has a new one coming out called Little Bee ; a complete change of venue since the narrator is a little girl from Nigeria. Nigeria being what it is, I suspect this is still survivor fiction.