Novelist Robert Ludlum.

Publishers initially passed on Lionel Shriver's satire on terrorism, The New Republic. The manuscript languished in a drawer until now, but can a work written 13 years ago remain relevant today?

Novelist Robert Stone. His new novel "Damascus Gate" is about the Middle East. Unlike most writers who write about the region, Stone is not Jewish; he's a lapsed Catholic. One reviewer writes of the book that it is "so comprehending of Israel's convoluted workings and its bifurcated culture--where the Biblical fervor of Jerusalem coexists with the disco fever of Tel Aviv--that he makes other writers on the subject seem like the breeziness of literary tourists." Stone is also the author of "Outerbridge Reach" and "Dog Soldiers."

White South African writer André Brink was the first Afrikaner to have a novel censored by the government. Brink has written six novels and many essays about the moral dilemmas facing Afrikaners of conscience. His novel "A Dry White Season," was adapted into a film of the same name. His new novel, a political thriller, is called "An Act of Terror." (Summit press)