American Gangbang: A Love Story (Gallery Books, 2011) is a wickedly funny book chronicling Sam Benjamin’s journey from Brown University, where he studied postmodern theory and media, into the world of pornography. Benjamin and Winston Len met up over coffee in the West Village recently to discuss his experience.

How many people can correctly identify the flora and fauna they encounter in everyday life? Fearfully few. Edward Hoagland can do that, and more.

Set in Copenhagen, Falling Sideways is a corporate novel that challenges the status quo life. Most of the characters work for the Tank, a Danish think tank-like organization with a vague “interdisciplinary policy mission.” Besides being a play on the organization’s function, the Tank’s name hints at an unstoppable menace—downsizing is about to wreak havoc on its employees.