Night-Table Reading

Malt LeBlanc,actor: The Last Sanctuary, by Craig Holden (Delacorte). "It's an extremely intelligent thriller that deals with more than just black and white or good and evil. It paints a more complex, realistic—and I think fascinating—picture of human nature."

Karen Black,actress: As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner (Vintage). "If called upon to report what the spontaneous seconds of life are really like as they hiss by— textured, redolent of half-memories— most people would be unable to do so accurately. Faulkner's people, stunningly, can."

Belly White, actress: The True Life Story of Isobel Roundtree, by Kathleen Wallace King (Washington Square Press). "It was a first novel that was given to me, and I found the writing just enchanting."

David Black, writer, producer: A Village Romeo and Juliet, by Gottfried Keller (Scribner). "In her introduction to a 1914 translation, Edith Wharton wrote, 'Certain images of Gottfried Keller's rank with Shakespeare's. '"