Emily Fridlund's 6 favorite books about self-deception

The Beast in the Jungle by Henry James (Dover, $4). James' ghost story The Turn of the Screw famously reckons with the unreliability of human perception. But I find his late novella The Beast in the Jungle even more confounding when it comes to crises of vision and insight. It shows how a self-aggrandizing fantasy can distort an entire life. Lamb by Bonnie Nadzam (Other Press, $16). This is one of the most unflinching and seductive novels I know about a man's drive to deceive himself. David Lamb...