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Before you buy the Ford Fiesta ST for its performance and technology, make sure two people go for the test ride: you and your partner. What you call a sporty ride, your partner may find harsh. You may be thrilled that a car this quick and poised on twisty mountain roads gets 35 mpg on the highway. Your partner will ...

The freshened 2014 Hyundai Equus expands its technology offerings to go along with an incredible value proposition. Every Equus comes standard with navigation, blind spot detection, rear cross traffic alert, lane departure warning and adaptive cruise control. The more upscale Equus Ultimate model adds in a useful head-up display, dual rear entertainment screens, and an all-glass cockpit display system. Among ...

Rosanne Cash, Johnny Cash’s daughter but a longtime New Yorker, looks South in her new CD All roads lead South on the new Rosanne Cash CD. Nearly every song name-drops a place below the Mason-Dixon line, from Nashville to Mobile to Mississippi to, most often, Memphis, a city that serves as a central character in no fewer than three of ...

“The Housemaid’s Daughter” “The Housemaid’s Daughter” by Barbara Mutch (St. Martin’s) Quiet, grievous loss pervades “The Housemaid’s Daughter.” The novel is about a black woman and her white mistress in South Africa, each dedicated to the other and both cruelly undone when apartheid is enacted and becomes their new reality. Barbara Mutch’s first novel, a saga spanning five decades, is ...

Sometimes even the best albums can slip through the cracks. The Court Yard Hounds’ latest CD, “Amelita,” came out back in July, but somehow got lost in the shuffle. It ranks as the greatest overlooked album of the year and, so, deserves mention before 2013 passes us by. The Hounds owes their life to the temporary fracturing of the Dixie ...

The BMW 3 Series defined sporty sedan performance for three decades. Now the compact Bimmer is also a flag-bearer for driver assistance technology and engine efficiency. You can have the 3 Series with a gas engine, turbo diesel, or hybrid. Get the diesel and come summer, as BMW notes, you can make it from New York to the beach on ...

TANNEN MAURY/EPA Beyonce, pictured performing during the halftime show of Super Bowl XLVII, dropped a surprise album on her fans Thursday night – but what isn’t as shocking is how good it is. Beyonce — one of pop’s most exposed star — has somehow found a way to show us yet another side. In her new CD, the emphatically named ...

Helen Warner/Helen Warner Ciaran Hinds (l.) and Michael McElhatton in ‘The Night Alive’ Conor McPherson’s moody new drama, “The Night Alive,” focuses on two down-and-out Dubliners who meet by chance. Sweet, right? Not really. McPherson is a playwright who embraces life’s dark streaks and mysteries. He has gone there before many times, including in his ghostly dramas “The Weir” and ...

Apple The iPad Air has a sleek exterior that borrows from the iPad Mini and a new processor — and it’ll be hard to beat this holiday season. It’s no longer revolutionary, and it’s no longer alone. But, somehow, Apple’s newest iPad, the iPad Air, remains the finest tablet in an increasingly crowded, increasingly confusing market. The company that began ...

Over the past week, I’ve been playing with the Xbox One, and I have great news: It’s better than the PS4. The console is definitely not prettier or better designed than the PS4, and the Xbox One gamepad is slightly worse than the DualShock 4, but the Xbox One wins in every other way: Launch games, functionality, and overall polish ...