Four decades ago, Erica Jong revolutionized the way we look at love, marriage and sex. Her world-wide bestseller, FEAR OF FLYING opened the doors for writers from Jennifer Weiner to Lena Dunham. Now she does it again by giving us powerful, new perspective on the next phase of women's lives. Full of the sly humor, deep wisdom and poignancy we know from her poetry, fiction and essays, she delivers the novel women everywhere have been waiting for... FEAR OF DYING As the afternoon of life looms over Vanessa Wonderman, she watches her parents age, attends doctor appointments with her pregnant daughter, and sits by the hospital bed of her husband, Asher, fifteen years her senior. With her best years as an actress behind her, she's discovering that beginnings are easy, but endings can be hard. Could her fountain of youth fantasies be fulfilled on zipless.com? A site inspired by the writings of her best friend, Isadora Wing, it promises "no strings attached" encounters-and Vanessa is so restless that she's willing to try anything. Fear of Dying is a daring and delightful look at what it really takes to be human and female in the 21st century. Wildly funny and searingly honest, it is a story for everyone who has ever been shaken and changed by love.

A collection of favorite poems. One of them is by Stephen Crane, who wrote: "I saw a man pursuing the horizon; / Round and round they sped. / I was disturbed at this; / I accosted the man. It's futile, I said, / You can never ̓/ You lie, he cried, / And ran on."

Andrea Robin Kaplan is a clique unto herself. In other words, she has no friends. Her only goal is get through high school with the least amount of humiliation possible, which should be easy— nothing ever happens in the suburbs, right? Wrong. One day, as Andi walks home from school, a little brown VW drives up and she meets Frank. Frank makes her feel beautiful and special. With Frank, Andi forgets how alone she is. From boundary breaking author Lesléa Newman comes a haunting story about a girl who is all alone, and a man old enough to know better. From the Hardcover edition.

In 1920s Austria, no one in the Viennese opera company knows that their wardrobe mistress Tessa is really a princess. But when the dashing self-made millionaire Guy Farne arrives at the opera, Tessa realizes that there may be more to life--and love--than just music.

From acclaimed author, actor, and singer-songwriter David Duchovny, a deeply personal, existential, and insightful debut poetry collection.

When Darcy's older brother David is killed in a terrible accident, Darcy's parents decide to donate his heart for transplant, and Darcy becomes obsessed with finding the person who received his heart, believing that if she can find his heart, she will find her brother.

Planning a wedding can be a trying experience... A little prewedding anxiety is normal for every bride, and Manhattan attorney Brooke Miller isn't worried. She's got the loving support of the world's greatest guy, so planning her nuptials should be a piece of cake. But that was yesterday. Today, Brooke's landed her fi rst big case and has just discovered that the opposing attorney is none other than her fi anc?Jack. But that's okay. These two professionals aren't going to let a little courtroom sparring get their legal briefs in a bunch.... Right? Wrong! Now Jack's pulling every dirty trick in the law books, and Brooke's starting to suspect that maybe he isn't the man she thought he was. Warring with her fi anc?t work and at home, Brooke realizes that she'll have to choose between the case of her life, or actually having a life.

In Viña Delmar's breakthrough novel, "Bad Girl," the author takes readers on a gripping journey through the tenements and working-class married life of 1920s America. Published in 1928, this cautionary tale delves into the controversial themes of premarital sex, pregnancy, and childbirth. The unexpected and immediate sensation of the novel led to its notoriety, even facing a ban in Boston initially. Despite the challenges, "Bad Girl" soared to new heights, becoming the Literary Guild's April 1928 selection and climbing the Publishers Weekly fiction bestseller list to peak at No. 4. Step into the world of societal taboos and forbidden love in this compelling narrative that captivated readers and secured its place as a bestseller in 1928.

A daring novel that shocked the Jazz Age-and still burns with truth today. In Bad Girl, Viña Delmar rips the glittering mask off 1920s romance and exposes the real heartbeat of a generation caught between desire, convention, and survival. In roaring-era New York City, a young woman refuses to play by society's rules. She wants love-but she also wants freedom, respect, and a life that belongs to her alone. When Dorothy, a working-class shop girl with a wild streak, falls for Eddie, a man as stubborn and passionate as she is, their story explodes into a storm of love, pride, independence, and consequence. Beneath the flapper sparkle and jazz-club heat lies a deeply modern struggle: how far can a woman go to live life on her own terms before the world calls her a bad girl? First published in 1928, Bad Girl became an instant bestseller and scandal, earning Delmar both fame and controversy. Banned in some cities and celebrated in others, it was later adapted into an Oscar-winning Hollywood film-one of the first movies to portray love and marriage with raw honesty and emotional depth. Rediscovered today, this lost feminist classic captures the power and vulnerability of women carving out identity in a rapidly changing world. Bad Girl speaks directly to fans of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dorothy Parker, Anita Loos, and Edna Ferber-readers who crave authentic emotion, smart social commentary, and unforgettable storytelling.

A Novel. The raucous, hilarious, big bestseller about sex, guided missiles, real estate, commuters, love and the U.S. Army in a Connecticut town. A very nice vintage collector's item. Number # F1791. Original price 50 cents.

Never silent since that peak in Darien, Mrs. Hobson, who has attacked any form of prejudice including Hollywood's Archie Bunkerisms, now discovers homosexuality. To be sure this is no more than a soap--the follow-up of that letter that Tessa Lynn gets from her third and favorite child Jeff who's in boarding school. Out of the closet, onto the couch where he spends four years. Nothing changes; only Tessa who will learn that it's society that's homophobic and that there should be no stigma to the path he's chosen which leads on to the Gay Lib manifesto. The supreme moment (""her heart shook"") is when Jeff, now a doctor, returns home with his lover by his side. All in the ""fullness"" of maternal love cum enlightenment--no place to be for very long.

In 1955, New York Times bestselling novelist Harold Robbins shocked the world by pulling back the bedroom curtain to expose America's complicated and controversial relationship with the power of female sexuality. The concept was stunning, salacious... and breathtaking--a story not only built entirely upon the premise of illicit sex, but from a woman's point of view, as she uses it to rise to a position of power and wealth in a man's world. It was a seminal moment, and the literary world would never be the same. Fate, love, power, and sex collide in the halls of justice in New York City as ADA Mike Keyes comes face-to-face with his lifelong love, MaryAnn Flood, the city's most notorious--to say nothing of dangerous--madame. Before she was a tabloid celebrity with a little black book full of the names, though, Marja Fluudjincki was a shy young girl who captured his heart and never let it go. In the years since, she's parlayed her beauty into power and position as the head of 79 Park Avenue, an escort service catering to the rich and powerful under the guise of an upscale modeling agency. Now, with Marja on trial and Mike the prosecutor assigned to her case, they both face the biggest challenge of their lives. Is she still capable of love after sacrificing everything to claw her way up from the mean streets to the penthouse? Can he--should he--set aside his personal feelings for the sake of justice? 79 Park Avenue is a story of unanswered, perhaps unanswerable, questions, for society as much as its brilliantly nuanced characters. Why is the promiscuous man celebrated while his female counterpart is shamed? How can we revel in the sexualization of women, yet respect them so little? How much progress have we really made in the battle of the sexes? More than 60 years after its original release, the story of MaryAnn Flood remains just as relevant today, and this, more than anything demonstrates the genius and talent of Harold Robbins.

Ready to follow Nick Hornsby and Helen Fielding as the next big thing from Cool Britannia to hit America is Ben Elton. Already known to a wide public television audience as the funnyman behind Blackadder, The Young Ones, and The Thin Blue Line, Elton, author of Popcorn , lights up the literary sky with Blast from the Past . Part noir thriller, part hilarious send-up of the politics of extremism, Blast from the Past is the new novel from English comedy phenomenon (stand-up, playwright, television writer, and author) Ben Elton--a name soon to be known in all circles once Joel Schumacher's film of his book Popcorn reaches the silver screen. In the early 80s, when Polly was a seventeen-year-old ideological peace protestor and Jack was a U.S. Army captain stationed at England's Greenham Common, the two had a secret and very unlikely affair. No two people could have had more to argue about, save that they couldn't live without each other, yet one day Jack came to the conclusion that he loved soldiering more than Polly and sacrificed their love to be a career army man. Now, sixteen years later, Polly is a lonely thirty-something social services employee and Jack is a four-star general who has returned to Britain to find her, his only true love. With only one night to resolve their differences, and a knife-wielding stalker lurking in the shadows, for everyone concerned this will be a night like no other. From the Hardcover edition.

The glitter and cynicism of Rome under Mussolini provide the background of what is probably Alberto Moravia’s best and best-known novel — The Woman of Rome . It’s the story of Adriana, a simple girl with no fortune but her beauty who models naked for a painter, accepts gifts from men, and could never quite identify the moment when she traded her private dream of home and children for the life of a prostitute.One of the very few novels of the twentieth century which can be ranked with the work of Dostoevsky, The Woman of Rome also tells the stories of the tortured university student Giacomo, a failed revolutionary who refuses to admit his love for Adriana; of the sinister figure of Astarita, the Secret Police officer obsessed with Adriana; and of the coarse and brutal criminal Sonzogno, who treats Adriana as his private property. Within this story of passion and betrayal, Moravia calmly strips away the pride and arrogance hiding the corrupt heart of Italian Fascism.

Acclaimed for such Academy Award—winning screenplays as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and such thrillers as Marathon Man, not to mention the bestselling classic The Princess Bride, William Goldman stands as one of the most beloved writers in America. But long before these triumphs, he caused a sensation with his brilliant first novel, a powerful story of reckless youth that was hailed as a worthy rival to The Catcher in the Rye. THE TEMPLE OF GOLD Ray Trevitt is coming of age in the American midwest of the late 1950s. Handsome, restless, eager to live life and to find his place in the world, Ray hurtles headlong through a young man’s rite of passage–searching for answers and somewhere to belong. What he discovers is that within friendships and love affairs, army tours and married life, victory and tragedy, lie the experiences that will shape his destiny, scar his soul, and ultimately teach him profound lessons he never expected.

"Liberalism orients itself around the idea of self-interest tempered by reason, with the addition of civically useful emotions such as patriotism, self-sacrifice, and empathy. But the politics dominating much of the world shows that these ideals are not enough. William A. Galston argues that the defense of liberal democracy requires understanding the dark forces whose impact on political life liberal democratic institutions seek to mute: the emotions of fear, humiliation, anger, resentment, and hatred, and the drive to dominate. In hard or threatening times, it is these dark passions that most reliably persuade people and move them to action—whether voting or violence. Throughout the democratic world, these institutional defenses are now being tested by a new generation of demagogues. With a keen awareness of the stakes, Galston explains why countering this dangerous development requires not only more responsive public policies but persuasive rhetoric and a realistic conception of political psychology—one that is free of the illusion that reason or affirmative sentiments such as empathy, solidarity, and love can reliably dominate public affairs."--Provided by publisher

Celebrated playwright and magnetic wit Wendy Wasserstein has been firmly rooted in New York’s cultural life since her childhood of Broadway matinees, but her appeal is universal. Shiksa Goddess collects thirty-five of her urbane, inspiring, and deeply empathic essays–all written when she was in her forties, and all infused with her trademark irreverent humor. The full range of Wasserstein’s mid-life obsessions are covered in this eclectic collection: everything from Chekhov, politics, and celebrity, to family, fashion, and real estate. Whether fretting over her figure, discovering her gentile roots, proclaiming her love for ordered-in breakfasts, lobbying for affordable theater, or writing tenderly about her very Jewish mother and her own daughter, born when she was forty-eight and single, Wasserstein reveals the full, dizzying life of a shiksa goddess with unabashed candor and inimitable style.

A dinner party in an ornate mansion on the fashionable Upper East Side of Manhattan provides the scene for this witty and incisive play. Set in two eras--the early 1900s and our own Gilded Age--the characters move effortlessly from one period to the other. The host, a contemporary master of high-risk arbitrage, steps in and out of character as a robber baron of an earlier time. His guests of today include a Hollywood director, a not-so-cutting-edge sculptor, an online lingerie designer, an aggressive publicist, and an aging historian. Their counterparts from the past are the great man's rebellious son, a grand dame of New York society, the architect who built the mansion originally, and the maids and servants who maintain it. In this dance of rich storytelling and social commentary, it becomes strikingly clear that while old money has become new, little else has changed over the years. Children still rebel against their controlling parents, women still hope for love, and greed, snobbery, and angst persist.

"You must read Bedelia"--the seductive black-widow thriller by the author of the classic film noir Laura (The New York Times). Charlie Horst has returned with his new bride Bedelia to his family home in Connecticut. Indulgently infatuated, Charlie is the luckiest man alive. What's not to love about Bedelia? She's gorgeous and complacent. She's also a gracious and ideal party host--luscious and decorative in blue velvet. And in public, she plays the part of worshipful wife to perfection. In private, even more so. Who can blame Charlie for overlooking her little deceptions? Or for not paying any mind to her contradictory claims about her past? When Charlie falls ill due to a freak poisoning, Charlie knows that Bedelia will be right his side, watching him closely. But who's watching Bedelia? "Vera Caspary wrote thrillers--but not like any other author of her time, male or female. Her specialty was a specific type that she pioneered--the psycho thriller" (Huffington Post) and this "sinister entertainment" (The New Yorker), is Caspary at her most chilling. Adapted in 1946 into a film starring Margaret Lockwood, Bedelia is "a tour de force of psychological suspense . . . Desperate Housewives meets Double Indemnity" (Liahna Armstrong, President Emeritus, Popular Culture Association).