The seven stories collected here showcase McCarthy's formidable powers of observation, her deliciously witty writing style, and her celebrated talent for dissecting characters with biting acuity. A young woman looks for subtle (and not-so-subtle) ways to escape her unsatisfying marriage; an innocuous single man's friends realize his companionship has an enormous price; and an Italian guide puzzles a traveling pair of Americans.

An intimately charged novel of desire and disaster from the National Book Award-winning author of Trust Exercise and Flashlight Regina Gottlieb had been warned about Professor Nicholas Brodeur long before arriving as a graduate student at his prestigious university high on a pastoral hill. He’s said to lie in the dark in his office while undergraduate women read couplets to him. He’s condemned on the walls of the women’s restroom, and enjoys films by Roman Polanski. But no one has warned Regina about his exceptional physical beauty—or his charismatic, volatile wife. My Education is the story of Regina’s mistakes, which only begin in the bedroom, and end—if they do—fifteen years in the future and thousands of miles away. By turns erotic and completely catastrophic, Regina’s misadventures demonstrate what can happen when the chasm between desire and duty is too wide to bridge.

In a time when steak, vodka, and Benzedrine were the three main staples of a healthy diet, when high-powered executives called each other "baby" and movie stars wore wigs to bed, network tycoons had a name for the TV set: they called it "the love machine." But to supermodel Amanda, socialite Judith, and journalist Maggie, "the love machine" meant something else: Robin Stone, "a TV-network titan around whom women flutter like so many moths. . . . The novel deals with his rise and fall as he makes the international sex scene (orgying in London, transvestiting in Hamburg), drinks unlimited quantities and checks out the latest Nielsens." (Newsweek)

A Library Journal Horror Best Seller From Nebula Award winner Sam J. Miller comes a frightening and uncanny ghost story about a rapidly changing city in upstate New York and the mysterious forces that threaten it. Ronan Szepessy promised himself he'd never return to Hudson. The sleepy upstate town was no place for a restless gay photographer. But his father is ill and New York City's distractions have become too much for him. He hopes that a quick visit will help him recharge. Ronan reconnects with two friends from high school: Dom, his first love, and Dom's wife, Attalah. The three former misfits mourn what their town has become--overrun by gentrifiers and corporate interests. With friends and neighbors getting evicted en masse and a mayoral election coming up, Ronan and Attalah craft a plan to rattle the newcomers and expose their true motives. But in doing so, they unleash something far more mysterious and uncontainable. Hudson has a rich, proud history and, it turns out, the real-state developers aren't the only forces threatening its well-being: the spirits undergirding this once-thriving industrial town are enraged. Ronan's hijinks have overlapped with a bubbling up of hate and violence among friends and neighbors, and everything is spiraling out of control. Ronan must summon the very best of himself to shed his own demons and save the city he once loathed.

In 2005, celebrated novelist Francisco Goldman married a beautiful young writer named Aura Estrada in a romantic Mexican hacienda. The month before their second anniversary, during a long-awaited holiday, Aura broke her neck while body surfing. Francisco, blamed for Aura's death by her family and blaming himself, wanted to die, too. Instead, he wrote Say Her Name , a novel chronicling his great love and unspeakable loss, tracking the stages of grief when pure love gives way to bottomless pain. Suddenly a widower, Goldman collects everything he can about his wife, hungry to keep Aura alive with every memory. From her childhood and university days in Mexico City with her fiercely devoted mother to her studies at Columbia University, through their newlywed years in New York City and travels to Mexico and Europe--and always through the prism of her gifted writings--Goldman seeks her essence and grieves her loss. Humor leavens the pain as he lives through the madness of grief and creates a living portrait of a love as joyous as it is deep and profound. Say Her Name is a love story, a bold inquiry into destiny and accountability, and a tribute to Aura, who she was and who she would've been.

A stunning early novel by the twice Booker-shortlisted author of Hot Milk and Swimming Home , Deborah Levy. Like her namesake Jack Kerouac, J.K. is always on the road, travelling Europe with her typewriter in a pillowcase. From J.K.'s irreverent, ironic perspective, Levy charts a new, dizzying, end-of-the-century world of shifting boundaries and displaced peoples. _________________________________ 'An exciting writer, sharp and shocking as the knives her characters wield' Sunday Times 'Levy is a brilliant writer' Telegraph 'Levy's strength is her originality of thought and expression' Jeanette Winterson

The sequel to the phenomenal national bestseller and enduring classic Love Story. Can the love of your life appear twice in a lifetime? Oliver Barrett IV found his soulmate in Jenny Cavilleri. Their love was magical and exhilarating...and though heartbreakingly brief, it was a love to last a lifetime. Two years have passed since Jenny was taken from him, and Oliver believes he will never love again. Then one day, Marcie--beautiful and mysterious--enters his world and suddenly the future holds new promise. From the running track in New York's Central Park to the hushed executive suites of a mightly department store empire, from a snowy Massachusetts Christmas to a shattering moment of turth in exotic Hong Kong--the story of Oliver Barrett IV is a story of passion and principle, of a young man's journey out of sadness, into love.

Elements of Style , the Pulitzer Prize—winning playwright Wendy Wasserstein’s first novel, is a scathing comedy about New York's high society facing the post—9/11 world. Francesca Weissman, an Upper East Side pediatrician rated number one by Manhattan magazine, floats on the fringes of the upper strata of privilege and aspiration. Through her bemused eyes we meet the thoroughbred socialite Samantha Acton; relentless social climber Judy Tremont; Barry Santorini, an Oscar-winning moviemaker accustomed to having his way; his supermarket heiress wife, Clarice; and more, tossed together in a frothy stew of outrageous conspicuous consumption and adulterous affairs that play out on Page Six. But when Wasserstein’s madcap tour of the social lives and mores of twenty-first-century Manhattan veers into tragedy, we finally see the true cost of her characters’ choices, and the beating heart of this dazzling novel.

Hailed as one of the best books of 1998 by the Los Angeles Times , this group of twelve short stories was written over the past twenty years. From the steamy streets of New Delhi to New York's tony Upper East Side, Jhabvala's characters grapple with the universal quandaries of the human experience–jealousy, passion, temptation, and deception–truths of life and love that follow no matter where we wander.

In an unnamed country at the beginning of the last century, a child called Pavla is born to peasant parents. Her arrival, fervently anticipated and conceived in part by gypsy tonics and archaic prescriptions, stuns her parents and brings outrage and scorn from her community. Pavla has been born a dwarf, beautiful in face, but as the years pass, she grows no farther than the edge of her crib. When her parents turn to the treatments of a local charlatan, his terrifying cure opens the floodgates of persecution for Pavla. "Little Nothing" unfolds across a lifetime of unimaginable, magical transformation in and out of human form, as an outcast girl becomes a hunted woman whoseultimate survival depends on the most startling transfiguration of them all. Woven throughout is the journey of Danilo, the young man entranced by Pavla, obsessed only with protecting her. Part allegory about the shifting nature of being, part subversive fairy tale of love in all its uncanny guises, "Little Nothing" spans the beginning of a new century, the disintegration of ancient superstitions, and the adoption of industry and invention. With a cast of remarkable characters, a wholly original story, and extraordinary, page-turning prose, Marisa Silver delivers a novel of sheer electricity."

The glorious novel from the bestselling Lesley Lokko; an epic tale of three women whose lives interweave over decades. In a beachfront mansion in Martha's Vineyard, Annick and Rebecca relax, safe in the knowledge that their young children are in the care of life-long friend Tash. But by the end of the afternoon, one of the children will have vanished... Annick, daughter of an actress and an assassinated president, has spent her life running from the truth of her family's wealth. Rebecca has always done the right thing. Perfect daughter. Perfect wife. Perfect mother. She's beginning to wonder if she'll ever get chance to live for herself. And Tash, free from the poverty of her heritage, has the world at her feet. So why is she struggling to keep a grip on her life? This is the sweeping story of three very different women; their pasts, their secrets, and their friendship.

From the author of To Die For comes this poignant, stirring, and occasionally hilarious story of a woman's attempt to remake her life after a searing divorce. Maynard's novel captures love as one approaches middle age in contemporary America.

Bestselling author Jonathan Lethem delivers a hilarious novel about love, art, and what it's like to be young in Los Angeles. Lucinda Hoekke's daytime gig as a telephone operator at the Complaint Line—an art gallery's high-minded installation piece—is about as exciting as listening to dead air. Her real passion is playing bass in her forever struggling, forever unnamed band. But recently a frequent caller, the Complainer, as Lucinda dubs him, has captivated her with his philosophical musings. When Lucinda's band begins to incorporate the Complainer's catchy, existential phrases into their song lyrics, they are suddenly on the cusp of their big break. There is only one problem: the Complainer wants in.

From the New York Times bestselling author of Inheritance and host of the hit podcast Family Secrets —”a cool depiction of a mother and daughter's fraught and fiery relationship” ( USA Today ). Clara Brodeur has spent her entire adult life pulling herself away from her famous mother, the renowned and controversial photographer Ruth Dunne, whose towering reputation rests on the unsettling nude portraits she took of her young daughter. At age eighteen, sick of her notoriety as “the girl in the pictures,” Clara fled New York City, settling and making her own family in small-town Maine. But years later, when Ruth reaches out from her deathbed, Clara suddenly finds herself drawn back to the past she thought she had escaped. From the beloved author of Family History and Slow Motion, a spellbinding novel that asks: How do we forgive those who failed to protect us?

In this moving, wry, and candid novel, widely acclaimed novelist Ayelet Waldman takes us through one woman’s passage through love, loss, and the strange absurdities of modern life.Emilia Greenleaf believed that she had found her soulmate, the man she was meant to spend her life with. But life seems a lot less rosy when Emilia has to deal with the most neurotic and sheltered five-year-old in New York City: her new stepson William. Now Emilia finds herself trying to flag down taxis with a giant, industrial-strength car seat, looking for perfect, strawberry-flavored, lactose-free cupcakes, receiving corrections on her French pronunciation from her supercilious stepson – and attempting to find balance in a new family that’s both larger, and smaller, than she bargained for. In Love and Other Impossible Pursuits Ayelet Waldman has created a novel rich with humor and truth, perfectly characterizing one woman’s search for answers in a crazily uncertain world.

Evvie, Maggie, and Topher have known each other since university. Their friendship was something they swore would last forever. Now years have passed, the friends have drifted apart, and none of them ever found the lives they wanted - the lives they dreamed of when they were young and everything seemed possible. Evvie starved herself to become a supermodel but derailed her career by sleeping with a married man. Maggie married Ben, the boy she fell in love with at university, never imagining the heartbreak his drinking would cause. Topher became a successful actor but the shame of a childhood secret shut him off from real intimacy. By their thirtieth reunion, these old friends have lost touch with each other and with the people they dreamed of becoming. Together again, they have a second chance at happiness... until a dark secret is revealed that changes everything. The Friends We Keep is about how despite disappointments we've had or mistakes we've made, it's never too late to find a place to call home.

The three pieces gathered in The Strange Case of Rachel K roughly map the genesis of Rachel Kushner's fiction. From the fate of a conquistador in "The Great Exception," to the illegal radio broadcasts and then bombs in "Debouchment," to a Havana courtesan's "strange" case, these stories build into a vision of Cuba that is black-humored, brutal, and beautiful. In this collection, which "overflows in atmosphere as it shows off the burgeoning talent of one of our best writers" (NPR), Rachel Kushner is forging her own original path into the wilds of contemporary fiction.

It is time to elect a new abbess at the Convent of Crewe. There are two contenders: nuns Alexandra and Felicity. Alexandra is busy bugging the convent while Felicity calls the police when her love letters (to a young Jesuit priest) are stolen. A brilliant laugh-out-loud satire on the Watergate scandal.This is one of the 22 novels written by Muriel Spark in her lifetime. All are being published by Polygon in hardback Centenary Editions between November 2017 and September 2018.

Finalist for the Baileys Women's Prize Annie McDee, thirty-one, lives in a shabby London flat, works as a chef, and is struggling to get by. Reeling from a sudden breakup, she’s taken on an unsuitable new lover and finds herself rummaging through a secondhand shop to buy him a birthday gift. A dusty, anonymous old painting catches her eye. After spending her meager savings on the artwork, Annie prepares an exquisite birthday dinner for two—only to be stood up. The painting becomes hers, and Annie begins to suspect that it may be more valuable than she’d thought. Soon she finds herself pursued by parties who would do anything to possess her picture: an exiled Russian oligarch, an avaricious sheikha, an unscrupulous art dealer. In her search for the painting’s identity, Annie will unwittingly discover some of the darkest secrets of European history—and the possibility of falling in love again.

"Fresh from the enormous success of her debut novel Near to the Wild Heart, Hurricane Clarice let loose something stormier in 1946 with her second novel, The Chandelier. In a body of work renowned for its potent idiosyncratic genius, The Chandelier in many ways has pride of place. "It stands out," her biographer Benjamin Moser noted, "in a strange and difficult body of work, as perhaps her strangest and most difficult book." Of glacial intensity, consisting almost entirely of interior monologues--interrupted by odd and jarring fragments of dialogue and action--the novel moves in slow waves that crest in moments of revelation. As she seeks freedom via creation, the drama of Virginia's isolated life is almost entirely internal: from childhood, she sculpts clay figurines with "the best clay one could desire: white, supple, sticky, cold. She got a clear and tender material from which she could shape a world. How, how to explain the miracle..." While on one level simply the story of a woman's life, The Chandelier's real drama lies in Lispector's attempt "to find the nucleus made of a single instant ...the tenuous triumph and the defeat, perhaps nothing more than breathing." The Chandelier pushes Lispector's lifelong quest for that nucleus into deeper territories than any of her amazing works" --