'I just loved it. Lethally funny and so clever.' - Jilly Cooper I ADORED it. It's the most fun I've had with a book in a long time and I love how she writes - so many dazzling sentences and phrases.' - Marian Keyes Debt double-basements dastardly bankers...and DIVORCE? 'Hell is other people' and journalist Mimi Fleming is fast realizing on her return to Notting Hill that there is no greater hell than the W11 neighbours with whom she shares an exclusive communal garden. Since she's been away all her friends have become - impossibly - even richer thinner and YOUNGER. They're busy not just turning back the clock but also their homes into palatial iceberg houses - with basement swimming pools. But Mimi's troubles are just beginning. There's the compromising and risky mission she'd undertaking to re-launch her so-called journalism career (plus an embarrassing case of mistaken identity thanks to Google). Then there's her children who will only communicate via WhatsApp . And worst of all Mimi's fallen for someone and it's certainly not her husband Ralph. Ralph and Mimi have already been to Notting Hell and back. But is this the end or the beginning of something new?

Triangulating love, old but not yet forgotten murders, and international spy craft mark this story. Robert wants nothing more than to become a serious art historian. But his hopes for a staid academic life are put on hold when he's driven from London to Venice to escape one lover and seek out another: the enigmatic Bulgarian refugee Lina Pancev. In Venice, Robert encounters a grand carnival of lust, lies, blackmail, cocktail parties, and regicide. As he chases Lina, his heart's desire, the city itself provides a priceless education in love, art, and beauty. Witty yet elegant, Territorial Rights is a celebration of human imperfection and complexity, with as many shifting identities, wardrobe changes, and sumptuous settings as a comic opera.

In a small town among the citrus groves in the Santa Bernita Valley, so the locals claim, nothing ever goes according to plan. "It's a great place to live, they say, if you like surprises: it's just like life, only different." Certainly a number of Rito's inhabitants--fewer than a hundred in all--are surprised to be living here. Red Ray, for instance, a wildly alcoholic lawyer who bought a dilapidated Victorian mansion in an attempt to rehabilitate his marriage and regain the affections of his wife and young son. After destroying those hopes with a spectacular final binge, Red established a drunk farm, Round Rock, on the ruins. There, one day at a time, he follows his new, unexpected calling. Many months after her husband decamped (almost immediately) for Los Angeles, Libby Daw still lives alone in their trailer, and finds herself even more rooted to the valley she dreams of escaping. And there's Lewis Fletcher, a sometime graduate student whose keen intelligence is sorely tested by his erratic behavior and current predicament. Without exactly knowing why, and entirely against his wishes--or by default and sheer good luck--he finds himself placed in Ray's care at Round Rock. As these people seek out or maintain their various niches in the valley, the peculiar history of the place asserts itself. An heiress descended from the original settlers, Billie Fitzgerald still acts as though she owns it all; devoted to her father and son, she obscures her mercurial emotions from even her closest friends. The past also returns with David Ibañez, whose family had harvested the groves for generations--and whose talents and secrets (and thus, he discovers, his future) are inextricably bound to the complex, close-knit town he thought he had left behind. With insight matched with artistry, Michelle Huneven traces the emerging destinies of these characters as each of them struggles for peace and equilibrium, even happiness and love, against hapless, all-too-human frailty and circumstance. A vivid evocation of landscape and community, Round Rock derives great power from psychological subtlety, and from affection for and profound understanding of lives strained or broken but on the mend. Fresh, remarkably mature, and constantly surprising, this astonishing debut wins both your trust and your heart.

Following her acclaimed, Los Angeles Times Book Prize–nominated novel, The God of War , Marisa Silver’s extraordinary book, Alone With You , is a starkly elegant and superbly rendered collection of short stories. Marisa Silver dazzled and inspired readers with her critically acclaimed The God of War (a Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist), praised by Richard Russo as “a novel of great metaphorical depth and beauty.” In this elegant, finely wrought new collection, Alone With You, Silver has created eight indelible stories that mine the complexities of modern relationships and the unexpected ways love manifests itself. Her brilliantly etched characters confront life’s abrupt and unsettling changes with fear, courage, humor, and overwhelming grace. In the O. Henry Prize–winning story “The Visitor,” a VA hospital nurse’s aide contends with a family ghost and discovers the ways in which her own past haunts her. The reticent father in “Pond” is confronted with a Solomonic choice that pits his love for his daughter against his feelings for her young son. In “Night Train to Frankfurt,” first published in The New Yorker, a daughter travels to an alternative-medicine clinic in Germany in a gambit to save her mother’s life. And in the title story, a woman vacations in Morocco with her family while contemplating a decision that will both ruin and liberate them all. From “Temporary,” where a young woman confronts the ephemeral nature of companionship, to “Three Girls,” in which sisters trapped in a snowstorm recognize the boundaries of childhood, the nuanced voices of Alone With You bear the hallmarks of an instant classic from a writer with unerring talent and imaginative resource. Silver has the extraordinary ability to render her fictional inhabitants instantly relatable, in all their imperfections. Her stories have the singular quality of looking in a mirror. We see at once what is familiar and what is strange. In these stirring narratives, we meet ourselves anew.

The internationally renowned novelist and poet creates a very contemporary version of the story of Romeo and Juliet set in the twin realms of college and national politics. In the prominent political family of the Dickensons, ambition comes first, and Melissa, the third child, has always felt she came last. Going away to college offers a chance at love and a life free from her brilliant mother's constant scrutiny. Blake, a child of mixed race and apparently unknown parentage, has been raised by lawyers whose defence of death row cases has brought them into fierce dispute with Melissa's father, now a senator, then governor of Pennsylvania. When Melissa meets Blake at College, their passion is immediate. Yet Blake is keeping a dangerous secret from Melissa, one that could destroy both them and their families. Dealing with themes of love, honesty, identity and the consequences of ambition, this thoughtful beautifully written story is a page turner with an edge.

Product Description Set in the magnificent culture of the Middle East more than four thousand years ago, Lilah is a rich and emotionally resonant story of faith, love, and courage. Living in exile, Lilah is in love with Antinoes, a Persian warrior. They have known each other since they were children, and Antinoes dearly wants to make Lilah his wife. Yet Lilah does not feel she can marry without the blessing of her brother, Ezra. She and Ezra are close, and Lilah knows her brother well—he does not want his sister to have a husband outside their faith. Ezra is a scholar of the laws of Moses, and Lilah believes it is her brother’s destiny to lead the Jewish people back to the Promised Land. While Antinoes pressures her to accept his proposal, Lilah realizes that before she can consider her own happiness, it is her duty to help her brother accomplish the seemingly impossible task that is before him. Putting herself in grave danger, and with the help of Antinoes, Lilah wins Ezra an audience with Artaxerxes II, the King of Kings, who grants permission to lead the exiles on their journey back to the Promised Land. After a hazardous trip across the desert, Lilah, Ezra, and the thousands who join them arrive in Jerusalem. But the hardship of rebuilding the Temple takes its toll, and the religious enthusiasm of some turns to extremism. Ezra, listening to the zealots, orders all non-Jewish wives and their children banished from Jerusalem. Lilah, whose love for Antinoes has never wavered, is horrified by this command. She knows she must now choose between her brother and her conscience, which tells her that the time has come to defy him. Lilah is a timeless story of one woman’s stand against intolerance; it will linger in the reader’s mind long after the last page has been turned. From Publishers Weekly In his final installment of the Canaan Trilogy ( Sarah; Zipporah), Halter ambitiously tackles portions of the complicated biblical book of Ezra, which centers on the rebuilding of the Jerusalem temple and calls Israel to ethnic and religious purity. In the Persian town of Susa, the beautiful Lilah dreams of marrying her Persian lover and childhood sweetheart, Antinoes. However, her beloved brother Ezra, who has immersed himself in studying the laws of God, refuses to approve of their union since Antinoes is not a Jew. As the story unfolds, with scenes full of rich detail, Lilah becomes the unlikely instrument of gaining royal approval for the Jewish people to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the holy city. However, once there, Ezra orders all non-Jewish wives and children driven away in what is surely one of the most heart-wrenching episodes directly from scripture. A horrified Lilah repudiates her brother and leaves with them. As the cast-off women wander unprotected outside the city, rape, murder and mayhem ensue. (It's confusing that Lilah narrates one violent scene, but readers are unsure how she survives it.) As in Sarah and Zipporah, there is plenty of highly charged sexuality and some imaginative storytelling. Unfortunately, as with its predecessors, the story trails off, and the ending is unsatisfactory. (June) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From AudioFile Ellen Reilly brings the story of Lilah, sister of Ezra, the biblical prophet, to life. Perhaps not many are familiar with the story of Ezra, which takes place more than four thousand years ago during a sad time in Israel's history. Lilah is torn between her love for her brother, Ezra, and her love for a Persian warrior. She must choose, and her choice will bring far-reaching consequences. All the emotion and turmoil in the story are made real by the talented Ellen Reilly. One can easily feel the heartache, passion, and drama of this book. Fascinating and well worth a listen. N.L. © AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine About the Author Mar

" What do a chamber pot, a famous poet, a family feud, and a long-ago suitor all have in common? In this delicious laugh-out-loud new novel of love and loss, rivalry and reconciliation, treasure and trash, by acclaimed author Mameve Medwed (Mail, The End of an Error), we see what happens when past and present collide. . . ." Elizabeth Barrett Browning might have written about the length and breadth of love, but Abby Randolph has given up on all that, preferring to spend her time between her cluttered "needs work" apartment and the overcrowded antiques mart -- the optimistically named Objects of Desire. Yet Abby can't help but wonder what happened to her earlier passionate self who rejected the path set out for her, dropping out of Harvard and falling headfirst into an ill-fated love affair. . . . Then the "Antiques Roadshow" comes to town, and Abby turns up at the crack of dawn, artifact in hand, standing alongside thousands of Boston's hopefuls. But there, among the carousel horses, pipe sets, potbellied stoves, and bedraggled stuffed animals, it is Abby's rather ordinary -- and squalid -- piece of porcelain that gets the star treatment. Abby is barely able to enjoy her good news, for the moment the show airs, life comes back at her at full force. Everything changes: friendship, finances, family, love affairs, career, her view of others, and the way she sees herself. With this, her fourth novel, Medwed once again returns to Cambridge and, in her "sardonic, funny voice" ("Chicago Tribune"), "homes in on the rarified self-important atmosphere of our Ivy League institutions -- and the reflected snobbishness of the people who serve them" ("New York Times Book Review"). This novel is a gift to anyone who goes to a flea market or watches "Antiques Roadshow," anyone who has ever defied expectations, or, especially, anyone who has never been able to extinguish an old flame.

"Set at the height of Vietnam protests, Jimi Hendrix and LSD, Wet Goddess is a story of strange encounters, awkward misadventures, and ultimately, love. Stoked on cheap pot and reports that dolphins possess near-human intelligence, liberal arts major Zachary Zimmerman couldn’t have been more thrilled about his first pro photography job. The project: shoot a book about the stars of Florida Funland’s struggling dolphin show – while turning a blind eye to the writer’s affair with a trainer. But the writer isn’t the only one at Florida Funland looking for forbidden love. Ruby, a solo performer in the show, slowly edges her way inside Zach’s slightly foggy mind, drawing him deeper and deeper into her wet, wild realm of sensual abandon and unexpected violence. Previously excerpted in Penthouse and the classic Project Jonah anthology Mind in the Waters, this is the only authorized print edition of the long-awaited novel." -- From back of book

The language of love can be beautiful or bawdy, naively simple or boldly salacious, elegantly baroque or course and common梠r, in certain moments, a wild mixture of all of these. Louis Untermeyer has gathered the world抯 greatest erotica in verse, ranging from the Bible to the present day. The most renowned poets of all time are represented in this fresh collection where freedom of range is matched by an equal freedom of speech in writing about sexual love. From Ovid to Swinburne, from Chaucer to E.E. Cummings, from Queen Elizabeth to Emily Dickinson, the poetry burns with mounting emotion and smolders with importunate pleadings, aggravating delays, passionate fulfillment or, alas, painful frustration. Here are the unexplored extremes encompassed by well-loved poets, the outspoken sensuality in the union of love and lust, and the earthy celebration of carnal pleasure. Here in more than six hundred poems, are the infinite variations in the traditional battle of the sexes: the gallant approach, the tentative flirtation, the provocative badinage, the coy denial, the gradually permitted intimacy, the timid or breathless consent, and the finally shared extremity of passion.

Shayna Steinblatt, a lesbian, tries to help her grandmother with the adjustment to nursing home life, make peace with her mother, and work out a lasting relationship with Luz Maria Borges, who may be the love of her life.

A young girl's love of the coquíes' nightly song helps her survive a destructive hurricane with her family. Includes author's note and a glossary of terms.

A novel of love, sadness, wasted youth, and literary and intellectual ambition-"a wincingly funny debut" ("Vogue") Keith Gessen is a Brave and trenchant new literary voice. Known as an award-winning translator of Russian and a book reviewer for publications including "The New Yorker" and "The New York Times," Gessen makes his debut with this critically acclaimed novel, a charming yet scathing portrait of young adulthood at the opening of the twenty-first century. The novel charts the lives of Sam, Mark, and Keith as they overthink their college years, underthink their love lives, and struggle to find a semblance of maturity, responsibility, and even literary fame.

A New York story, a dark comedy, Balls: A Novel tells of the 30-year-old Henry Schiller, a songwriter and lounge-player, in love with a woman far younger and more musically gifted than himself, one with her eye on other men and the rise of her own career, whose crisis deepens when he discovers he has testicular cancer.

Lovers is pure Krantz, an intoxicating dance of love lost, stolen, and found among women and men who lure each other with potent combinations of money, talent, ambition, and passion. Chief among them is irresistible Gigi Orsini, the high-spirited, merry, adventurous creature who grew up into enchanting womanhood in Scruples Two . Now Gigi is working as a copywriter in a new Los Angeles advertising agency, with her creative "teammate," David Melville, a brilliant young art director who joins her in seeking new accounts. The agency is headed by dashing Archie Rourke, humorous Byron Bernheim and the severely difficult beauty, Victoria Frost, daughter of the famed Millicent Frost Caldwell who, with her husband Angus Caldwell, owns one of New York's largest advertising agencies. Ben Winthrop, a proper Bostonian and an enormously successful mall builder, attempts to capture Gigi's quicksilver affections, although his fierce contenders for the same prize include both David Melville and the dominating film director, Zach Nevsky. Meanwhile, Billy Winthrop Ikehorn Orsini Elliott, the unforgettably impulsive heroine of Scruples , and her new husband, the great charmer, Spider Elliott, are busy with their own fascinating lives, as are Gigi's father, canny film producer Vito Orsini, and her best friend, the ravishing Sasha Nevsky, none of whom can be forgotten from Scruples and Scruples Two . Lovers completes all the stories set in motion in the first two novels, yet it stands entirely on its own as a slice of life in the exciting years of 1983 and 1984.

"Zoltan Beck is dying. His devoted but long-suffering sons, Ben and Frank, are trying to prepare themselves and their families for Zoltan's eventual departure...but they can't quite bring themselves to believe that the end is really at hand, and neither can Zoltan himself. The head of a family marked by war and tragedy for decades, he "can't stand to be in a room with a miserable person" and has done his best to keep the pain of his refugee past from his beloved children. But as he faces the end of his life, he discovers a heartbreaking secret from the War that will ultimately bring the family together - or irrevocably disrupt it. Set in both mid-20th century Hungary and contemporary Toronto, this is a deeply moving novel that revels in the energy of its extraordinary characters. It is the story of lost love and newfound connections, of a father and his sons desperately reaching out to bridge an ever-widening gap...even as their time together ebbs away."--Provided by publisher.

A profoundly unsettling collection of tales of Americans caught up in the ethnic, religious, social, economic, and political conflicts of modern day Israel, by an astonishing new voice. In a land where sudden death is an everyday fact of life, a boy dodges bullets and searches through rubble for news of his soldier father. An aging rabbi?s faith is tested by a crippling, seemingly supernatural affliction. A middle-aged man comforts his Holocaust-survivor mother as she faces senility, convinced that Nazis are conspiring against her. And the mysterious biblical red heifer makes a startling appearance in the midst of a decidedly contemporary struggle. In these unsettling tales, the remarkable Jon Papernick transports us to modern-day Israel, a country torn by war, strife, and controversy throughout the history of its statehood. Giving voice to striking characters--Israelis, Palestinians, and Americans; Arabs, Christians, and Jews--caught in the ethnic, religious, social, and political conflicts of a dangerous region, Papernick brings the images we glimpse from afar, in newspapers and on television, chillingly to life. By turns starkly realistic and allegorically fantastic, these tales chronicle the conflict from the inside and illuminate the suffering and anger experienced by those on all sides. In?An Unwelcome Guest,? a young Jewish settler from New York plays a deadly game of backgammon with a ghostly old Arab while his pregnant wife sleeps unaware. In?The King of the King of Falafel,? a restaurant rivalry ends in apocalyptic violence. In "Lucky Eighteen," two young Americans living in Jerusalem as the Oslo accords collapse juggle political activism and a devastating love triangle--under the dark specter of suicide bombings. And in the brilliant, horrifying title story, a lonely shepherd wanders a broken no-man's-land, carrying with him the burden of an unspeakable act. In these haunting and strangely beautiful stories, the tragic carnage of the Middle East is rendered in unforgettable form. Suffused with rage, violence, humor, magic, and religion, this gripping collection leaves a profound impact. Evenhanded yet passionate, shocking yet hopeful, The Ascent of Eli Israelheralds the arrival of a masterful storyteller. Please visit.

Never Going Home is a wake-up tale of passionate love, intrigue, despair, and tragedy. The players in Never Going Home are alone. They find their way to one another and create a family of super-intellects. Betty, a wise eighty-five-year-old retired librarian, leads the family. Other accomplished family members include Harold, a lawyer; Bailey, a widow and mother with an MSF degree in finance; Will, a sociologist; Bob, a bank president; Gloria, with an MBA degree; and Lenny, a Vietnam veteran who studied psychotherapy to understand his PTSD in which he relives his combat experiences. Ruby, a Las Vegas showgirl, and voted best of Vegas five years running, hearing of Lenny's thesis in psychotherapy, surmises Lenny could be the key to unlocking her very private dysfunction. Betty reveals the enormous wealth Harold and she accumulated investing in the military-industrial complex off a tip from an aircraft-manufacturing lobbyist Harold defended in court prior to the Vietnam War. They made millions as crony capitalists. There seems to be no challenge the family can't rise to. Author Jerry Lewis exposes through his "can-do" characters a wide variety of issues facing Americans today: war, deplorable treatment of veterans, religious intolerance, racial issues, corruption and deception, cultural evolution, mismatch disease, health-care hoaxes, diet, and exercise. This book will earn a front-and-center position on your bookshelf.

"In Bitter Bronx, one of our most gifted and original novelists depicts a world before and after modern urban renewal destroyed the gritty sanctity of a land made famous by Ruth, Gehrig, and Joltin' Joe. Bitter Bronx is suffused with the texture and nostalgia of a lost time and place, combining a keen eye for detail with Jerome Charyn's lived experience. These stories are informed by a childhood growing up near that middle-class mecca, the Grand Concourse; falling in love with three voluptuous librarians at a public library in the Lower Depths of the South Bronx; and eating at Mafia-owned restaurants along Arthur Avenue's restaurant row, amid a "land of deprivation…where fathers trundled home…with a monumental sadness on their shoulders." In "Lorelei," a lonely hearts grifter returns home and finds his childhood sweetheart still living in the same apartment house on the Concourse; in "Archy and Mehitabel" a high school romance blossoms around a newspaper comic strip; in "Major Leaguer" a former New York Yankee confronts both a gang of drug dealers and the wreckage that Robert Moses wrought in his old neighborhood; and in three interconnected stories―"Silk & Silk," "Little Sister," and "Marla"―Marla Silk, a successful Manhattan attorney, discovers her father's past in the Bronx and a mysterious younger sister who was hidden from her, kept in a fancy rest home near the Botanical Garden. In these stories and others, the past and present tumble together in Charyn's singular and distinctly "New York prose, street-smart, sly, and full of lurches" (John Leonard, New York Times)".--Dust jacket.

"As intriguing and impressive a novelist as she is a musician, Hval is a master of quiet horror and wonder.” —Chris Kraus, author of I Love Dick A lyrical debut novel from a musician and artist renowned for her sharp sexual and political imagery Jo is in a strange new country for university and having a more peculiar time than most. In a house with no walls, shared with a woman who has no boundaries, she finds her strange home coming to life in unimaginable ways. Jo’s sensitivity and all her senses become increasingly heightened and fraught, as the lines between bodies and plants, dreaming and wakefulness, blur and mesh. This debut novel from critically acclaimed artist and musician Jenny Hval presents a heady and hyper-sensual portrayal of sexual awakening and queer desire.

What if God fell in love and the person was already married? A bitter story of the very first love triangle between a man, his wife, and their God First came Adam, whose fall soured His quest for absolute authority, then Noah, whose dreary sense of duty He found dull. God resolves for a third and final time to get it right, to select a vessel through whom He can direct human affairs, and to whom He can communicate directly His will. He chooses a solitary figure whose trust must be wooed, but whose faith, once secured, will surely reflect even greater glory and love. Were matters only that simple. In Only Human , Jenny Diski's brilliant and affecting retelling of the Abraham and Sarah story, God learns that no man, chosen or not, is solitary, and that the bonds forged by the human heart are resilient even to divine commandment. Diski transforms an archetypal tale of Old Testament obedience into a fierce love triangle, a test of wills over not only mankind's future, but over who will tell the story of its past.