Having recalled his life through the story of his physical self in Winter Journal , internationally acclaimed novelist Paul Auster remembers the experience of his development from within through the encounters of his interior self with the outer world in Report from the Interior . In the beginning, everything was alive. The smallest objects were endowed with beating hearts . . . From his baby's-eye view of the man in the moon, to his childhood worship of the movie cowboy Buster Crabbe, to the composition of his first poem at the age of nine, to his dawning awareness of the injustices of American life, Report from the Interior charts Auster's moral, political, and intellectual journey as he inches his way toward adulthood through the postwar 1950s and into the turbulent 1960s. Auster evokes the sounds, smells, and tactile sensations that marked his early life—and the many images that came at him, including moving images (he adored cartoons, he was in love with films), until, at its unique climax, the book breaks away from prose into pure imagery: The final section of Report from the Interior recapitulates the first three parts, told in an album of pictures. At once a story of the times—which makes it everyone's story—and the story of the emerging consciousness of a renowned literary artist, this four-part work answers the challenge of autobiography in ways rarely, if ever, seen before.

My Brilliant Friends is a group biography of three women's friendships forged in second-wave feminism. Poignant and politically charged, the book is a captivating personal account of the complexities of women's bonds. Nancy K. Miller describes her friendships with three well-known scholars and literary critics: Carolyn Heilbrun, Diane Middlebrook, and Naomi Schor. Their relationships were simultaneously intimate and professional, emotional and intellectual, animated by the ferment of the women's movement. Friendships like these sustained the generation of women whose entrance into male-dominated professions is still reshaping American society. The stories of their intertwined lives and books embody feminism's belief in the political importance of personal experience. Reflecting on aging and loss, ambition and rivalry, competition and collaboration, Miller shows why and how friendship's ties matter in the worlds of work and love. Inspired in part by the portraits of the intensely enmeshed lives in Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan novels, My Brilliant Friends provides a passionate and timely vision of friendship between women.

Strong, sexy women are the lifeblood of Jackie Collins's novels, and The Love Killers takes this to a bold new level! Famed activist Margaret Lawrence Brown had always been a staunch advocate for women through her Free Women Now organization, especially for sex workers in New York City. When Margaret is shockingly murdered during one of her women's empowerment lectures, three of her nearest and dearest step in with an insatiable desire to destroy the lives of those responsible. The result: a bloodbath of sexual mayhem through the lethal corridors of organized crime. Three beautiful women set out to prove that when it comes to revenge, the female is far deadlier than the male -- especially when they're The Love Killers...

Four award-winning authors. Four amazing alternate histories. In this collection of novellas, four masters of alternate history turn back time, twisting the facts with four excursions into what might have been. Bestselling author Harry Turtledove imagines a different fate for Socrates (now Sokrates); S. M. Stirling envisions life "in the wilds of a re-barbarized Texas" after asteroids strike the earth in the 19th century; Sidewise winner Mary Gentle contributes a story of love (and pigs) set in the mid-15th century, as European mercenaries prepare to sack a Gothic Carthage; and Nebula nominee Walter Jon Williams pens a tale of Nietzsche intervening in the gunfight at the O.K. Corral.

“Turtledove is the standard-bearer for alternate history.”— USA Today The novels of Harry Turtledove show history balancing on single moments: One act of folly. One poor decision. One moment of rage. In this astounding new series, the unthinkable has come to pass. The Cold War turns hot—and the United States and the Soviet Union unleash their nuclear arsenals upon each other. Millions die. Millions more are displaced. Germans battle side by side with Americans, Polish freedom fighters next to Russian fascists. The genie is out of the bottle. And there’s no telling what fresh hell will come next. At the heart of Fallout are Harry Truman and Josef Stalin. Even as Joe McCarthy rises in power, the U.S. president is focused elsewhere, planning to cut off the head of the Soviet threat by taking out Stalin. It’s a daring gambit, but the Soviets have one of their own. Meanwhile, Europe’s weak sisters, France and Italy, seem poised to choose the winning side, while China threatens to overrun Korea. With Great Britain ravaged and swaths of America in ruins, leaders are running out of options. When the United States drops another series of bombs to slow the Russian advance in Europe, Stalin strikes back—with horrifying results. These staggering events unfold through the eyes of a sprawling cast of characters: a Holocaust survivor in a displaced persons camp in Washington; the wife of a bomber pilot and her five-year-old daughter starting a new existence; a savage Soviet fighter waging war by his own rules; a British pub owner falling in love with an American pilot. In the masterly hands of Harry Turtledove, this epic chronicle of war becomes a story of human struggle. As the armies of the world implode, the next chapter will be written by the survivors—those willing to rise up for an uncertain future. Praise for Fallout “Turtledove proves, yet again, that he is the best when it comes to rewriting history!” — Suspense Magazine “Turtledove, the master of alternate history, has done well again.” — Shelf Awareness “No one writes alternate-history novels quite like Turtledove. . . . Expect epic political stakes as well as personal and heartfelt stories of war.” —BookTrib

"Acclaimed New Yorker writer Brodkey set the literary world ablaze with this much-talked-about debut novel--a literary tour de force about an adopted child in the early 1930s who is raised in the St. Louis household of his cousins."--Goodreads

Intended as both inspiration and instruction, This Year You Write Your Novel provides the tools to turn out a first draft painlessly and then revise it into something finer. No more excuses. "Let the lawn get shaggy and the paint peel from the walls," bestselling novelist Walter Mosley advises. Anyone can write a novel now, and in this essential book of tips, practical advice, and wisdom, Walter Mosley promises that the writer-in-waiting can finish it in one year. Mosley tells how to: Create a daily writing regimen to fit any writer's needs--and how to stick to it. Determine the narrative voice that's right for every writer's style. Get past those first challenging sentences and into the heart of a story.

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.

"Young Lions: How Jewish Authors Reinvented the American War Novel shows how Jews, traditionally castigated as weak and cowardly, for the first time became the popular literary representatives of what it meant to be a soldier and what it meant to be an American. Revisiting best-selling works ranging from Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead to Joseph Heller's Catch-22, and uncovering a range of unknown archival material, Leah Garrett shows how Jewish writers used the theme of World War II to reshape the American public's ideas about war, the Holocaust, and the role of Jews in postwar life. In contrast to most previous war fiction these new Jewish war novels were often ironic, funny, and irreverent and sought to teach the reading public broader lessons about liberalism, masculinity, and pluralism"--Page 4 of cover.

When it appeared in 1972 'Bloody Murder' was greeted as the classic study of crime fiction, a book "heartily recommended to anyone who has ever enjoyed a detective story or a crime novel" as Kingsley Amis wrote. Subsequent edition ensured that this study was kept up to date to include later authors, and a third and final revised edition was issued in 1993 in celebration of distinguished author/critic Julian Symons' 80th year. The views expressed are as candid as ever. One bestselling writer is called unreadable, another compared to writers of "strip cartoon stories". But the general tone is warmly appreciative of every sort of book within the genre.

Turning thirty was never supposed to be like this. Ten years ago, Ben, Lindsey, Chuck, Alison, and Jack graduated from New York University and went out into the world, fresh-faced and full of dreams for the future. But now Ben's getting a divorce; Lindsey's unemployed; Alison and Chuck seem stuck in ruts of their own making; and Jack is getting more publicity for his cocaine addiction than his multimillion-dollar Hollywood successes. Suddenly, turning thirty-- past the age their parents were when they were born, older than every current star athlete or pop music sensation-- seems to be both more meaningful and less than they'd imagined ten years ago. Jonathan Tropper's wonderful debut novel is about more than friendship, love, celebrity, addiction, kidnapping, or even turning thirty-- it's a heartfelt comic riff on what it means to be an adult against your will, to be single when you thought you'd have a family, to discover you are not, in fact, immortal, and to learn that Star Wars is as good a life lesson today as it was when you were six years old.

Narrated in Lincoln’s own voice, the tragicomic I Am Abraham promises to be the masterwork of Jerome Charyn’s remarkable career. Since publishing his first novel in 1964, Jerome Charyn has established himself as one of the most inventive and prolific literary chroniclers of the American landscape. Here in I Am Abraham , Charyn returns with an unforgettable portrait of Lincoln and the Civil War. Narrated boldly in the first person, I Am Abraham effortlessly mixes humor with Shakespearean-like tragedy, in the process creating an achingly human portrait of our sixteenth President. Tracing the historic arc of Lincoln's life from his picaresque days as a gangly young lawyer in Sangamon County, Illinois, through his improbable marriage to Kentucky belle Mary Todd, to his 1865 visit to war-shattered Richmond only days before his assassination, I Am Abraham hews closely to the familiar Lincoln saga. Charyn seamlessly braids historical figures such as Mrs. Keckley—the former slave, who became the First Lady's dressmaker and confidante—and the swaggering and almost treasonous General McClellan with a parade of fictional extras: wise-cracking knaves, conniving hangers-on, speculators, scheming Senators, and even patriotic whores. We encounter the renegade Rebel soldiers who flanked the District in tattered uniforms and cardboard shoes, living in a no-man's-land between North and South; as well as the Northern deserters, young men all, with sunken, hollowed faces, sitting in the punishing sun, waiting for their rendezvous with the firing squad; and the black recruits, whom Lincoln’s own generals wanted to discard, but who play a pivotal role in winning the Civil War. At the center of this grand pageant is always Lincoln himself, clad in a green shawl, pacing the White House halls in the darkest hours of America’s bloodiest war. Using biblically cadenced prose, cornpone nineteenth-century humor, and Lincoln’s own letters and speeches, Charyn concocts a profoundly moral but troubled commander in chief, whose relationship with his Ophelia-like wife and sons—Robert, Willie, and Tad—is explored with penetrating psychological insight and the utmost compassion. Seized by melancholy and imbued with an unfaltering sense of human worth, Charyn’s President Lincoln comes to vibrant, three-dimensional life in a haunting portrait we have rarely seen in historical fiction.

Jenny Erpenbeck's highly acclaimed novel Go, Went, Gone was a New York Times notable book and launched one of Germany's most admired writers into the American spotlight. In the New Yorker, James Wood wrote: "When Erpenbeck wins the Nobel Prize in a few years, I suspect that this novel will be cited." On the heels of this literary breakthrough comes Not a Novel, a book of personal, profound, often humorous meditations and reflections. Erpenbeck writes, "With this collection of texts, I am looking back for the first time at many years of my life, at the thoughts that filled my life from day to day." Starting with her childhood days in East Berlin ("I start with my life as a schoolgirl ... my own conscious life begins at the same time as the socialist life of Leipziger Strasse"), Not a Novel provides a glimpse of growing up in the GDR and of what it was like to be twenty-two when the wall collapsed; it takes us through Erpenbeck's early adult years, working in a bakery after immersing herself in the worlds of music, theater, and opera, and ultimately discovering her path as a writer. There are lively essays about her literary influences (Thomas Bernhard, the Brothers Grimm, Kafka, and Thomas Mann), unforgettable reflections on the forces at work in her novels (including history, silence, and time), and scathing commentaries on the dire situation of America and Europe today. "Why do we still hear laments for the Germans who died attempting to flee over the wall, but almost none for the countless refugees who have drowned in the Mediterranean in recent years, turning the sea into a giant grave?" With deep insight and warm intelligence, Jenny Erpenbeck provides us with a collection of unforgettable essays that take us into the heart and mind of "one of the finest and most exciting writers alive" (Michel Faber).

"Cassie and Zoe Griffin were born just a year apart, but the sisters could not have been more different. Zoe, beautiful and charming, grew up with a burning desire for fame, making up for a lack of natural talent with hard work and determination. Cassie, though, had a gift. She was uncomfortable in her plus-sized body and preferred to be in the shadows, she was a musical prodigy. On the threshold of adulthood, the sisters are discovered by a record label and become the Griffin Sisters, a band that quickly skyrockets to fame, reaching the heights of pop stardom: MTV, VH1, the Billboard charts, and every marker of a dream come true. Cassie's musical gifts make her the voice of a generation and while the spotlight tests her spirit, it also opens her heart to possibilities for connection she has never considered. Zoe gets everything she thought she wanted: international fame and the paparazzi, the couture-and the man-that go with it. But twenty years later, everything has changed. Cassie lives in seclusion in Alaska. Zoe has abandoned her music dreams for suburban motherhood in New Jersey. The Griffin Sisters are long gone, and the devil's bargain of celebrity has exacted a high price that drives the sisters apart and nearly destroys them both. And yet Zoe's teenage daughter Cherry has inherited her family's talent and stage presence, and will stop at nothing to achieve the very dream of pop stardom her mother has warned her against-opening the wounds of their shared history in the process. Both sisters must face the consequences of choices from the past: the ones they made and the ones the music industry made for them. Can the mistakes of the past be redeemed, and can broken bonds be repaired? In this stirring and soul-bearing novel, Jennifer Weiner brings to life the heartache, joy, and glory of the glamorous but shattering Golden Age of pop music, and a celebrates the power of love and forgiveness, even after the music stops"--

A beautiful novel exploring the little-known story of Anne Frank's life before she went into hiding - from bestselling, award-winning author Alice Hoffman and published in cooperation with the Anne Frank House. In soaring prose, bestselling author Alice Hoffman brings Anne Frank to life on the page, drawing from her extensive research in Europe and the United States, to depict her experiences from the moment the Nazis invade the Netherlands until her family is forced into hiding in the annex of her father's office building at 263 Prinsengracht, in Amsterdam. As state-sponsored discrimination turns ordinary people into monsters, the Jews of the Netherlands are caught in an inescapable swell of violence and hate, and Anne is shaped as both a young woman and as a writer who will change the world. WHEN WE FLEW AWAYfeatures archival content provided by the Anne Frank House, as well as information about Otto Frank's desperate bids to get his family to safety in America gathered from correspondence between Otto Frank and Nathan Straus, Jr., from the Straus Historical Society's Archives. A heart-wrenching exploration of Anne's life before the annex By New York Times bestselling author of The World We Knew, Alice Hoffman Featuring archival content provided by the Anne Frank House

Pippa Jones is a fortyish former literary sensation who fears she will be a one-hit wonder. After the follow-up book she was almost done writing, Podlusters, had to be tossed (it ended up sharing a plot and title with superstar author Ella Rankin's summer blockbuster!), she couldn't write a thing. Months of staring at a blank page made her confidence vanish like a one-night stand. When she finds out that she has only five days left to finish (or rather, start) or repay an advance she's already spent, Pippa has a brilliantly original idea. Okay, fine, her twelve-year-old son came up with it as a joke, but Pippa and her teenage daughter approved. -- Provided by publisher.

The return of a beloved classic, from the bestselling author of The Princess Bride ! “This inventive, offbeat fable has a touch of magic about it.”— Los Angeles Times Once upon a time, the gondoliers of Venice possessed the finest voices in all the world. But, alas, few remember those days—and fewer still were ever blessed to hear such glorious singing. No one since has discovered the secret behind the sudden silence of the golden-voiced gondoliers. No one, it seems, but S. Morgenstern. Now Morgenstern recounts the sad and noble story of the ambitions, frustrations, and eventual triumph of Luigi, the gondolier with the gooney smile. Here, in this brilliantly illustrated exposition of the surprising facts behind this all-but-forgotten mystery, S. Morgenstern reveals the fascinating truths about John the Bastard, Laura Lorenzini, the centenarian Cristaldi the Pickle, Enrico Caruso, Porky XII, the Great Sorrento, the Queen of Corsica—and, of course, the one and only Luigi. His tale will captivate you as much as his song! “Where The Princess Bride was lightheartedly brutal, this story is gently whimsical, well-complemented by Paul Giovanopoulos’s zany drawings.”— San Francisco Examiner-Chronicle

Based on the true story of a nine-year-old boy who escapes the Warsaw Ghetto and must survive throughout the war in the Nazi-occupied Polish countryside.

A luckless thief’s wrong turn becomes a crooked cop’s fortune in a wild ride of a thriller by a New York Times bestselling author. Failed lawyer Robert Green has such a good plan: Crack three hundred safe-deposit boxes and sail off to South America with his brilliant, morally flexible sister, Penny. If it weren’t for the damned freezing rain. In the dying resort town of Granite Shores, cop Jack Biddle is self-appointed king―mostly of bad decisions. Between his family’s crumbling legacy, a wife who just joined the city council, and life-threatening gambling debts, Jack’s looking for a way out. Then he spots a van spinning off a mountain road into the valley below. In the wreckage, Jack finds a very dead Robert, millions in heisted loot…and opportunity. All Jack has to do is clean up the mess, disappear Robert’s body, make off with the fortune, and not get caught. One hitch is Penny. Another is Mitch Diamond, a wild card ex-con who knows more about the missing fortune than he lets on. Jack, Penny, and Mitch each have an endgame. But there’s only one way out, and they’re crashing headlong toward it.

"This critically acclaimed blockbuster from internationally renowned novelist Robert Littell seamlessly weaves together history and fiction to create a multigenerational, wickedly nostalgic saga of the CIA-known as "the Company" to insiders. Racing across a landscape spanning the legendary Berlin Base of the '50s, the Soviet invasion of Hungary, the Bay of Pigs, Afghanistan, and the Gorbachev putsch, The Company tells the thrilling story of agents imprisoned in double lives, fighting an amoral, elusive, formidable enemy-and each other-in an internecine battle within the Company itself. A brilliant, stunningly conceived epic thriller, The Company confirms Littell's place among the genre's elite"--