"From the author of Blame, a new novel about the unexpected damage inflicted by romantic entanglements. It's the early 1980s: Reagan is in the White House and his trickle-down theory is gaining traction in the national psyche. Cressida Hartley, twenty-eight, a PhD candidate in economics, has moved to her parents' shabby A-frame in the Sierras, hoping to finish her dissertation about art in the marketplace. Though she came seeking solitude, she finds herself increasingly drawn into the life of the small mountain community, and she's seduced by a local lodge owner, Jakey Yates, a big, burly, immensely attractive man in his late forties. Rick Garsh, the local contractor, gives Cress a part time job. Through Rick she meets the Morrow brothers, two talented fine-finish carpenters. They are handsome, amusing, intriguing, and married. As Cress tells her best friend back home in Pasadena, being a single woman on the mountain amounts to a form of public service. Increasingly uninspired by her dissertation, Cress allows love, adultery, and obsession to commandeer her life, and soon she becomes the victim of her own perilous reasoning. Michelle Huneven is one of our most searching, elegant novelists--Richard Russo has called her "a writer of extraordinary and thrilling talent." In Off Course, she tells the cautionary tale of an intelligent young woman seeking her place in life only to discover that love is the great distraction, and impossible love the greatest distraction of all"--

Friendship, family, and high-stakes Scrabble come together in this compelling novel from a bestselling author Duncan Dorfman, April Blunt, and Nate Saviano don't seem to have much in common. Duncan is trying to manage his newfound ability to "read" with his fingers. April is striving to be accepted by her family of jocks. And Nate is struggling to meet his father's high expectations. But when a Scrabble Tournament brings them together, their stories intertwine. Driven by competition, drama, and just a touch of magic, the story will have readers flying through the pages, anxious to discover who will be the real winners . . .

This is the author's first novel, which relates the experiences of a young bohemian intellectual. The six episodes create a fascinating portrait of a New York social circle of the 1930s. McCarthy's bold insight and virtuoso style won her immediate recognition as one of the most accomplished, versatile, and penetrating writers in americanca.

In 1938, before the Munich pact, Gellhorn visited Prague and witnessed its transformation from a proud democracy preparing to battle Hitler to a country occupied by the German army. Born out of this experience, her novel follows a journalist who returns to Prague after its annexation and finds her efforts to obtain help for the refugees and to convey the shocking state of the country both frustrating and futile. A convincing account of a people under the brutal oppression of the Gestapo, and Gellhorn's most powerful work of fiction

Their friend Marcel Proust had killed himself after the fall in diamond shares, a collapse that annihilated a part of his fortune. This is the first-ever translation into English of this startling tour-de-force by one of the twentieth century’s greatest writers. The Lemoine Affair was inspired by the real-life French scandal involving Henri Lemoine, who claimed he could manufacture diamonds from coal and convinced numerous people—including officers of the De Beers diamond mine company and Proust himself—to invest in the scheme. In a series of pastiches—imitations written in the style of other writers—Proust tells the story of the embarrassment rippling across high society Paris in the wake of the scandal, poking fun at himself (in one story, a character declares that Marcel Proust is so embarrassed he’s suicidal) while lampooning some of France’s greatest writers, including Flaubert, Balzac, and Saint-Simon. Full of sophisticated wit and dazzling wordplay, and rife with allusions to his friend and fictional characters, many Proust scholars see the dead-on mimicry of The Lemoine Affair —written soon after Proust’s rejection of society life—as the work by which he honed his own unique, masterly voice. The Art of The Novella Series Too short to be a novel, too long to be a short story, the novella is generally unrecognized by academics and publishers. Nonetheless, it is a form beloved and practiced by literature's greatest writers. In the Art Of The Novella series, Melville House celebrates this renegade art form and its practitioners with titles that are, in many instances, presented in book form for the first time.

Proust's only other work of fiction published in his lifetime apart from the monumental novel cycle 'In Search of Lost Time, Pleasures and Days' takes the reader on a journey through the high-society circles of fin-de-siecle Paris, presenting the lives, loves and attitudes of a host of unforgettable characters.

Fifth Volume in the Series: Proust Complete Bilingual - English / French - Vol. 1 to 7.Each English Volume is annotated and illustrated by P. Segal: PROUST SAID THAT, with different numbers and topics, followed by the original French version.In this volume: Issue N°5 from "Proustsaidthat Americana Collection." (27 pages).Topics: In This Issue; Holiday Madness, The Café Lifestyle, The 1995 Proust Wake, Paris, Our Lady of the Typists, Proust Sightings, Chocolate Madeleines and much more Remembrance of Things Past / À la Recherche du Temps Perdu. Previously also translated as In Search of Lost Time is a novel in seven volumes, written by Marcel Proust (1871-1922). It is considered to be his most prominent work, known both for its length and its theme of involuntary memory, the most famous example being the "episode of the Madeleine" which occurs early in the first volume.The novel had great influence on twentieth-century literature; some writers have sought to emulate it, others to parody it. In the centenary year of the novel's first volume, Edmund White pronounced À la Recherche du Temps Perdu "the most respected novel of the twentieth century." "Within a Budding Grove" was awarded the "Prix Goncourt" in 1919.Charles Kenneth Scott Moncrieff, MC (The Military Cross is the third-level military decoration awarded to officers and (since 1993) other ranks of the British Armed Forces, and used to be awarded to officers of other Commonwealth countries.) was a Scottish writer, most famous for his English translation of most of Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu, which he published under the Shakespearean title Remembrance of Things Past.About the SeriesSeries: Proust Complete Bilingual - English / French- Vol. 1 to 7. Translated from French by C. K. Scott Moncrieff: -Volume I: Swann's Way [1922] / Du Côté de chez Swann (1913), sometimes translated as The Way by Swann's. -Volume II: Within a Budding Grove [1924] / À L'ombre Des Jeunes Filles en Fleurs (1919), also translated as In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower. Goncourt Prize in 1919.-Volume III: The Guermantes Way [1925] / Le Côté de Guermantes (1920/1921)-Volume IV: Cities of the Plain [1927] / Sodome et Gomorrhe (1921/1922) sometimes translated as Sodom and Gomorrah.-Volume V: The Captive [1929] / La Prisonnière (1923), also translated as The Prisoner. Volume VI: The Sweet Cheat Gone [1930] / Albertine Disparue (1925) La Fugitive) sometimes translated as The Fugitive [last line of Walter de la Mare's poem "The Ghost"] or Albertine Gone. Translated by Stephen Hudson: Volume VII: Time Regained [1931] / Le Temps Retrouvé (1927), also translated as Finding Time Again and The Past Recaptured.Topics in the "Proustsaidthat Americana Collection": Issue N°1: Proust Support Group, nocturnal liestyle, drugs, Pink Floyd, Stephen Hawking, Dreyfus Affair, madeleines Issue N°2: Marcel Purroust, neurosis, Fortuny, Bonny DoonV ineyard, French postcards, nesselrode puddingIssue N°3: Untortured Love, Cacophony Society, Paris and Venice, The Little Phrase, Raymond Chandler, fried sole.Issue N° 4: Proust's Life and Mine, Rejection, Proust Questionnaire, Florence, Coffee, S. Richter, bouillabaisse.Issue N°5: Holiday Madness, The Café Lifestyle, The 1995 Proust Wake, Paris, Our Lady of the Typists, Proust Sightings, Chocolate Madeleines and much more Front Cover: Hélène Standish, born Hélène de Pérusse des Cars.Marcel Proust is inspired by several models for the character Oriane de Guermantes in his novel, In Search of Lost Time.

MACKINLAY KANTOR Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Andersonville GLORY FOR ME A Novel in Verse By MacKinlay Kantor BASIS FOR THE MOVIE THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES It is seldom in time of war that an author, no matter how emotionally aware of what it all means, can write a book which expresses the feeling that motivates fighting men. Why did it happen this way, why is it ending this way- what are we now that it is done with, now that we are home? Indeed, are we home, or are we in a boarding-house of confusion and wretchedly defeated purposes and understandings? MacKinlay Kantor is one of America's best-known novelists. It might be said that if any author could write that book Kantor would be the one for the job, but it takes more than mere professional writing skill to achieve such a major accomplishment. It takes awareness born of action and danger and keenly felt knowledge. Such knowledge MacKinlay Kantor has found, and in his novel of war and its men, Glory for Me, he has wholly expressed it. Well above the draft age, and physically unacceptable to the armed forces, Kantor intensely felt the need to join his younger fellows in some way; in some way he had to be a part of the danger, the horror, the glory of this war. He found his opportunity as a war correspondent. As such, based in England, he flew in combat with the U. S. Air Forces and the R.A.F. over enemy territory into flak and fire. As such he learned to know the fighting men whose constant companion, friend and fellow-in-war he was for many months. For the equivalent of a leave Kantor came back to the United States, and what filled his mind and his heart and his thoughts had to find expression in a book, which is Glory for Me. Glory for Me is a simple novel-about three service men, honorably discharged for medical causes, who return home to the same town where in peacetime they had not known one another. Now they know one another, and through them we know them and their town and our country and war and peace and man. Glory for Me is a national epic, told in language of the common man, in language of the poet: told as only an American could tell it.

The grandson of Prince Genji lives outside of space and time and wanders the grounds of an old monastery in Kyoto. The monastery, too, is timeless, with barely a trace of any human presence. The wanderer is searching for a garden that has long captivated him. This novel by International Booker Prize winner Laszlo Krasznahorkai - perhaps his most serene and poetic work - describes a search for the[Bokinfo]

The renowned novelist De Wohl, with his usual crisp language and descriptive narrative, as well as irony and humor, presents the colorful and tumultuous times of the early Christian era in this story of intrigue, romance and power politics revolving around Helena, the devoted and saintly mother of Constantine, the first Christian emperor. This historical novel tells the story of the quest for the True Cross through fifty years of the most exciting events in Roman and Christian history. The narrative begins when the Tribune Constantius, a Roman officer stationed in Britain, meets and wins Helena, only daughter of the mystical and oracular King Coel of Britain. Through the course of their early lives together, and during their ten-year separation when Constantius returns to Britian as a conquering Caesar and Helena has become a rejected wife, devoted mother, and militant Christian, there is a sure and convincing portrayal of character growth and personal conflict. Helena's fierce determination to raise Constantine as a warrior son and her gradual discovery and dramatic acceptance of Christianity prepare her for the final miracle of her life discovery of the True Cross, the Living Wood on Calvary. The Living Wood is a chapter from the turbulent half-forgotten pages of early Christian history and legend in which the religious conflicts and problems are handled with moving simplicity. It is also an action-packed novel of those times--with a lesson for us today--that captures with equal skill and tumult and the shouting of the battlefield and the devious plots and counter-plots of the court.

"The glorious Folly is a colorful and exciting novel built around the amazing career of St. Paul. It follows him from the period during which he was a devout and fiery Hebrew scholar who persecuted Christians because he considered it his duty to God, through his miraculous conversion on the road to Damascus, to his magnificent achievements as missionary, church builder, and expounder of Christian doctrine, to his imprisonment and triumphant death as a martyr in Rome. In addition to tracing the adventures of St. Paul, The glorious Folly is about that epochal period in history when a mere handful of devoted and inspired Christians set out to give a living faith to a dying pagan world. Here is presented, through fictional characters who come vividly to life, the family and community life of the little group of fervent Christians who faced terrible persecutions and martyrdom because of their love for Christ and for each other. Against the background of the stupendous evil of Nero's Rome, its cruelty, treachery, and corruption, St. Paul and the early Christians are shown in all the radiance, glory, and adventure of their exemplary and devout lives"--

In a red brick mansion block off the Marylebone Road, Vivien, a sensitive, bookish girl grows up sealed off from both past and present by her timid refugee parents. Then one morning a glamorous uncle appears, dressed in a mohair suit, with a diamond watch on his wrist and a girl in a leopard-skin hat on his arm. Why is Uncle Sandor so violently unwelcome in her parents' home? This is a novel about survival - both banal and heroic - and a young woman who discovers the complications, even betrayals, that inevitably accompany the fierce desire to live. Set against the backdrop of a London from the 1950s to the present day, The Clothes on Their Backs is a wise and tender novel about the clothes we choose to wear, the personalities we dress ourselves in, and about how they define us all.

From a debut author comes a heart-warming novel about a unique girl and her seventhgrade experiences. Emma-Jean Lazarus is the smartest and strangest girl at William Gladstone Middle School. Her classmates don?t understand her, but that?s okay because Emma-Jean doesn?t quite get them either. But one afternoon, all that changes when she sees Colleen Pomerantz crying in the girl?s room. It is through Colleen that Emma-Jean gets a glimpse into what it is really like to be a seventh grader. And what she finds will send her tumbling out of a tree and questioning why she ever got involved in the first place.

The second novel from GG finalist and international award winner Kenneth Bonert, who brought Jewish Johannesburg to explosive life in his 2013 debut, The Lion Seeker . As the 1980s draw to a close, apartheid is in its death throes and South Africa is a maelstrom of political violence. Young Martin Helger has problems of his own. Out of place at an elite private school, he is the son of a rough-handed scrap dealer and lives in the shadow of his enigmatic brother, a neighbourhood legend. When an irresistible young American boards at the Helger home, a transfixed Martin soon finds himself wrenched out of the isolated bubble of his white privilege and thrust into the raw heart of South Africa's racial struggle. At the same time, secrets from the past begin to emerge and old sins long-buried return in terrifying new ways, tearing at the Helgers, a second-generation Jewish family, even as the larger forces of history and politics tear apart the country. Migration, terrorism, revolution, identity and memory--these are just some of the bold themes brilliantly and honestly explored in this powerful novel. At once a riveting literary thriller, a moving coming-of-age tale, and an unforgettable journey through a fascinating world , The Mandela Plot entertains and terrifies in equal measure, and resonates profoundly in light of current affairs.

In this celebration of imperfection, Katie Roiphe turns her exacting gaze on the surprisingly narrow-minded conventions governing the way we live now. Is there a preoccupation with 'healthiness' above all else? If so, does it lead insidiously to judging anyone who tries to live differently? Examining such subjects as the current fascination with Mad Men, the oppressiveness of Facebook ('the novel we are all writing'), and the quiet malice our society displays towards single mothers, Roiphe makes her case throughout these electric pages. This is a razor-sharp, wickedly entertaining and unapologetic defense of 'the messy life'.

Fictional Novel, Literary Fiction

"Captivating. Krantz's latest tome... is her most erotic yet. "Dazzle" sizzles." -- "Daily News, Los Angeles," Now, Judith Krantz, best-selling author of "Scruples," "Mistral's Daughter," and "Till We Meet Again," invites you into the luscious, monied world of Jazz Kilkullen, her most daring, provocative, impetuous heroine yet. "Deliciously sexy." --"Cosmopolitan," Inside the fun-filled photographers' studio in California known as Dazzle, Jazz Kilkullen reigns supreme. At twenty-nine, this playful, gifted, and thoroughly sexy woman has become one of the most successful celebrity portrait photo in the world. "Enjoyable... Jazz is one of the most likable free souls to emerge from the novel industry." -- "The Pittsburgh Press," But her charmed career and her dashing private life, which includes three fascinating-and fascinated-men, are rocked when an unexpected tragedy leaves jazz to battle her father's vengeful ex-wife and the machinations of her half-sisters. At stake is the Kilkullen family ranch, a three-billion-dollar paradise of unspoiled California land that developers all over the world would do anything to possess... and Jazz will do anything to protect. Absolutely anything. "Judith Krantz's best novel since "Scruples,"" -- "Associated Press," "Steamy." --"Los Angeles Times," "Hot... bubbling with sex, intrigue, and-most of all-money. Krantz is at the height of her form here." -- "Booklist" "From the Paperback edition."

From the author of the 2022 Pulitzer winner The Netanyahus , one of the great comic epics of our time: the Last Jewish Novel about the Last Jew in the World. On Christmas Eve 1999, all the Jews in the world die in a strange, millennial plague, with the exception of the firstborn males, who are soon adopted by a cabal of powerful people in the American government. By the following Passover, however, only one is still alive: Benjamin Israelien; a kindly, innocent, ignorant man-child. As he finds himself transformed into an international superstar, Jewishness becomes all the rage: matzo-ball soup is in every bowl, sidelocks are hip; and the only truly Jewish Jew left is increasingly stigmatized for not being religious. Since his very existence exposes the illegitimacy of the newly converted, Israelien becomes the object of a worldwide hunt... Meanwhile, in the not-too-distant future of our own, "real" world, another last Jew--the last living Holocaust survivor--sits alone in a snowbound Manhattan, providing a final melancholy witness to his experiences in the form of the punch lines to half-remembered jokes.

Imagine an author who has become a legend in his own lifetime - all because of the novel he wrote in the first flush of youth. Novelist Eugene Pota is a cultural icon of the twentieth century, struggling to write what will be the last novel of his career. But what to write about when, like so many noted authors before him, all of Pota's output since that first, landmark novel has been scrutinized and dissected - and found wanting? PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST, AS AN OLD MAN follows Pota's efforts to settle on a subject for his final work. In his search, Heller - through Pota - pays homage to his favourite authors and discusses the problems that have plagued so many writers whose later works failed to live up to the successes of their first: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry James, Jack London, Joseph Conrad, to name but a few. It is a rare and enthralling look into the artist's search for creativity, a search that comes at a point in life when impotence - both sexual and spiritual - has become a frustrating fact. Joseph Heller must have known that this would be his final novel; it stands as a fitting testament to the life and works of a leading light in modern literature.

Ruth Simon is beautiful, smart, talented, and always hungry. As a teenager, she starved herself almost to death, and though outwardly healed, inwardly she remains dangerously obsessed with food. For Joseph Zimmerman, Ruth's tormented relationship with eating is a source of deep distress and erotic fascination. Driven by his love for Ruth, and haunted by his own secrets, Joseph sets out to unravel the mystery of hunger and denial. This gripping debut novel is a powerful exploration of appetite, love, and desire.