412 results for "Novel"

The Salinger Contract

Adam Langer
An enthralling literary mystery that connects some of the world's most famous authors--from Norman Mailer and Truman Capote to B. Traven and J. D. Salinger -- to a sinister collector in Chicago Adam Langer, the narrator of this deft and wide-ranging novel by the author of the same name, tells the intertwining tales of two writers navigating a plot neither one of them could have ever imagined. There may be no other escape than to write their way out of it. Adam is a writer and stay-at-home dad in Bloomington, Indiana, drawn into an uneasy friendship with the charismatic and bestselling thriller author Conner Joyce. Conner is having trouble writing his next book, and when a menacing stranger approaches him with an odd--and lucrative--proposal, events quickly begin to spiral out of control. A novel of literary crimes and misdemeanors, The Salinger Contract will delight anyone who loves a fast-paced story told with humor, wit, and intrigue.
Open Road Integrated Media, Incorporated 2014-01-21 280 pages

Three War Stories

David Mamet
Spanning centuries and continents, Mamet uses war and its players to explore, among other themes, redemption and forgiveness as they unfold in the context of conflict in the form of three novellas. In The Redwing , the first of the three novellas, a 19th Century Secret Service naval officer turned prisoner, then novelist and finally memoirist recounts his own transformations during the course of his service and imprisonment. The protagonist in Notes on Plain Warfare examines religion through the prism of the American Indian wars. Finally, The Handle and the Hold is a vivid, dialogue-driven tale of two ex-military men who steal a plane in the month before the Israeli War of Independence. Finely wrought, Mamet eloquently depicts the psychological brutality conflict raises in the landscape of the mind.
Argo Navis 2013 240 pages

Wickett's Remedy A Novel

Myla Goldberg
The triumphant follow-up to the bestsellingBee Season,Wickett’s Remedyis an epic but intimate novel about a young Irish-American woman facing down tragedy during the Great Flu epidemic of 1918. Wickett’s Remedyleads us back to Boston in the early part of the 20th century and into the world of Lydia, an Irish-American shop girl yearning for a grander world than the cramped confines of South Boston. She seems to be well on her way to the life she has dreamed of when she marries Henry Wickett, a shy medical student and the scion of a Boston Brahmin family. Soon after their wedding, however, Henry shocks Lydia by quitting medical school and creating a mail-order patent medicine called Wickett’s Remedy. And then just as the enterprise is getting off the ground, the Spanish Influenza epidemic of 1918 begins its deadly sweep across the world, drastically changing their lives. In a world turned almost unrecognizable by swift and sudden tragedy, Lydia finds herself working as a nurse in an experimental ward dedicated to understanding the raging epidemic — through the use of human subjects. Meanwhile, we follow the fate of Henry’s belovedWickett’s Remedyas his one-time business partner steals the recipe and transforms it into QD Soda, a wildly popular soft drink. Based on years of research and evoking actual events,Wickett’s Remedyperfectly captures the texture of the times and brings a colourful cast of characters vividly to life, including a sad and funny chorus of the dead. With wit and dexterity, Goldberg has fashioned a novel that is both charming and grand.Wickett’s Remedyannounces her arrival as a major novelist. South Boston belonged to Lydia as profoundly and wordlessly as her thimble finger. Her knowledge of its streets was more complete than any atlas, her mental maps reflecting changes that occurred from season to season, day to day, and hour to hour. Each time she left 28 D Street — one among a row of identical triple-decker houses, the tenements lining the street like so many stained teeth — her route reflected this internal almanac. . . . For ten years this was enough. Then in fifth grade, Lydia saw a city map and realized her entire world was a mitten dangling from Boston’s sleeve. Across the bridge lay Washington Street — the longest street in all New England — which began like any other but then continued north, a single determined thread of cobblestone that wove itself through every town from Boston to Providence. Once Lydia saw Washington Street she knew she could not allow it to exist without her. —excerpt fromWickett's Remedy From the Hardcover edition.
Random House Large Print 2005-09-15 545 pages

The Improbability of Love A Novel

Hannah Rothschild
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.
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group 2016-09-06 512 pages

The Adventurers

Harold Robbins
From the author of The New York Times #1 best-selling novel The Carpetbaggers comes a tale of violence, sex, betrayal, revenge and intrigue. The Adventurers is a story of revolution and danger in the sultry jungles of South America.As a young boy, Diogenes Alejandro Xenos (¿Dax¿) witnesses the brutal rape and murder of his mother and sister by government troops¿experiencing the drama of revolution, loss, and tragedy firsthand. He is sent to Europe by the victorious rebel leader to rebuild his country¿s diplomatic and financial status post-revolution, and is immediately thrown into the elite environment of Europe¿s jet set society of international bankers and diplomats.Outwardly, Dax lives a life of privilege as one of the continent¿s most sought-after, hedonistic playboys¿wanted by men and women alike, but for very different reasons. Inside, however, he channels his fear, anger and hatred for the new regime, which he realizes is as corrupt as the old, into a desire to disrupt the status quo. Once a favorite of the general-turned-dictator, Dax quickly becomes an outlaw in his own country, living on the fringes of society as a rebel hell-bent on a new revolution.This epic tale of escape from the horrors of a third world regime is one of Harold Robbins' most ambitious novels ever, combining his trademark sensuality with political intrigue, a globe-spanning variety of exotic locales, and themes that never seem to change¿political intrigue, greed, power, money, violence, sex and betrayal.With Dax Xenos, Robbins thrills and excites us with one of his most memorable and intriguing characters¿a flawed and complicated hero.The Adventurers was one of Robbins¿ most successful novels, spending 41 weeks on The New York Times best sellers list. Today, this novel easily proves that Robbins¿ compelling prose still has the power to surprise, titillate, and move readers.
Oghma Creative Media 2018-05-15 860 pages

City of Laughter

Temim Fruchter
A rich and riveting debut spanning four generations of Eastern European Jewish women bound by blood, half-hidden secrets, and the fantastical visitation of a shapeshifting stranger over the course of 100 years An ambitious, delirious novel that tangles with queerness, spirituality, and generational silence, City of Laughter announces Temim Fruchter as a fresh and assured new literary voice. The tale of a young queer woman stuck in a thicket of generational secrets, the novel follows her back to her family's origins, where ancestral clues begin to reveal a lineage both haunted and shaped by desire. Ropshitz, Poland, was once known as the City of Laughter. As this story opens, an 18th century badchan, a holy jester whose job is to make wedding guests laugh, receives a visitation from a mysterious stranger--bringing the laughter the people of Ropshitz desperately need, and triggering a sequence of events that will reverberate across the coming century. In the present day, Shiva Margolin, recovering from the heartbreak of her first big queer love and grieving the death of her beloved father, struggles to connect with her guarded mother, who spends most of her time at the local funeral home. A student of Jewish folklore, Shiva seizes an opportunity to visit Poland, hoping her family's mysteries will make more sense if she walks in the footsteps of her great-grandmother Mira, about whom no one speaks. What she finds will make her question not only her past and her future, but also her present. Electric and sharply intimate, City of Laughter zigzags between our universe and a tapestry of real and invented Jewish folklore, asking how far we can travel from the stories that have raised us without leaving them behind.
Grove/Atlantic, Incorporated 2025-01-14 400 pages

Heather, the Totality

Matthew Weiner
The explosive debut novel - about family, power and privilege - from the creator of the award-winning Mad Men. Named a Barnes & Noble Best Book of the Year Mark and Karen Breakstone have constructed the idyllic life of wealth and status they always wanted, made complete by their beautiful and extraordinary daughter Heather. But they are still not quite at the top. When the new owners of the penthouse above them begin construction, an unstable stranger penetrates the security of their comfortable lives and threatens to destroy everything they've created.
Little, Brown 2018-06-12 144 pages

The Lion Seeker

Kenneth Bonert
A brawny, brilliant debut novel about the epic struggles of an immigrant son in a darkening world. Johannesburg, South Africa. The Great Depression. In this harsh new country, young Isaac Helger burns with fiery determination— to break out of the inner city, to buy his scarred mother the home she longs for, to find a way to realize her dream of reuniting a family torn apart. But there are terrible, unspoken secrets of the past that will haunt him as he makes his way through a society brutalized by racism, as he loses his heart to an unattainable girl from the city’s wealthiest heights and his every exit route from poverty dead-ends. When the threat of the Second World War insinuates itself with brutal force into Isaac’s reality, he will face the most important choice of his life . . . and will have to learn to live with the consequences. In this extraordinarily powerful novel, Kenneth Bonert brings alive the world of South African Jewry in all its raw energy and ribald vernacular. Comedic, searing, lyrical and with a snap-perfect ear for dialogue, The Lion Seeker is a profoundly moral exploration of how wider social forces shape us and shatter us, echoing through history with lessons that are no less relevant today than in the crucible of its time.
National Geographic Books 2014-02-25 576 pages

The abbess of Crewe

Spark, Muriel
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.
Polygon 2018 88 pages

The Subject Steve

Sam Lipsyte
The bad news was bad. I was dying. I was dying of something no one had ever died of before. I was dying of something absolutely, fantastically new. The Subject Steve is a dark, dazzling, and totally original satire on human mortality and our desperate efforts to evade it. Meet Steve (not his real name), a Special Case, in truth a Terminal Case, and the eponymous antihero of Sam Lipsyte’s savagely funny first novel. Steve has been informed by his two doctors, the Philosopher and the Mechanic, that he is dying of a condition of unquestioned fatality but no discernible physical cause. Eager to brand a new plague with their names, they call it Goldfarb-Blackstone Preparatory Extinction Syndrome, or PREXIS for short. The news that this perfectly ordinary postmodern citizen–bitter ex-husband, quasi-deadbeat father, midlife adman, creator of such resonant dot.com slogans as “Reality Is for Those Who Dream” and “How Did You Like Tomorrow?”–is dying of something that might well be boredom sets off a media frenzy. When his physicians are exposed as frauds, but not his death sentence, he betakes himself upstate to the Center for Nondenominational Recovery and Redemption, founded and ruled by the shadowy and brutal caregiver Heinrich of Newark. From there he will travel to the desert, where the success of a cultish media empire will rest on his demise. But nothing will alter the Subject Steve’s inevitable rendezvous with those twin banes of humankind, death and synergy. With the publication of this novel, by turns manic, ebullient and exquisitely deadpan, Sam Lipsyte enters the company of the master American satirists. It is a dark comedy for overlit times. From the Hardcover edition.
Broadway Books 2002-09-01 256 pages

The Winemaker

Noah Gordon
From the author of The Physician and Shaman now comes this story of a young man-the grapes he grows, the wine he fashions, the women he loves, and his struggle against an evil that seeks to destroy him. Already an international bestseller. Josep Alvarez is a young man in the tiny grape-growing village of Santa Eulália, in northern Spain, where his father grows black grapes that are turned into cheap vinegar. Joseph loves the agricultural life, but he is the second son, and his father's vineyard will be inherited by his brother Donat, the firstborn. Josep needs to keep his hands in the soil. He yearns for a job growing grapes and for an opportunity to marry Teresa Gallego. In Madrid, an assassination plot, conceived against the political leader of Spain by men of wealth and power, creates a storm of intrigue that sucks into its vortex a group of innocent young farm workers in Santa Eulália. How Josep's life is changed drastically by these events, and how, ironically, they gradually turn him into an inspired vintner with an evolving vision of life, is the fascinating story of The Winemaker. "Conciseness is Gordon's greatest skill. He unfolds a plot branching out far, until a panoramic view of a world past emerges-as vivid as the great realistical novels of the 19th century." -Welt am Sonntag (Germany) "So suspenseful that you cannot put it down." -Leipziger Volkszeitung (Germany) "Gordon's healthy obsession with research, his ability to create extremely realistic characters, and that innate literary talent of his for which there's no explanation are certain to make this book another best seller." -Elle Magazine (Spain) "A wonderful book. Enjoy it with a good bottle of wine." -Bücher (Germany) Noah Gordon has had outstanding international success. The Physician, soon to be a motion picture, has been called a modern classic, and booksellers at the Madrid Book Fair voted it "one of the 10 best-loved books of all time." Shaman was awarded the James Fenimore Cooper Prize for historical fiction. Both of these books, and five of the author's other novels-The Rabbi, The Death Committee, The Jerusalem Diamond, Matters of Choice, and The Winemaker-are published in digital formats by Barcelona eBooks and Open Road Integrated Media. Gordon's novel, The Last Jew, will also be published digitally in the near future. He lives outside of Boston with his wife, Lorraine Gordon.
Open Road Integrated Media, Incorporated 2012 340 pages

Weepers - A Novel

Peter Mendelsund
A messianic tale about a group of professional mourners—a darkly funny novel of grief, mystery and redemption from the author of The Delivery . Ed is a weeper. A professional weeper. He's a card-carrying member of an eccentric union hired to cry at funerals, wakes, services and burials. It’s an odd job, but his services are sorely needed these days, as the town, the region, the country as a whole has become more or less numb. No one is able to summon a shred of human emotion whatsoever. Not anymore. (What’d be the point? The world’s already gone to hell.) So there’s always work for Ed and his colleagues. But all those cries can wear a man down, and the tears don’t flow quite like they used to, even for a consummate pro like Ed. Then one morning, a stranger comes to town. A scrawny kid with no belongings, no parents, no name, no past. And at precisely the moment of his arrival, people begin to experience something new. Something strange. An onslaught of unbidden feelings, unfamiliar feelings, too many feelings A surrealist story of mourning and messiahs, deserts and droughts, cowboys and junkies, miracles and mass hysteria, the lure of despair and the solace of friendship. Peter Mendelsund’s Weepers is a novel for this age: our age of anesthesia and anger.
Picador 2026-06-16 320 pages

Farrell Covington and the Limits of Style A Novel

Paul Rudnick
“A case study in elegant, honest tragicomedy…by the genuinely hilarious Paul Rudnick” (Gary Shteyngart, New York Times bestselling author) that follows the decades-long, rule-breaking romance between the son of one of America’s wealthiest families and a middle-class aspiring author. Devastatingly handsome and insanely rich, Farrell Covington is capable of anything and impossible to resist. He’s a clear-eyed romantic, an aesthete but not a snob, self-indulgent yet wildly generous. As the son of one of the country’s most powerful and deeply conservative families, the world could be his. But when he falls for Nate Reminger, an aspiring writer from a nice Jewish family in Piscataway, New Jersey, the results are passionate and catastrophic. Together, the two embark on a unique romance that spans half a century. They are inseparable—except for the many years when they are apart. Moving from the ivy-covered bastion of Yale to New York City, Los Angeles, and eventually all over the world, Farrell and Nate experience the tremendous upheaval and social change of the last fifty years. From the freedom of gay life in 1970s Manhattan to the Hollywood closet, the AIDS epidemic, and the profound strides of the LGBTQ+ movement, this witty and moving novel shows how the world changes around us while we’re busy doing other things. Written with “engaging wit, side-eyed perceptiveness, and barbed elan” (Michael Chabon), this modern classic proves that style has its limits, love does not.
Simon and Schuster 2024-04-30 368 pages

The Novel of Ferrara

Giorgio Bassani
Giorgio Bassani’s six classic books, collected for the first time in English as the epic masterwork they were intended to be. Among the masters of twentieth-century literature, Giorgio Bassani and his Northern Italian hometown of Ferrara “are as inseparable as James Joyce and Dublin or Italo Svevo and Trieste” (from the Introduction). Now published in English for the first time as the unified masterwork Bassani intended, The Novel of Ferrara brings together Bassani’s six classics, fully revised by the author at the end of his life: Within the Walls , The Gold-Rimmed Spectacles , The Garden of the Finzi-Continis , Behind the Door , The Heron , and The Smell of Hay . Set in the northern Italian town of Ferrara before, during, and after the Second World War, these interlocking stories present a fully rounded world of unforgettable characters: the respected doctor whose homosexuality is tolerated until he is humiliatingly exposed by an exploitative youth; a survivor of the Nazi death camps whose neighbors’ celebration of his return gradually turns to ostracism; a young man discovering the ugly, treacherous price that people will pay for a sense of belonging; the Jewish aristocrat whose social position has been erased; the indomitable schoolteacher, Celia Trotti, whose Communist idealism disturbs and challenges a postwar generation. The Novel of Ferrara memorializes not only the Ferrarese people, but the city itself, which assumes a character and a voice deeply inflected by the Jewish community to which the narrator belongs. Suffused with new life by acclaimed translator and poet Jamie McKendrick, this seminal work seals Bassani’s reputation as “a quietly insistent chronicler of our age’s various menaces to liberty” (Jonathan Keates).
National Geographic Books 2020-12-01 800 pages

The Director A Novel

Daniel Kehlmann
A New York Times Notable Book • An NYPL Best Book of 2025 • A Washington Post Notable Book A Late Show with Stephen Colbert Book Club Pick “Nothing short of brilliant.” — The Wall Street Journal From “a surpassingly gifted storyteller” ( The New York Times ), a visionary novel inspired by the life of film director G.W. Pabst, who fled to Hollywood to resist the Nazis only to return to his homeland to create propaganda films for the German Reich. An artist’s life, a pact with the devil, and the dangerous illusions of the silver screen. G.W. Pabst, one of cinema’s greatest directors of the 20th century, was filming in France when the Nazis seized power. To escape the horrors of the new and unrecognizable Germany, he fled to Hollywood. But now, under the blinding California sun, the world-famous director suddenly looks like a nobody. Not even Greta Garbo, the Hollywood actress whom he made famous, can help him. When he receives word that his elderly mother is ill, he finds himself back in his homeland of Austria, which is now called Ostmark. Pabst, his wife, and his young son are suddenly confronted with the barbaric nature of the regime. So, when Joseph Goebbels—the minister of propaganda in Berlin—sees the potential for using the European film icon for his directorial genius and makes big promises to Pabst and his family, Pabst must consider Goebbels’s thinly veiled order. While Pabst still believes that he will be able to resist these advances, that he will not submit to any dictatorship other than art, he has already taken the first steps into a hopeless entanglement. Kehlmann’s latest oeuvre explores the complicated relationships and distinctions between art and power, beauty and barbarism, cog and conspirator.
S&S/Summit Books 2026-05-12 352 pages

Kyra A Novel

Carol Gilligan
From the internationally renowned author of In a Different Voice, a remarkable debut novel: a love story that introduces an unforgettable character in modern fiction, Kyra, and a superb new fiction writer, Carol Gilligan. Kyra is an architect designing a new city, a woman of humor and courage living in a vibrant world of family, friends, and colleagues and determined to break out of old structures. When she meets Andreas, a director staging an innovative production of Tosca, neither wants to fall in love–and yet, inevitably, they do. Their story takes us from Cambridge and an island off the coast of Massachusetts to Vienna, Thailand, Cyprus, and Wales as Kyra seeks the deepest truths about herself, other people, loyalty, and love. This reaching leads her to commit singular acts that startle and shock, inspiring new freedom for others as well as for Kyra herself. Rich with Carol Gilligan’s signature gifts–emotional wisdom, subtle renderings of the intricacies of human relationship, conflict and choice, and lyrical prose–Kyra is a luminous, magnificent novel by a writer realizing the range of her powers.
Random House Publishing Group 2009-06-09 272 pages

At Last A Novel

Marisa Silver
“An astounding achievement.” —Megha Majumdar * “Her best book yet.” —Paul Yoon Set in midcentury America, At Last explores a rich family saga centered on two fierce and competitive matriarchs whose intertwined lives reflect the complexities of family, tradition, and personal ambition. “Whole lives course down the decades, and every minute is conveyed with Silver’s signature combination of toughness and grace,” (Laird Hunt). Helene Simonauer and Evelyn Turner are two formidable women whose paths cross when their children marry. Both women are sharp, cunning, and unwavering in their conflicting beliefs about marriage, responsibility, and family and, most pressingly, their efforts to vie for the love of their shared granddaughter. At Last paints a vivid portrait of the American Midwest, capturing the essence of a time and place where societal norms and personal aspirations often clashed. Marisa Silver’s narrative weaves together the lives of Helene and Evelyn, from their vastly different childhoods through the pivotal events that define them. Both intimate and expansive, and capturing the complexities of ambition and love with humor and insight, At Last is a testament to what happens when an unintended, even unwanted relationship turns out to be a central one that defines a life.
Simon and Schuster 2025-09-02 288 pages