Step into Jenny Slate's wild imagination in this "magical" (Mindy Kaling), "delicious" (Amy Sedaris), and "poignant" (John Mulaney) New York Times bestseller about love, heartbreak, and being alive -- "this book is something new and wonderful" (George Saunders). You may "know" Jenny Slate from her Netflix special, Stage Fright , as the creator of Marcel the Shell, or as the star of "Obvious Child." But you don't really know Jenny Slate until you get bonked on the head by her absolutely singular writing style. To see the world through Jenny's eyes is to see it as though for the first time, shimmering with strangeness and possibility. As she will remind you, we live on an ancient ball that rotates around a bigger ball made up of lights and gasses that are science gasses, not farts (don't be immature). Heartbreak, confusion, and misogyny stalk this blue-green sphere, yes, but it is also a place of wild delight and unconstrained vitality, a place where we can start living as soon as we are born, and we can be born at any time. In her dazzling, impossible-to-categorize debut, Jenny channels the pain and beauty of life in writing so fresh, so new, and so burstingly alive, we catch her vision like a fever and bring it back out into the bright day with us, where everything has changed. One of Vanity Fair' s Great Quarantine Reads.

New York Times bestseller Laura Lippman showcases why she is one of today's top crime writers in this acclaimed collection of suspenseful stories featuring fierce women--including one never-before-published novella. "A first-rate collection, an obvious must for the legions of Lippman fans, but also great reading for anyone who savors short crime fiction." -- Booklist (starred review) The award-winning master of psychological suspense is in top form in this collection of diverse and diabolically clever stories. In the never-before-published "Just One More," a married couple--longing for that old romantic spark--creates a playful diversion that comes with unexpected consequences. Lippman's beloved Baltimore PI Tess Monaghan keeps a watchful eye on a criminally resourceful single father in "Seasonal Work," while her mother, Judith, realizes that the life of "The Everyday Housewife" is an excellent cover for all kinds of secrets. In "Slow Burner," a husband's secret cell phone proves to be a dicey temptation for a suspicious wife. A father's hidden past piques the curiosity of a young snoop in "The Last of Sheila-Locke Holmes." Plus seven other brilliantly crafted stories of deception, murder, dangerous games, and love gone wrong--irrefutable evidence that Laura Lippman's riveting fiction will more than satisfy any crime reader.

Written with a trenchant, sardonic edge, The Group is a dazzlingly outspoken novel and a captivating look at the social history of America between two world wars. "Juicy, shocking, witty, and almost continually brilliant."--CosmopolitanAward-winning Mary McCarthy's most celebrated novel follows the lives of eight Vassar graduates, known simply to their classmates as “the group.” An eclectic mix of personalities and upbringings, they meet a week after graduation to watch Kay Strong get married. After the ceremony, the women begin their adult lives -- traveling to Europe, tackling the worlds of nursing and publishing, and finding love and heartbreak in the streets of New York City. Through the years, some of the friends grow apart and some become entangled in each other's affairs, but all vow not to become like their mothers and fathers. It is only when one of them passes away that they all come back together again to mourn the loss of a friend, a confidante, and most importantly, a member of the group.

Cat behaviorist and star of Animal Planet's hit television show My Cat from Hell , Jackson Galaxy, a.k.a. "Cat Daddy," isn't what you might expect for a cat expert (as The New York Times noted, with his goatee and tattoos, he "looks like a Hells Angel"). Yet Galaxy's ability to connect with even the most troubled felines -- not to mention the stressed-out humans living in their wake -- is awe-inspiring. In this book, Galaxy tells the poignant story of his thirteen-year relationship with a petite gray-and-white short-haired cat named Benny, and gives singular advice for living with, caring for, and loving the feline in your home. When Benny arrived in his life, Galaxy was a down-and-out rock musician with not too much more going on than a part-time job at an animal shelter and a drug problem. Benny's previous owner brought the cat to the shelter in a cardboard box to give him up. Benny had seen better days --- his pelvis had just been shattered by the wheels of a car -- and his owner insisted he'd been "unbondable" from day one. Nothing could have been further from the truth. An inspiring account of two broken beings who fixed each other, Cat Daddy is laced throughout with Galaxy's amazing "Cat Mojo" advice for understanding what cats need most from us humans in order to live happier, healthier lives.

A literary love story that rivals those celebrated in earlier classics. "St. Louis Post-Dispatch" In Helprin s rhapsodic rendering . . . "In Sunlight and in Shadow" is . . . the romance of life itself. " Los Angeles Times" In the summer of 1946, New York City pulses with energy. Harry Copeland, a World War II veteran, has returned home to run the family business. Yet his life is upended by a single encounter with the young singer and heiress Catherine Thomas Hale, as each falls for the other in an instant. They pursue one another in a romance played out in Broadway theaters, Long Island mansions, the offices of financiers, and the haunts of gangsters. Catherine s choice of Harry over her longtime fiance endangers Harry s livelihood and threatens his life. In the end, Harry must summon the strength of his wartime experience to fight for Catherine, and risk everything. In its storytelling heft, its moral rectitude, the solemn magnificence of its writing and the splendor of its hymns to New York City, ["In Sunlight and in Shadow"] is a spiritual pendant to Winter s Tale and every bit as extraordinary . . . Even the most stubbornly resistant readers will soon be disarmed by the nobility of the novel s sentiments and seduced by the pure music of its prose. "Wall Street Journal" [NO AUTHOR PHOTO] Mark Helprin is the acclaimed author of Winter s Tale, A Soldier of the Great War, The Pacific, Memoir from Antproof Case, Freddy and Fredericka, Ellis Island, and numerous other works. "

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - A powerful collection of the influential columnist's most important works--featuring rare speeches and a major new essay about today's populist movements and the future of global democracy "Charles will be remembered as one of the greatest public intellects of his generation."--John McCain In his decades of work as America's preeminent political commentator, whether writing about statecraft and foreign policy or reflecting on more esoteric topics such as baseball, spaceflight and medical ethics, Charles Krauthammer elevated the opinion column to a form of art. This collection features the columns, speeches and unpublished writings that showcase the best of his original thought and his last, enduring words on the state of American politics, the nature of liberal democracy and the course of world history. The book also includes a deeply personal section offering insight into Krauthammer's beliefs about what mattered most to him: friendship, family and the principles he lived by. The Point of It All is a timely demonstration of what made Charles Krauthammer the most celebrated American columnist and political thinker of his generation, a revealing look at the man behind the words and a lasting testament to his belief that anyone with an open and honest mind can grapple deeply with the most urgent questions in politics and in life.

Felice Bauer was Kafka's first great love and the inspiration for his first great fiction. Six weeks after they met, he wrote "The Judgment" for her in one night of feverish activity. Kafka always inferred to the traumatic, public breaking-off of their engagement as his "tribunal," and indeed he began work on The Trial within a month of that event. Kafka's letters to Felice offer rare insights into the writer's life and art. Elias Canetti's brilliant and sensitive examination of this moving correspondence to shows is the origins of Kafka's voice as a writer and his torment as a man.

O, The Oprah Magazine, Time Magazine, Financial Times, Esquire, Bustle, Lit Hub, Electric Literature, Library Journal, Brooklyn Based, Avenue BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR New York Times Editors' Choice "Superb. . . . Krauss's depictions of the nuances of sex and love, intimacy and dependence, call to mind the work of Natalia Ginzburg in their psychological profundity, their intellectual rigor. . . . Krauss's stories capture characters at moments in their lives when they're hungry for experience and open to possibilities, and that openness extends to the stories themselves: narratives too urgent and alive for neat plotlines, simplistic resolutions or easy answers." --Molly Antopol, New York Times Book Review "From a contemporary master, an astounding collection of ten globetrotting stories, each one a powerful dissection of the thorny connections between men and women. . . . Each story is masterfully crafted and deeply contemplative, barreling toward a shimmering, inevitable conclusion, proving once again that Krauss is one of our most formidable talents in fiction." --Esquire In one of her strongest works of fiction yet, Nicole Krauss plunges fearlessly into the struggle to understand what it is to be a man and what it is to be a woman, and the arising tensions that have existed from the very beginning of time. Set in our contemporary moment, and moving across the globe from Switzerland, Japan, and New York City to Tel Aviv, Los Angeles, and South America, the stories in To Be a Man feature male characters as fathers, lovers, friends, children, seducers, and even a lost husband who may never have been a husband at all. The way these stories mirror one other and resonate is beautiful, with a balance so finely tuned that the book almost feels like a novel. Echoes ring through stages of life: aging parents and new-born babies; young women's coming of age and the newfound, somewhat bewildering sexual power that accompanies it; generational gaps and unexpected deliveries of strange new leases on life; mystery and wonder at a life lived or a future waiting to unfold. To Be a Man illuminates with a fierce, unwavering light the forces driving human existence: sex, power, violence, passion, self-discovery, growing older. Profound, poignant, and brilliant, Krauss's stories are at once startling and deeply moving, but always revealing of all-too-human weakness and strength.

The final, poignant chapter in a trilogy of bestselling true stories about a floppy-eared Scottish Fold named Norton Peter Gethers was a confirmed cat hater until the day he received a six-week-old kitten as a gift. Walking the streets of New York with Norton tucked into his pocket, Gethers began forming an intense attachment to his new pet. Before long Norton was flying with his owner on the Concorde to Europe, sipping milk in Parisian cafés, and eating custom-made pounce pizzas at Spago. Soon Gethers began to detail Norton’s adventures in print, and with The Cat Who Went to Paris and A Cat Abroad the duo made history as well as many, many friends around the world. The Cat Who’ll Live Forever chronicles the latest in Norton’s astonishing adventures, celebrity encounters, and worldwide excursions, culminating in his heartwarming and heartbreaking final cross-country trip. The first half of this book will have you smiling and laughing as Norton changes the lives of the Italian owners of a thirteenth-century abbey in Sicily, attends movie premiers with Sir Anthony Hopkins in the chic Hamptons, and relaxes at the dog run in Greenwich Village’s Washington Square Park. But as Norton gets older his schedule slows down and he struggles with the aches and pains and physical inconveniences that go along with age, teaching his human the essentials of loving and caring and coping with illness. Ultimately Norton passes along to his owner the most valuable lessons of all¯how to deal with death and grief, how to live life on your own terms, and how to appreciate and savor the joyful times that come along while we’re here on earth. The Cat Who’ll Live Forever is, on one level, a touching meditation on love and relationships and dealing with the pain of inevitable loss. Above all, it is a deeply moving and life-affirming tribute to a humble little animal who never let stardom go to his head and always understood the meaning of true friendship.

Time magazine called Mortimer J. Adler a ''philosopher for everyman.'' In this guide to considering the big questions, Adler addresses the topics all men and women ponder in the course of life, such as ''What is love?'', ''How do we decide the right thing to do?'', and, ''What does it mean to be good?'' Drawing on his extensive knowledge of Western literature, history, and philosophy, the author considers what is meant by democracy, law, emotion, language, truth, and other abstract concepts in light of more than two millennia of Western civilization and discourse. Adler's essays offer a remarkable and contemplative distillation of the Great Ideas of Western Thought.

"All first-rate criticism first defines what we are confronting," the late, great jazz critic Whitney Balliett once wrote. By that measure, the essays of Christopher Hitchens are in the first tier. For nearly four decades, Hitchens has been telling us, in pitch-perfect prose, what we confront when we grapple with first principles-the principles of reason and tolerance and skepticism that define and inform the foundations of our civilization-principles that, to endure, must be defended anew by every generation. "A short list of the greatest living conversationalists in English," said The Economist , "would probably have to include Christopher Hitchens, Sir Patrick Leigh-Fermor, and Sir Tom Stoppard. Great brilliance, fantastic powers of recall, and quick wit are clearly valuable in sustaining conversation at these cosmic levels. Charm may be helpful, too." Hitchens-who staunchly declines all offers of knighthood-hereby invites you to take a seat at a democratic conversation, to be engaged, and to be reasoned with. His knowledge is formidable, an encyclopedic treasure, and yet one has the feeling, reading him, of hearing a person thinking out loud, following the inexorable logic of his thought, wherever it might lead, unafraid to expose fraudulence, denounce injustice, and excoriate hypocrisy. Legions of readers, admirers and detractors alike, have learned to read Hitchens with something approaching awe at his felicity of language, the oxygen in every sentence, the enviable wit and his readiness, even eagerness, to fight a foe or mount the ramparts. Here, he supplies fresh perceptions of such figures as varied as Charles Dickens, Karl Marx, Rebecca West, George Orwell, J.G. Ballard, and Philip Larkin are matched in brilliance by his pungent discussions and intrepid observations, gathered from a lifetime of traveling and reporting from such destinations as Iran, China, and Pakistan. Hitchens's directness, elegance, lightly carried erudition, critical and psychological insight, humor, and sympathy-applied as they are here to a dazzling variety of subjects-all set a standard for the essayist that has rarely been matched in our time. What emerges from this indispensable volume is an intellectual self-portrait of a writer with an exemplary steadiness of purpose and a love affair with the delights and seductions of the English language, a man anchored in a profound and humane vision of the human longing for reason and justice.

The seminal, uncollected essays—lauded as “dazzling” ( The New York Times Book Review )—by the late Christopher Hitchens, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller God Is Not Great , showcase the notorious contrarian’s genius for rhetoric and his sharp rebukes to tyrants and the ill-informed everywhere. For more than forty years, Christopher Hitchens delivered essays to numerous publications on both sides of the Atlantic that were astonishingly wide-ranging and provocative. His death in December 2011 from esophageal cancer prematurely silenced a voice that was among the most admired of contemporary voices—writers, readers, pundits and critics the world over mourned his loss. At the time of his death, Hitchens left nearly 250,000 words of essays not yet published in book form. “Another great book of essays from a writer who we wish were still alive to produce more copy” ( National Review ), And Yet… ranges from the literary to the political and is a banquet of entertaining and instructive delights, including essays on Orwell, Lermontov, Chesterton, Fleming, Naipaul, Rushdie, Orhan Pamuk, and Dickens, among others, as well as his laugh-out-loud self-mocking “makeover.” The range and quality of Hitchens’s essays transcend the particular occasions for which they were originally written, yielding “a bounty of famous scalps, thunder-blasted targets, and a few love letters from the notorious provocateur-in-chief’s erudite and scathing assessments of American culture” ( Vanity Fair ). Often prescient, always pugnacious, formidably learned, Hitchens was a polemicist for the ages. With this posthumous volume, he remains, “America’s foremost rhetorical pugilist” ( The Village Voice ).

This collection of 101 stories of love and sacrifice provides emotional and practical resources to sustain the family caregiver. These revealing stories from people of all ages who take care of family members, at home or in outside facilities, are filled with emotional support and practical advice. You’ll be inspired and feel appreciated as you read all 101 of these personal glimpses into the lives of other family caregivers, including: How Joan Lunden manages the care of her mother at the same time she is raising young children, as part of the Sandwich Generation. How Jill Eikenberry and Michael Tucker moved Jill’s elderly mother in next door—they eat family meals together, prepared by their daughter. How Leeza Gibbons’ mother planned for her Alzheimer’s disease, and Leeza’s tips on how to accept and manage the diagnosis and care. How Gail Sheehy navigated the caregiving maze during her husband’s battle with cancer, and the 9 emotional stages of the family caregiver. How Dr. Alexis Abramson became her grandmother’s full-time caregiver at age 22, a real-life experience that led to a Ph.D. in Gerontology.

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

A New York Times Book Review Notable Book Daphne Merkin brings her signature combination of wit, candor, and penetrating intelligence to subjects that touch on every aspect of contemporary culture, from the high calling of the literary life to the poignant underside of celebrity and our collective fixation on fame. Merkin's elegant, widely admired profiles go beneath the glossy facades to consider their vulnerabilities and demons, as well as their enduring hold on us. Here one will encounter a gallery of complex, unforgettable celebrities, from Marilyn Monroe to Mike Tyson, and from Courtney Love to Truman Capote. Merkin also offers reflections on writers as varied as Jean Rhys, W. G. Sebald, John Updike, and Alice Munro. From a brazenly honest and deeply empathic observer, The Fame Lunches shines a light on truths we often prefer to keep veiled-and in doing so opens up the conversation for all of us.

True stories of sudden death in the classic collection by a master of American journalism “Reporters love murders,” Calvin Trillin writes in the introduction to Killings. “In a pinch, what the lawyers call ‘wrongful death’ will do, particularly if it’s sudden.” Killings, first published in 1984 and expanded for this edition, shows Trillin to be such a reporter, drawn time after time to tales of sudden death. But Trillin is attracted less by violence or police procedure than by the way the fabric of people’s lives is suddenly exposed when someone comes to an untimely end. As Trillin says, Killings is “more about how Americans live than about how some of them die.” These stories, which originally appeared in The New Yorker between 1969 and 2010, are vivid portraits of lives cut short. An upstanding farmer in Iowa finds himself drastically changed by a woman he meets in a cocktail lounge. An eccentric old man in Eastern Kentucky is enraged by the presence of a documentary filmmaker. Two women move to a bucolic Virginia county to find peace, only to end up at war over a shared road. Mexican American families in California hand down a feud from generation to generation. A high-living criminal-defense lawyer in Miami acquires any number of enemies capable of killing him. Stark and compassionate, deeply observed and beautifully written, Killings is “that rarity, reportage as art” (William Geist, The New York Times Book Review ). Praise for Killings “Riveting tales of murder and mayhem. . . . [Calvin] Trillin is a superb writer, with a magical ability to turn even the most mundane detail into spellbinding wonder. Armed with this wealth of material, he utterly shines. Every piece here is a gem.” — The Seattle Times “What Mr. Trillin does so well, what makes Killings literature, is the way he pictures the lives that were interrupted by the murders. Even the most ordinary life makes a terrible noise . . . when it’s broken off.” —Anatole Broyard, The New York Times “Fascinating, troubling . . . In each of these stories is the basis of a Dostoevskian novel.” —Edward Abbey , Chicago Sun-Times “The stories . . . are unforgettable. They leave us, finally, with the awareness of the unknowable opacity of the human heart.” —Bruce Colman , San Francisco Chronicle “[Trillin] writes brilliantly. . . . These stories still hold up, as classics.” — The Buffalo News “In his artful ability to conjure up a whole life and a whole world, Trillin comes as close to achieving the power of a Chekhov short story as can anyone whose material is so implacably tied to fact.” —Frederick Iseman , Harper’s Bazaar “I have a book for you true-crime addicts if you’re caught up on the podcast Serial, the cascade on TV of 48 Hours and Dateline NBC episodes. . . . It’s time to pick up Calvin Trillin’s Killings .” — The New York Times Book Review “Well-crafted and thoughtfully composed, lacking judgment and admonishment, these are a true piece of quality journalism, which clearly continues to captivate audiences.” — Library Journal “With telling detail and shrewd insights, [Calvin Trillin] masterfully evokes the places and personalities that hatched these grim episodes.” — Publishers Weekly

“As far as the education of children is concerned,” states Natalia Ginzburg in this collection of her finest and best-known short essays, “I think they should be taught not the little virtues but the great ones. Not thrift but generosity and an indifference to money; not caution but courage and a contempt for danger; not shrewdness but frankness and a love of truth; not tact but a love of one’s neighbor and self-denial; not a desire for success but a desire to be and to know.” Whether she writes of the loss of a friend, Cesare Pavese; or what is inexpugnable of World War II; or the Abruzzi, where she and her first husband lived in forced residence under Fascist rule; or the importance of silence in our society; or her vocation as a writer; or even a pair of worn-out shoes, Ginzburg brings to her reflections the wisdom of a survivor and the spare, wry, and poetically resonant style her readers have come to recognize. “A glowing light of modern Italian literature . . . Ginzburg’s magic is the utter simplicity of her prose, suddenly illuminated by one word that makes a lightning streak of a plain phrase. . . . As direct and clean as if it were carved in stone, it yet speaks thoughts of the heart.” — The New York Times Book Review

One of The New Yorker 's "Books We Loved in 2017" A Grace Paley Reader compiles a selection of Paley’s writing across genres, showcasing her breadth of work as well as her extraordinary insight and brilliant economy of words. "A writer like Paley," writes George Saunders, “comes along and brightens language up again, takes it aside and gives it a pep talk, sends it back renewed, so it can do its job, which is to wake us up.” Best known for her inimitable short stories, Grace Paley was also an enormously talented essayist and poet, as well as a fierce activist. She was a tireless member of the antiwar movement, the civil rights movement, the tenants’ rights movement, the anti-nuclear-power movement, and the Women’s Pentagon Action, among other causes, and proved herself to be a passionate citizen of each of her communities—New York City and rural Vermont.

This anthology of 41 gothic tales includes spine-tingling stories by Joyce Carol Oates, Ursula K. Le Guin, Roald Dahl, H.G. Wells, Jorge Luis Borges, Guy de Maupassant, Bram Stoker, Nathaniel Hawthorne, H.P. Lovecraft, and many others.

With her trademark combination of candor, brass, and wit, Bernhard--a regular on the Roseanne show--presents her singular take on romance, love, and sex in the '90s. The author of Confessions of a Pretty Lady, Bernhard draws on her own experiences to present thought-provoking essays about the sweet-and-sour experiences of love.