As Jodi Picoult's Picture Perfect begins, it is daybreak in downtown Los Angeles. A woman suffering from amnesia is taken in by an officer new to the L.A. police force, after he finds her wandering aimlessly near a graveyard. Days later, when her husband comes to claim her at the police station, no one is more stunned than Cassie Barrett to learn that not only is she a renowned anthropologist, but she is married to Hollywood's leading man, Alex Rivers.As Alex helps Cassie become reaccustomed to her fairy-tale existence, fragments of memory return: the whirlwind romance on location in Africa, her major anthropological discovery, the trajectory of Alex's career. Yet as Cassie settles into her glamor-filled life, uneasiness nags at her. She senses there is something troubling and wild that she cannot remember, something that would alter the picture of her perfect marriage. When she finds a positive pregnancy test in her bathroom, she is flooded with dark memories. Trying to piece together her past, she runs to the only person she trusts will keep her hidden--Will Flying Horse, the policeman who had initially harbored her.Moving from the sweltering African grasslands to the desolate plains of the reservation to the claustrophobic glitz of Hollywood, Jodi Picoult's story is one rich in detail, breadth, and emotion. Picture Perfect is a lush, beautifully written novel that will captivate its readers.

Originally published in 1973, the groundbreaking, uninhibited story of Isadora Wing and her desire to fly free caused a national sensation. In "The New York Times," Henry Miller compared it to his own classic, "Tropic of Cancer" and predicted that "this book will make literary history..." It has sold more than twelve million copies. Now, after thirty years, the revolutionary novel known as "Fear of Flying" still stands as a timeless tale of self-discovery, liberation, and womanhood.

What happens when your Prince Charming turns out not to be so charming after all? In To Have and To Hold , bestselling author Jane Green offers a sizzling, highly entertaining look at romantic relationships after we say “I do.” Alice knows she should be happy. A charming twenty-eight-year-old with a successful catering business, she’s always dreamed of a rose-covered cottage in the English countryside, filled with children and animals and home-cooked meals. Her favorite attire is comfy jeans, her best manicure features garden dirt under the nails. But when her teenage crush—the wealthy, dashing man-about-town Joe Chambers—wants to make her his bride, Alice is more than willing to play Cinderella to Joe’s prince. Never mind that he wants her to change—a diet, ice-blond highlights, stilettos, snooty gallery openings—and that he’s allergic to nature and kids. She tells herself she’s happy to sacrifice for love, and besides, with Joe’s stunning good looks and high-profile career at a top financial firm, every woman in London wants to be in her shoes. But that’s just the problem. Despite Alice’s efforts to be the perfect wife, Joe soon reveals a penchant for being hopelessly unfaithful. When a notorious indiscretion with a female colleague forces Joe to transfer to New York, Alice’s life turns upside down. As Joe continues to sneak around, and her best friend’s beau offers a tempting glimpse of what real love could be like, Alice must decide how much Cinderella she can take before her deepest desires win out—and if she can summon up the courage to find real happiness on her own. Delicious, witty, and packed with sparkling sex appeal, To Have and To Hold is an unputdownable read that will have you rooting out loud for its endearing heroine. A #1 bestseller in Britain, this latest tale from the beloved, utterly winning Jane Green proves that the search for true love doesn’t always end when someone dons a veil, and offers a lively, refreshing take on modern marriage.

This brilliant new novel by an American master, the author of Ragtime, The Book of Daniel, Billy Bathgate, and The March, takes us on a radical trip into the mind of a man who, more than once in his life, has been the inadvertent agent of disaster. Speaking from an unknown place and to an unknown interlocutor, Andrew is thinking, Andrew is talking, Andrew is telling the story of his life, his loves, and the tragedies that have led him to this place and point in time. And as he confesses, peeling back the layers of his strange story, we are led to question what we know about truth and memory, brain and mind, personality and fate, about one another and ourselves. Written with psychological depth and great lyrical precision, this suspenseful and groundbreaking novel delivers a voice for our times—funny, probing, skeptical, mischievous, profound. Andrew's Brain is a surprising turn and a singular achievement in the canon of a writer whose prose has the power to create its own landscape, and whose great topic, in the words of Don DeLillo, is “the reach of American possibility, in which plain lives take on the cadences of history.” Praise for Andrew's Brain “Too compelling to put down . . . fascinating, sometimes funny, often profound . . . Andrew is a provocatively interesting and even sympathetic character. . . . The novel seamlessly combines Doctorow's remarkable prowess as a literary stylist with deep psychological storytelling pitting truth against delusion, memory and perception, consciousness and craziness. . . . [Doctorow] takes huge creative risks—the best kind.” — USA Today “ Andrew's Brain is cunning. . . . [A] sly book . . . This babbling Andrew is a casualty of his times, binding his wounds with thick wrappings of words, ideas, bits of story, whatever his spinning mind can unspool for him. . . . One of the things that makes [Andrew] such a terrific comic creation is that he's both maddeningly self-delusive and scarily self-aware: He's a fool, but he's no innocent. . . . Andrew may not be able to enjoy his brain, but Doctorow, freely choosing to inhabit this character's whirligig consciousness, can.” — The New York Times Book Review “A tantalising tour de force . . . a journey worth taking . . . With exhilarating brio, the book plays off . . . two contrasting takes on mind and brain. . . . [ Andrew's Brain encompasses] an astonishing range of modes: vaudeville humour, tragic romance, philosophical speculation. . . . It fizzes with intellectual energy, verbal pyrotechnics and satiric flair.” — The Sunday Times (London) “Dramatic . . . cunning and beautiful . . . strange and oddly fascinating, this book: a musing, a conjecture, a frivolity, a deep interrogatory, a hymn.” — San Francisco Chronicle “Provocative . . . a story aswirl in a whirlpool of neuroscience, human relations, loss, guilt and recent American history . . . Doctorow reveals his mastery in the sheen of a text that is both window and mirror. Reading his work is akin to soaring in a glider. Buoyed by invisible breath, readers encounter stunning vistas stretching to horizons they've never imagined.” — The Plain Dealer “Andrew's ruminations can be funny, and his descriptions gorgeous.” —Associated Press “[An] evocative, suspenseful novel about the deceptive nature of human consciousness.” — More “A quick and acutely intelligent read.” — Entertainment Weekly From the Hardcover edition.

On a quiet night in the best part of Greenwich, Connecticut, eight people assemble for a convivial dinner. But after that night, their lives will never be the same, as death erupts into their lives. They are a disparate group, including a former State Department employee, a Catholic nun, a linguistics professor, and a successful novelist. They, and the people they love, portray the arrogance and innocence, brutality and compassion in America today. Each character becomes a thread-dark, light, or a shade in between-in a carpet of intricate design, and as Howard Fast weaves them together, they embody the interdependence of human life and human guilt and the eternal work of redemption.

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.

Poxl West fled the Nazis' onslaught in Czechoslovakia. He escaped their clutches again in Holland. He pulled Londoners from the Blitz's rubble. He wooed intoxicating, unconventional beauties. He rained fire on Germany from his RAF bomber. Poxl West is the epitome of manhood and something of an idol to his teenage nephew, Eli Goldstein, who reveres him as a brave, singular, Jewish war hero. Poxl fills Eli's head with electric accounts of his derring-do, adventures and romances, as he collects the best episodes from his storied life into a memoir. He publishes that memoir, Skylock, to great acclaim, and its success takes him on the road, and out of Eli's life. With his uncle gone, Eli throws himself into reading his opus and becomes fixated on all things Poxl. But as he delves deeper into Poxl's history, Eli begins to see that the life of the fearless superman he's adored has been much darker than he let on, and filled with unimaginable loss from which he may have not recovered. As the truth about Poxl emerges, it forces Eli to face irreconcilable facts about the war he's romanticized and the vision of the man he's held so dear. Daniel Torday's debut novel, "The Last Flight of Poxl West, " beautifully weaves together the two unforgettable voices of Eli Goldstein and Poxl West, exploring what it really means to be a hero, and to be a family, in the long shadow of war.

Cal Bradley's marriage is the stuff of romance. For fifteen year,, he has shared his life with Marie, a woman he passionately adores. In an idyllic corner of New England that has been home to his family for generations, Cal has become one of the most respected men in town: a father, churchgoer and a talented psychiatrist who runs a family clinic. Life is good. Then one night, a nineteen-year-old boy named Peter Blue sets a local church on fire and is sent to Cal for treatment For the patient, it's a last chance at redemption. For Cal, it's a journey into fear, deception, and murder. Because somehow Peter Blue's inner life is connected to Cal', reality...and to his wife's hidden past. And before Cal can hunt down the truth he is going to have to choose between everything he believes is right, and everything he loves.

Lucas Baird is on the lam. He accidentally killed a man in LA. Totally defensible, but he chose to run, as he has done most of his aimless twenty-four years of life. This time Luke ends up in New York, making love to Daisy on a beach on Long Island. A sudden storm traps him under debris in a rain sewer where he is held captive by a gang of kids under the sway and prod of a fiendish twelve-year-old town bully. The kids, in dreadful fear of their tyrannical master, turn savage, heaping hideous acts of torment and cruelty upon poor Luke. P> How he manages to free himself becomes a redemptive tale woven into the fabric of a fraught, bizarre love story reminiscent of THE BEACH and LORD OF THE FLIES.

From the woman who brought us Scruples , Dazzle , and Spring Collection comes a provocative new novel, a deeply moving mother-daughter tale set amid the elegance of a famed New York auction house and the glamour of Hollywood. A mother's secret... Tessa Kent, exquisite and precocious, gave birth to an illegitimate daughter when she was only fourteen. Her parents raised the infant, Maggie, as their own child, as Tessa went on to become an international movie star. Maggie lives for her glamorous "sister's" infrequent whirlwind visits. But when she accidentally learns the truth, eighteen-year-old Maggie breaks all ties with Tessa and starts to work at the famed Manhattan auction house of Scott & Scott. A daughter's fury... Five years later, a life-altering crisis makes Tessa passionately determined to end this estrangement. There's only one way Tessa can reach out to her daughter: a high-stakes auction of the immensely valuable collection of famed jewels lavished on her by her late husband. Tessa promises Scott & Scott the auction on the condition that Maggie and she work closely together on the sale. Tessa's whole future hangs in the balance--for she knows her happiness depends on what may be an impossible reconciliation....

"Climats" is a profound and elegant psychological novel that explores the intricate complexities of human relationships, love, and the shifting emotional landscapes of the heart. Written by the celebrated French author André Maurois, this masterpiece delves into the lives of Philippe Marcenat and the women who shape his existence, offering a searingly honest portrayal of the joys and devastations of romantic obsession. The narrative is divided into two compelling perspectives. The first part follows Philippe as he recounts his tumultuous marriage to the ethereal but elusive Odile, whose need for freedom clashes with his possessive nature. In the second part, Philippe's second wife, Isabelle, provides a contrasting viewpoint, revealing the challenges of living in the shadow of a past love and the struggle to create a lasting bond. Through these dual narratives, Maurois examines how personal "climates"-the emotional atmospheres individuals bring to their relationships-can both attract and repel, leading to cycles of misunderstanding and longing. Regarded as a classic of 20th-century literature, "Climats" remains a timeless meditation on the nature of jealousy, the difficulty of truly knowing another person, and the pursuit of happiness within the confines of marriage. Its lyrical prose and keen psychological insights continue to resonate with readers seeking a deep understanding of the human condition. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you may see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

From the award-winning author of Minor Characters comes a haunting novel about the persistence of love and the sustaining and destabilizing power of memories In the vibrant downtown Manhattan art world of the 1960s, where men and women collide in "lucky and unlucky convergences," a series of love affairs has left Joanna Gold, a young photographer, feeling numbed. Then, at yet another party, a painter named Tom Murphy walks up to her. "Why do you hang back?" he asks. Rather than another brief collision, their relationship is the profound and ecstatic love each had longed to find. But it's undermined by Tom's harrowing past--his fatherless childhood, his wartime experiences, and most of all, the loss of the two children he left behind in Florida, along with the powerful red, white, and black paintings he will never set eyes on again. Tom, both tender and volatile, draws Joanna into the unwinnable struggle against the forces that drive him toward death. Once again, Joyce Johnson brings to life a mythic bohemian world where art is everything and life is as full of intensity and risk as the bold sweep of a painter's brush across a canvas. A New York Times Notable Book Excerpted in The New Yorker and Harper's Magazine

The award-winning author of Minor Characters writes with delicious transparency about a love that cannot be harnessed and a woman who refuses to be deceived In the great wave of husband-leaving ushered in by the Sexual Revolution, Molly Held frees herself from her cold, flagrantly unfaithful husband after their final quarrel turns violent. With her five-year-old son, she lights out for an Upper West Side apartment and the new life she hopes to find with Conrad Schwartzberg-the charismatic radical lawyer who has recently become her lover. Having escaped from a desert, she lands in a swamp. While Conrad radiates positive energy, he is unable to tell Molly-or anyone who loves him-the truth. No longer the wronged wife, Molly now finds herself the Other Woman. She is sharing Conrad with Roberta, another refugee from marriage-with Conrad's movements between the two of them disguised by his suspiciously frequent out-of-town engagements. Roberta either knows nothing or prefers to look the other way, but Molly's maddening capacity for double vision takes over her mind. What saves her from herself is her well-developed sense of irony, which never fails her-or the reader. "Ironic, witty and always graceful." -Marilyn French, author of The Women's Room "Johnson . . . reveals a knack for lyric bitterness." -Kirkus Reviews "Another superb novel of feminine risk-taking." -Ann Douglas " Bad Connections] is controlled, smooth, deftly written: it evokes scene and character with admirable sure swiftness. . . . Joyce Johnson's touches are all true." -Harper's Magazine "Joyce Johnson is a writer of wit and perception . . . and she has a keen eye for the irony of modern life." -The New York Times Book Review "Often funny, sometimes cathartically angry, always skillful in rendering the small, excruciating moments that add up to the misery of love gone bad." -The Village Voice "The new literature of the aggrieved woman has produced something here quite memorable, a sad, beautiful casebook of unrequited love, unrequited humanity." -E. L. Doctorow "Painfully perceptive, psychologically accurate." -Judith Rossner "A subtle, witty, rueful tour de force of that strange new territory which all of us now inhabit: modern women's modern lives." -Barbara Probst Solomon Joyce Johnson was born in 1935 in New York City, the setting for all her fiction: Come and Join the Dance, recognized as the first Beat novel by a woman writer, Bad Connections, and In the Night Caf . She is best known for her memoir Minor Characters, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1983 and dealt with coming of age in the 1950s and with her involvement with Jack Kerouac. She has published two other Beat-related books: Door Wide Open: A Beat Love Affair in Letters, and The Voice Is All: The Lonely Victory of Jack Kerouac. She has also written a second memoir, Missing Men, and the nonfiction title What Lisa Knew: The Truths and Lies of the Steinberg Case.

Surrender is in the tradition of best-selling psychological thrillers and cozy novels. It promises to engage your mind with its plot twists and turns; ignite your sense of humor with the realities of life that make you laugh; and tug at your heart with a hope filled spiritual thread. Psychiatrist Morgan Jane Winters moved back south to her beloved hometown of New Orleans to help those in need of mental and emotional care. Never in Morgan's wildest dreams could she have imagined that helping those in need would lead to being asked to aid in solving crimes with the New Orleans Police Department, but it did. When Commander Jackson Slade, Head of Special Investigations, calls on Morgan to lend a hand in solving the murders of four people, the darkest and deadliest of secrets within the political elite of New Orleans become unearthed. As they sift through what seems to be a massive cover up, they are led down a complex and dangerously lurid path of deception, intrigue, passion, murder, and redemption.

In a love story framed by the vivid realities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Edeet Ravel tenderly explores the complicated ways people connect when violence touches every aspect of their lives Dana Hillman is a young Israeli woman whose humanity and passion for justice are obvious to all who meet her. On peace missions, she and other activists act as human shields in situations where the Israeli army tries to displace Palestinians. A gifted photographer, she documents the protests, and the faces of women and children caught in the seemingly endless struggle. To make a living, though, she churns out junky historical romances, well aware of the irony of her situation. Her own love story has turned into a heartbreaking mystery: why did her husband, Daniel, suddenly disappear and where has he been for the last eleven years? Every year Dana publishes a full-page ad addressed to her lost husband that says, “I will never ever ever ever . . . stop waiting for you,” with that “ever” multiplied to fill the whole page. Dana’s hope and constancy fill the novel in the way that her “ever” fills up the page, as she holds fast to trust, love and a vision for the future that seems magical in this fractured place. From the Hardcover edition.

Leonard Merrick (1864 - 1939) was an English novelist. Although largely forgotten today, he was widely admired by his peers, J. M. Barrie called Merrick the "novelist's novelist." * * * * From the beginning of the Introduction by George Barr McCutcheon. The joy that Leonard Merrick puts into his stories finds instant response in the soul of his reader. He writes with the clear, sparkling vision of one who for the time being is an active participant in the little comedies and tragedies (for sometimes they are tragedies notwithstanding the deft twist he exercises in transforming them into something else) through which he leads his characters to an almost unctuous "curtain." It is not difficult to imagine the author Merrick translating himself into Merrick the actor, playing many parts in all of these sprightly romances; nor is it hard to picture him as existing in the environment to which his whilom people confine themselves. More than this, he has the power to transport his readers, as upon the fabled carpet, to the very heart of the scenes he describes - a few swift prods of the pen and we are jauntily driven into every corner of Paris, there to find amiable companions, who do not bother themselves about our virtues any more than we trouble ourselves about their morals.... ...Follow him through these pages, go arm and arm with him while Paris laughs, and the world will be brighter and gayer for you in consequence. Stroll along with him until you come up with that pair of despondent though exalted lovers who would have leaped into the Seine had it not been for the joyous intervention of the last franc and the philosophy of an equally moribund poet. Attend his earnest but melancholy aspirations in connection with his cousin Henriette, wherein a profitable marriage was to be his sacrifice upon the altar of necessity, and the notable journey which ended in pleasant disaster to his easily accommodated state of mind. Join him and his inconsequential companions as a guest at the memorable banquet arranged by the valiant, adorable Kiki, whose desires and fancies far-outstripped her means but whose art (such as it was) naively triumphed over the cupidity of a most honorable and substantial landlord. Toil also with him far into the night while he writes the engaging memoirs of the actress, Toine; stand beside him when the task is completed and the light of his life goes out with the discovery that he has loved and labored in vain-but glory with him when he springs up from the ruins and cheerfully goes back to his garret and its privations, by no means wiser or better than he was before but as undaunted as ever. Gallant soul, Tricotrin! To the peak and to the pit with the same unfailing jauntiness of spirit. Who else but he could have fallen from so high and landed so composedly, so happily uninjured, back in the dingy old room with Nicolas, impoverished, disillusioned, hungry but still rejoicing after his flight into Romance with Simon? And who else could have led him to these heights and dropped him so gently as the man who created him? I should like, above all things, to have been able to tell the sprightly tale of Tricotrin and his friends as Leonard Merrick has told it. -George Barr McCurcheon

Explore the intricate dance of love and deception in Leonard Merrick's "The Man Who Was Good," a compelling psychological drama set in the early 20th century. This meticulously prepared edition, featuring an insightful introduction by J.K. Prothero, delves into the complexities of man-woman relationships, laying bare the subtle nuances of marriage and the devastating consequences of betrayal. Merrick masterfully crafts a story that resonates with timeless themes of trust, identity, and the fragile nature of domestic life. Navigate the psychological landscape of a relationship tested to its limits, as "The Man Who Was Good" explores the hidden depths of human connection and the enduring power of the past. A classic of literary fiction, this novel offers a poignant and thought-provoking exploration of love, loss, and the enduring search for meaning within the bonds of matrimony. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

“The sly courage, the deft intelligence, and the fierceness of vision that we, his fans, have come to expect from a Rafael Yglesias novel all blaze brightly forth--and cast very dark shadows--inThe Wisdom of Perversity.” —Michael Chabon, author of Telegraph Avenue Brian and Jeff were best friends, growing up together in New York City in the late 1960s. Then something unspeakable happened that ended both their friendship and their childhoods. For forty years, their shared secret lay buried, but new circumstances have forced them to face the consequences of their silence. The predator who sexually abused them, as well as Jeff’s cousin, Julie, and countless others, has been exposed by more recent victims, but his wealth and privilege may protect him from punishment. Brian, Jeff, and Julie must weigh devastating choices: to tell all and risk their carefully constructed lives or face the likelihood that others will be victimized. Rafael Yglesias, critically acclaimed bestselling novelist and screenwriter, unmasks the headlines, giving voice to what has been left unsaid and light to what has been hidden.The Wisdom of Perversity is a startling, engrossing, unsettling, and moving story of surviving an insidious evil and of a triumphant struggle to heal its wounds. “Here is the antithesis of Nabokov’s Lolita . . . Set beside the grim literalness ofThe Wisdom of Perversity, as beside any case history of sexual abuse, Lolita is a lark, an extravagance, a phantasm of romance, a tour de force, a jubilant metaphor. Yglesias has known the real thing, and has chosen not to refashion it into anything other than itself.” —Joyce Carol Oates, The New York Times Book Review “An affecting novel that is big-screen lurid without being superficial or too slick . . . [with] a touch of Agatha Christie-like mystery.”—Kirkus Reviews “Yglesias delivers a powerful message about victimization, healing, and empowerment in a novel that is as timely as it is poignant.”—Booklist