From the beloved author of Comeback Love, an "absorbing" (The Washington Post) tale of forbidden romance set against the backdrop of the segregated American South, war-torn Europe, and the civil unrest of the Sixties. Sometimes falling in love is the most courageous act. Julian Rose is only fifteen when he leaves his family and Germany for a new life in 1920s America. Initially struggling, he eventually finds his way--first by becoming one of the preeminent bootleggers on the East Coast, and later by amassing a fortune in real estate. Kendall Wakefield is a free-spirited college senior who longs to become a painter. Her mother, the daughter of a slave and the founder of an African-American college in South Florida, spends her days running the institution and trying to find a suitable match for her only daughter. One evening in 1938, she hosts a dinner that reunites Julian with his parents, who have been rescued from the Nazis by her college. There, Kendall and Julian meet for the first time, and from that unlikely encounter begins a thirty-year, on-again off-again affair that will take the lovers from Miami Beach to Greenwich Village to postwar life in Paris. Throughout their travels, they will encounter the likes of Sartre, Picasso, and a host of other artists, writers, and intellectuals just as they are in the process of redefining culture for a new generation. Through it all, their longing for each other remains a constant in the ceaseless sweep of time. Wherever There Is Light is an absorbing, panoramic tale of twentieth-century America and an unforgettable story of defiant love that "is epic and truly felt" (Kirkus Reviews).
From the author of Comeback Love-, a sweeping, panoramic tale of twentieth-century America, chronicling the decades-long love affair between a Jewish immigrant and the granddaughter of a slave. Julian Rose is only fifteen when he leaves his family and Germany for a new life in 1920s America. Lonely at first, he eventually finds his way--first by joining up with Longy Zwillman and becoming one of the preeminent bootleggers on the East Coast, and later by amassing a fortune in real estate. Kendall Wakefield is a free-spirited college senior who longs to become a painter. Her mother, the daughter of a slave and founder of an African-American college in South Florida, is determined to find a suitable match for her only daughter. One evening in 1938, Mrs. Wakefield hosts a dinner that reunites Julian with his parents--who have been rescued from Hitler's Germany by the college--and brings him together with Kendall for the first time. From that encounter begins a thirty-year affair that will take the lovers from the beaches of Miami to the jazz clubs of Greenwich Village to postwar life in Paris, where they will mingle with Sartre, Picasso, and a host of other artists and intellectuals. Through his years serving in American intelligence and as an interrogator at the Nuremberg trials, what Julian wants most is to marry and find the joy that eluded his parents. Kendall craves her freedom, and after trading her oil paints for a Leica camera, becomes a celebrated photographer, among the first American journalists to photograph the survivors of a liberated concentration camp. Yet despite distance, their competing desires, and the rapidly changing world, their longing for each other remains a constant in the ceaseless sweep of time. Captivating and infused with historical detail, this is the epic tale of three generations, two different but intertwined families, and one unforgettable love story.
Two rambunctious, romantic flameouts. One boring wedding. One heated embrace in a quiet coatroom. This is not exactly the recipe for true love. John and Jane's lusty encounter at a friend's wedding isn't really the beginning of anything with any weight to it; even they know that. When they manage to pull back, it occurs to them that they might start this whole thing over properly. They might try getting to know one another first, through letters.
What follows is a series of traded confessions--of their messy histories, their past errors, their big loves, their flaws, and their passions. Each love affair, confessed as honestly as possible, reveals the ways in which Jane and John have grown and changed--or not changed--over the years; the people they've hurt, the ones still bruised. The ones who bruised them. Where all of this soul-baring will take them is the burning question behind every letter--a question that can only be answered when they meet again, finally, in the flesh.
What follows is a series of traded confessions--of their messy histories, their past errors, their big loves, their flaws, and their passions. Each love affair, confessed as honestly as possible, reveals the ways in which Jane and John have grown and changed--or not changed--over the years; the people they've hurt, the ones still bruised. The ones who bruised them. Where all of this soul-baring will take them is the burning question behind every letter--a question that can only be answered when they meet again, finally, in the flesh.
Finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel How can we live with integrity and pleasure in this world of police brutality and racism? An Asian American activist is challenged by his mother to face this question in this powerful--and funny--debut novel of generational change, a mother's secret, and an activist's coming-of-age Twenty-one-year-old Reed is fed up. Angry about the killing of a Black man by an Asian American NYPD officer, he wants to drop out of college and devote himself to the Black Lives Matter movement. But would that truly bring him closer to the moral life he seeks? In a series of intimate, charged conversations, his mother--once the leader of a Korean-Black coalition--demands that he rethink his outrage, and along with it, what it means to be an organizer, a student, an ally, an American, and a son. As Reed zips around his hometown of Los Angeles with his mother, searching and questioning, he faces a revelation that will change everything. Inspired by his family's roots in activism, Ryan Lee Wong offers an extraordinary debut novel for readers of Anthony Veasna So, Rachel Kushner, and Michelle Zauner: a book that is as humorous as it is profound, a celebration of seeking a life that is both virtuous and fun, an ode to mothering and being mothered.
'There was no one in the room. Blinds and curtains were closed; the light of the skies, if any, was shut out. ... Only the fire was alive, consuming its life--for what? Then the door opened and as Claudia came with hurried steps into the fire's glow, two open letters in her hand, the telephone began ringing. She shut the door and turned up the lights.' Claudia Heseltine returns to this moment three times in a series of parallel narratives. As the novel presses the re-set button, she accepts each invitation, one by telephone, two by letter, to a specific social event, and in doing so her life goes down a different path with its own possibilities and achievements, sorrows, and disappointments. This is an inventive novel, published in 1931, which contemplates the consequences of a single decision. Part of a curated collection of forgotten works by early to mid-century women writers, the British Library Women Writers series highlights the best middlebrow fiction from the 1910s to the 1960s, offering escapism, popular appeal, and plenty of period detail to amuse, surprise and inform.
"Elizabeth Blackwell is a story-telling genius. Her mesmerizing writing weaves a spell that will enchant you. While Beauty Slept breathes new life into the fairytale genre with a historical twist that will take your breath away." --Meg Cabot, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Princess Diaries and Heather Wells mystery series I am not the sort of person about whom stories are told. Those of humble birth suffer their heartbreaks and celebrate their triumphs unnoticed by the bards, leaving no trace in the fables of their time... And so begins Elise Dalriss's story. When she hears her great-granddaughter recount a minstrel's tale about a beautiful princess asleep in a tower, it pushes open a door to the past, a door Elise has long kept locked. For Elise was the companion to the real princess who slumbered--and she is the only one left who knows what actually happened so many years ago. As the memories start to unfold, Elise is plunged back into the magnificent world behind the palace walls she left behind more than a half century ago, a labyrinth where the secrets of her real father and the mysterious fate of her mother connect to an inconceivable evil. Elise has guarded these secrets for a lifetime. As only Elise understands all too well, the truth is no fairy tale.
Historical fiction at its best "The Brothers Grimm" meets "The Thirteenth Tale"
I am not the sort of person about whom stories are told.
I am not the sort of person about whom stories are told.
And so begins Elise Dalriss s story. When she hears her great-granddaughter recount a minstrel s tale about a beautiful princess asleep in a tower, it pushes open a door to the past, a door Elise has long kept locked. For Elise was the companion to the real princess who slumbered and she is the only one left who knows what actually happened so many years ago. Her story unveils a labyrinth where secrets connect to an inconceivable evil. As only Elise understands all too well, the truth is no fairy tale."
"Riveting . . . While I Was Gone [celebrates] what is impulsive in human nature."
-The New York Times "Miller weaves her themes of secrecy, betrayal, and forgiveness into a narrative that shines."
-Time Jo Becker has every reason to be content. She has three dynamic daughters, a loving marriage, and a rewarding career. But she feels a sense of unease. Then an old housemate reappears, sending Jo back to a distant past when she lived in a communal house in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Drawn deeper into her memories of that fateful summer in 1968, Jo begins to obsess about the person she once was. As she is pulled farther from her present life, her husband, and her world, Jo struggles against becoming enveloped by her past and its dark secret. "[While I Was Gone] swoops gracefully between the past and the present, between a woman's complex feelings about her husband and her equally complex fantasies-and fears-about another man. . . . [Miller writes] well about the trials of faith."
-The New York Times Book Review "Quietly gripping . . . Jo shines steadily as the flawed and thoroughly modern heroine. As in her 1986 novel, The Good Mother, Miller shows how impulses can fracture the family."
-USA Today "Marvelous . . . poignant . . . powerful."
-Seattle Times/Post Intelligencer
-The New York Times "Miller weaves her themes of secrecy, betrayal, and forgiveness into a narrative that shines."
-Time Jo Becker has every reason to be content. She has three dynamic daughters, a loving marriage, and a rewarding career. But she feels a sense of unease. Then an old housemate reappears, sending Jo back to a distant past when she lived in a communal house in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Drawn deeper into her memories of that fateful summer in 1968, Jo begins to obsess about the person she once was. As she is pulled farther from her present life, her husband, and her world, Jo struggles against becoming enveloped by her past and its dark secret. "[While I Was Gone] swoops gracefully between the past and the present, between a woman's complex feelings about her husband and her equally complex fantasies-and fears-about another man. . . . [Miller writes] well about the trials of faith."
-The New York Times Book Review "Quietly gripping . . . Jo shines steadily as the flawed and thoroughly modern heroine. As in her 1986 novel, The Good Mother, Miller shows how impulses can fracture the family."
-USA Today "Marvelous . . . poignant . . . powerful."
-Seattle Times/Post Intelligencer
In While I'm Falling, Laura Moriarty presents a compelling depiction of how one young woman's life changes when her family breaks up for good.
Ever since her parents announced that they're getting divorced, Veronica has been falling. Hard. A junior in college, she has fallen in love. She has fallen behind in her difficult coursework. She hates her job as counselor at the dorm, and she longs for the home that no longer exists. When an attempt to escape the pressure, combined with bad luck, lands her in a terrifying situation, a shaken Veronica calls her mother for help--only to find her former foundation too preoccupied to offer any assistance at all.
But Veronica only gets to feel hurt for so long. Her mother shows up at the dorm with a surprising request--and with the elderly family dog in tow. Boyfriend complications ensue, along with her father's sudden interest in dating. Veronica soon finds herself with a new set of problems, and new questions about love and independence.
Darkly humorous, beautifully written, and filled with crystalline observations about how families fall apart, While I'm Falling takes a deep look at the relationship between a daughter and a mother when one is trying to grow up and the other is trying to stay afloat.
While I'm Falling deftly captures the moment a child realizes that growing up means being responsible for your parents' mistakes -- and preventing yourself from making the same ones. Laura Moriarty keeps getting better and better. -- Jodi Picoult, author of Handle with Care In While I'm Falling, Laura Moriarty presents a compelling depiction of how one young woman's life changes when her family breaks up for good. Ever since her parents announced that they're getting divorced, Veronica has been falling. Hard. A junior in college, she has fallen in love. She has fallen behind in her difficult coursework. She hates her job as counselor at the dorm, and she longs for the home that no longer exists. When an attempt to escape the pressure, combined with bad luck, lands her in a terrifying situation, a shaken Veronica calls her mother for help -- only to find her former foundation too preoccupied to offer any assistance at all. But Veronica only gets to feel hurt for so long. Her mother shows up at the dorm with a surprising request -- and with the elderly family dog in tow. Boyfriend complications ensue, along with her father's sudden interest in dating. Veronica soon finds herself with a new set of problems, and new questions about love and independence. Darkly humorous, beautifully written, and filled with crystalline observations about how families fall apart, While I'm Falling takes a deep look at the relationship between a daughter and a mother when one is trying to grow up and the other is trying to stay afloat.
Foreword by Dave Eggers
Smart, whimsical, and often scathing, the fiction of Kurt Vonnegut influenced a generation of American writers--including Dave Eggers, author of this volume's Foreword. In these previously unpublished gems, Vonnegut's originality infuses a unique landscape of factories, trailers, and bars--and characters who pit their dreams and fears against a cruel and sometimes comically indifferent world.
Here are stories of men and machines, art and artifice, and how ideals of fortune, fame, and love take curious twists in ordinary lives. An ambitious builder of roads, commanding an army of bulldozers, graders, and asphalt spreaders, fritters away his free time with miniature trains--until the women in his life crash his fantasy land. Trapped in a stenography pool, a young dreamer receives a call from a robber on the run, who presents her with a strange proposition. A crusty newspaperman is forced onto a committee to judge Christmas displays--a job that leads him to a suspiciously ostentatious ex-con and then a miracle. A hog farmer's widow receives cryptic, unsolicited letters from a man in Schenectady about "the indefinable sweet aches of the spirit." But what will she find when she goes to meet him in the flesh?
These beautifully rendered works are a testament to Vonnegut's unique blend of observation and imagination. Like a present left behind by a departed loved one, "While Mortals Sleep" bestows upon us a shimmering Kurt Vonnegut gift: a poignant reflection of our world as it is and as it could be.
Smart, whimsical, and often scathing, the fiction of Kurt Vonnegut influenced a generation of American writers--including Dave Eggers, author of this volume's Foreword. In these previously unpublished gems, Vonnegut's originality infuses a unique landscape of factories, trailers, and bars--and characters who pit their dreams and fears against a cruel and sometimes comically indifferent world.
Here are stories of men and machines, art and artifice, and how ideals of fortune, fame, and love take curious twists in ordinary lives. An ambitious builder of roads, commanding an army of bulldozers, graders, and asphalt spreaders, fritters away his free time with miniature trains--until the women in his life crash his fantasy land. Trapped in a stenography pool, a young dreamer receives a call from a robber on the run, who presents her with a strange proposition. A crusty newspaperman is forced onto a committee to judge Christmas displays--a job that leads him to a suspiciously ostentatious ex-con and then a miracle. A hog farmer's widow receives cryptic, unsolicited letters from a man in Schenectady about "the indefinable sweet aches of the spirit." But what will she find when she goes to meet him in the flesh?
These beautifully rendered works are a testament to Vonnegut's unique blend of observation and imagination. Like a present left behind by a departed loved one, "While Mortals Sleep" bestows upon us a shimmering Kurt Vonnegut gift: a poignant reflection of our world as it is and as it could be.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER - Foreword by Dave Eggers
These previously unpublished, beautifully rendered works of fiction are a testament to Kurt Vonnegut's unique blend of observation and imagination. Here are stories of men and machines, art and artifice, and how ideals of fortune, fame, and love take curious twists in ordinary lives. An ambitious builder of roads fritters away his free time with miniature trains--until the women in his life crash his fantasy land. Trapped in a stenography pool, a young dreamer receives a call from a robber on the run, who presents her with a strange proposition. A crusty newspaperman is forced onto a committee to judge Christmas displays--a job that leads him to a suspiciously ostentatious ex-con and then a miracle. Featuring a Foreword by Dave Eggers, While Mortals Sleep is a poignant reflection of our world as it is and as it could be. Includes the following stories: "Jenny""The Epizootic"
"Hundred-Dollar Kisses"
"Guardian of the Person"
"With His Hand on the Throttle"
"Girl Pool"
"Ruth"
"While Mortals Sleep"
"Out, Brief Candle"
"Tango"
"Bomar"
"The Man Without No Kiddleys"
"Mr. Z"
"$10,000 a Year, Easy"
"Money Talks"
"The Humbugs" Praise for While Mortals Sleep "Immensely readable and thoroughly entertaining."--The Washington Post "Taut, concise . . . The stories set themselves up with neat swiftness, proceed at a clip, and shut down with equal speed, [showing Vonnegut] honing his skills in structure and satire."--Los Angeles Times "A lovely reminder of the mischievous moral voice we lost when we lost Kurt Vonnegut."--San Francisco Chronicle
"These stories were all good when they were written decades ago, but many strike me as great now. Never has the voice of Kurt Vonnegut, humanist and humorist, been more relevant."--The Seattle Times "There's something distinctly timeless about Vonnegut's vision."--Minneapolis Star-Tribune
While the Gods Were Sleeping is a novel about the magnitude and impact of the First World War, the recollections of which are recorded in the notebooks of the elderly Helena. The young Helena is sent to her uncle's country house before the war, and from here she witnesses scenes of indescribable horror. But it is also where she meets Matthew again, a British Army photographer who she goes on to marry. This is a story not about spectacular events; rather, Mortier is concerned with writing about war, history and the past with great empathy and engagement, and with a mixture of melancholy, qualification and resignation.
Slippery figures in anomalous situations - ghosts, spies, bodyguards, criminals- haunt these stories by Javier Marías: the characters come bearing their strange and special secrets, and never leave our minds. In one story, a man obsessed with his much younger lover endlessly videotapes her every move, and then confides his surprising plans for her; in another, a ghost can't stop resigning from his job. Masterfully, Marías manages in a small space to perplex and delight. "The short story fits Marías like a glove," as Le point noted. His stories have been hailed as "formidably intelligent" (The London Review of Books), "a bracing tonic" (The Chicago Tribune), and "startling" (The New York Times Book Review).
An instant New York Times bestseller! One of TIME Magazine's 100 Must-Reads of 2021! Two people realize that it's no longer an act when they veer off-script in this sizzling romantic comedy by New York Times bestselling author Jasmine Guillory. Ben Stephens has never bothered with serious relationships. He has plenty of casual dates to keep him busy, family drama he's trying to ignore and his advertising job to focus on. When Ben lands a huge ad campaign featuring movie star, Anna Gardiner, however, it's hard to keep it purely professional. Anna is not just gorgeous and sexy, she's also down to earth and considerate, and he can't help flirting a little... Anna Gardiner is on a mission: to make herself a household name, and this ad campaign will be a great distraction while she waits to hear if she's booked her next movie. However, she didn't expect Ben Stephens to be her biggest distraction. She knows mixing business with pleasure never works out, but why not indulge in a harmless flirtation? But their light-hearted banter takes a turn for the serious when Ben helps Anna in a family emergency, and they reveal truths about themselves to each other, truths they've barely shared with those closest to them. When the opportunity comes to turn their real-life fling into something more for the Hollywood spotlight, will Ben be content to play the background role in Anna's life and leave when the cameras stop rolling? Or could he be the leading man she needs to craft their own Hollywood ending?
From the bestselling author of My Ex-Best Friend's Wedding comes a novel about four friends who share a passion for a beloved British television show that will change all of their lives.
When the concierge of The Alexander, a historic Atlanta apartment building, invites his fellow residents to join him for weekly screenings of Downton Abbey, four very different people find themselves connecting with the addictive drama, and--even more unexpectedly--with each other... Samantha Davis married young and for the wrong reason: the security of old Atlanta money--for herself and for her orphaned brother and sister. She never expected her marriage to be complicated by love and compromised by a shattering family betrayal. Claire Walker is now an empty nester and struggling author who left her home in the suburbs for the old world charm of The Alexander, and for a new and productive life. But she soon wonders if clinging to old dreams can be more destructive than having no dreams at all. And then there's Brooke MacKenzie, a woman in constant battle with her faithless ex-husband. She's just starting to realize that it's time to take a deep breath and come to terms with the fact that her life is not the fairy tale she thought it would be. For Samantha, Claire, Brooke--and Edward, who arranges the weekly gatherings--it will be a season of surprises as they forge a bond that will sustain them through some of life's hardest moments--all of it reflected in the unfolding drama, comedy, and convergent lives of Downton Abbey.
When the concierge of The Alexander, a historic Atlanta apartment building, invites his fellow residents to join him for weekly screenings of Downton Abbey, four very different people find themselves connecting with the addictive drama, and--even more unexpectedly--with each other... Samantha Davis married young and for the wrong reason: the security of old Atlanta money--for herself and for her orphaned brother and sister. She never expected her marriage to be complicated by love and compromised by a shattering family betrayal. Claire Walker is now an empty nester and struggling author who left her home in the suburbs for the old world charm of The Alexander, and for a new and productive life. But she soon wonders if clinging to old dreams can be more destructive than having no dreams at all. And then there's Brooke MacKenzie, a woman in constant battle with her faithless ex-husband. She's just starting to realize that it's time to take a deep breath and come to terms with the fact that her life is not the fairy tale she thought it would be. For Samantha, Claire, Brooke--and Edward, who arranges the weekly gatherings--it will be a season of surprises as they forge a bond that will sustain them through some of life's hardest moments--all of it reflected in the unfolding drama, comedy, and convergent lives of Downton Abbey.
"I'm gonna tell you all about it, Mom. I'm gonna tell it like I'm on the end of your bed, talking to you. I'm not gonna cover up, cause there's no need. You'll see how it's all a flippin miracle. The whole weird year. It's only one year in my life, Ma, but it's all the stuff you slept through when I was a kid. All the stuff you fished through when you got up. I'm warning you, Ma, this is the truth." Startling poetry in the grittiest of emotional word go ... raw, tender and laugh-out-loud Whiplash digs its nail into you from the funny - a kickarse gem of a book. Told with landscapes, Whiplash puts Farren on the map as a wordsmith of astonishing talent.
"Like Carl Hiaasen, Berney delights in the cartoonish. Like Elmore Leonard, he can drive a plot. What sets him apart is how well he evokes love, making the romance...as compelling as the mystery."
--Boston Globe
Lou Berney immediately earned a seat of honor at the mystery masters' table with his crackling caper novel, Gutshot Straight--a lightning-fast, fiendishly clever suspenser that screamed for a sequel. And here it is. Former professional wheel man Charles "Shake" Bouchon is back, living in the Caribbean paradise of Belize with his lawless past far behind him--until a gunshot tears through his beachside restaurant and he's on the run again. A twisting tale filled with lawmen, con men, and hit men; a beautiful but deadly FBI agent; and a murderous thug named Baby Jesus, Whiplash River recalls the best of the off-the-wall crime fiction impresarios--Elmore Leonard, Carl Hiaasen, James W. Hall, Robert Ferrigno, Tim Dorsey--while establishing its own unique orbit in the noir universe.