Literary Essays

Loose Woman Seductive, earthy, and at times confessional, Sandra Cisneros's vibrant collection of poetry celebrates the females aspects of love--from the reflective to the overtly erotic--in a voice recognizable from her powerful works of fiction. These poems offer narratives as formally elegant...

In The Italian Quartet, Sara Marcello, a writer with roots in Italy, is invited to the island villa of Ugo and Olivia Bellini, two wealthy and worldly antiquarians. In this place of myth, belonging as much to Homer and Prospero as to the present, Sara discovers that she is at the center of...

***A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK*** ***LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2014*** ***PWs Best of the Year 2014*** The author of the best-selling and award-winning Netherland now gives us his eagerly awaited, stunningly different new novel: a tale of alienation and heartbreak in Dubai. ...

A wild, inventive ride of a short story collection from a distinctive new American storyteller. The stories in Thomas Pierce’s Hall of Small Mammals take place at the confluence of the commonplace and the cosmic, the intimate and the infinite. A fossil-hunter, a comedian, a hot- air balloon...

Eighties New York springs to gritty, vibrant life in this piercingly romantic and compulsively readable coming-of-age novel. A beautiful, sad, funny, altogether bewitching debut Francesca "Chess" Varani is an ultra-bright, sassy, but vulnerable Barnard freshwoman from a blue-collar background in...

The fiction debut of the New York Times bestselling author of My Fair Lazy.Told in the uproariously entertaining voice readers have come to expect from Jen Lancaster, If You Were Here follows Amish-zombie-teen- romance author Mia and her husband Mac (and their pets) through the alternately...

From Ragtime and Billy Bathgate to World’s Fair, The March, and Homer & Langley, the fiction of E. L. Doctorow comprises a towering achievement in modern American letters. Now Doctorow returns with an enthralling collection of brilliant, startling short fiction about people who, as the author...

A collection of magazine writer Jon Bradshaw’s essential writings, The Ocean Is Closed rediscovers a memorable talent, and offers us a shadow reality to the established literary canon of the mid-century. With droll wit and keen intelligence, Bradshaw’s cinematic prose brings the ’70s to vibrant life.

For listeners of Roberto Bolaño’s Savage Detectives and Muriel Spark’s Loitering with Intent, this “sublime” and “delightfully unhinged” metaphysical mystery disguised as a picaresque romp follows one poet’s spectacular fall from grace to ask a vital question: Is everyone a...

An NPR Best Book of 2021 NYPL 10 Best Books for Adults, 2021 A story collection, in the vein of Carmen Maria Machado, Kelly Link, and Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, spanning worlds and dimensions, using strange and speculative elements to tackle issues ranging from class differences to immigration to...

There was one partition of the land in 1947. Harsh Mander believes that another partition is underway in our hearts and minds. How much of this culpability lies with ordinary people? What are the responsibilities of a secular government, of a civil society, and of a progressive majority? In...

Gli scritti riuniti in questa raccolta vertono sulle funzioni della letteratura, su autori che Eco ha frequentato a lungo come Nerval, Joyce, Borges (ma anche Aristotele e Dante), sull’influenza di alcuni testi più o meno letterari sullo sviluppo degli eventi storici, su alcuni problemi tipici del narrare, come la rappresentazione verbale dello spazio, l’ironia intertestuale, la natura dei mondi possibili della finzione, e su alcuni concetti chiave della scrittura "creativa", come il simbolo, lo stile, la "zeppa" (ovvero i momenti apparentemente "morti", e meramente funzionali nello sviluppo d

“A wise, mild and enviably lucid book about a chaotic scene.” —Dwight Garner, The New York Times “Memoirs of fatherhood are rarely so honest or so blunt.” —Daniel Engber, The Atlantic “An instant classic.” —M. C. Mah, Romper NAMED A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2022 BY LIT HUB &...

From the internationally bestselling author of Serenade for Nadia, a powerful story of love and faith amidst the atrocities committed by ISIS against the Yazidi people. Disquiet transports the listener to the contemporary Middle East through the stories of Meleknaz, a Yazidi Syrian refugee...

Unfinished Business: Notes of a Chronic Re-Reader is Vivian Gornick’s celebration of passionate reading, of returning again and again to the books that have shaped her at crucial points in her life. In nine essays that traverse literary criticism, memoir, and biography, one of our most celebrated critics writes about the importance of reading - and re-reading - as life progresses. Guided by Gornick’s trademark verve and insight, Unfinished Business is a masterful appreciation of literature’s power to illuminate our lives from a peerless writer and thinker.

From Conan Doyle and Rudyard Kipling to Satyajit Ray and R. K. Narayan, this text is a collection of spine-chilling tales of the supernatural from India...

This collection brings together the best of Ruskin Bond's cameos, all beautifully imagined and crafted, inspired by people who have left a lasting impression on him. In addition, there are a host of characters culled from Bond's numerous short stories. Taken together, they constitute a...

These 13 stories by the author of The Invisible Man "approach the elegance of Chekhov" (Washington Post) and provide "early explorations of (Ellison's) lifelong fascination with the 'complex fate' and 'beautiful absurdity' of American identity" (John Callahan). First serial to The New Yorker...

Peggy Noonan's Wall Street Journal column has been must reading for thoughtful liberals and conservatives alike. Now she issues an urgent, heartfelt call for all Americans to support the next President. Because it is not the threats and challenges we face, but how we face them that defines us as...

With his harrowing debut, Luke Mogelson provides an unsentimental, unflinching glimpse into the lives of those forever changed by war. Subtle links between these ten powerful stories magnify the consequences of combat for both soldiers and civilians, as the violence experienced abroad echoes...