Literary Life

Ever since the Bommarito sisters were little girls, their mother, River, has written them a letter on pink paper when she has something especially important to impart. And this time, the message is urgent and impossible to ignore - River requires open-heart surgery, and Isabelle and her sisters are needed at home to run the family bakery and take care of their brother and ailing grandmother.

In midwinter in an English village, a teenage girl has gone missing and everyone is called upon to join the search. The villagers fan out across the moors as the police set up roadblocks, and a crowd of news reporters descends on what is usually a place of peace. As the seasons unfold and the search for the missing girl goes on, there are births and deaths, secrets kept and exposed, livelihoods made and lost, small kindnesses, and unanticipated betrayals. Reservoir 13 explores the rhythms of the natural world and the repeated human gift for violence.

Alexander Cleave, actor, has left his career and his family behind and banished himself to his childhood home. He wants to retire from life, but finds this impossible in a house brimming with presences, some ghostly, some undeniably human. Memories, anxiety for the future, and more particularly, for his beloved but troubled daughter, conspire to distract him from his dreaming retirement.

Troubled by an inability to find any meaning in his life, the 25-year-old narrator of this deceptively simple novel quits university and eventually arrives at his brother's New York apartment. In a bid to discover what life is all about, he writes lists. He becomes obsessed by time and whether it actually matters. He faxes his meteorologist friend. He endlessly bounces a ball against the wall. He befriends a small boy who lives next door. He yearns to get to the bottom of life and how best to live it.

For his whole life, the boy has lived underground, in a basement with his parents, grandmother, sister, and brother. Before he was born, his family was disfigured by a fire. His sister wears a white mask to cover her burns. He spends his hours with his cactus, reading his book on insects, or touching the one ray of sunlight that filters in through a crack in the ceiling. Ever since his sister had a baby, everyone's been acting very strangely.

Antonia Vega, the immigrant writer at the center of Afterlife, has had the rug pulled out from under her. She has just retired from the college where she taught English when her beloved husband, Sam, suddenly dies. And then more jolts: her bighearted but unstable sister disappears, and Antonia returns home one evening to find a pregnant, undocumented teenager on her doorstep.

Ian Bedloe is the ideal teenage son, leading a cheery, apple-pie life with his family in Baltimore. That is, until a careless and vicious rumor leads to a devastating tragedy. Imploding from guilt, Ian believes he is the one responsible for the tragedy. No longer a star athlete with a bright future, and desperately searching for salvation, he stumbles across a storefront with a neon sign that simply reads: Church of the Second Chance. Ian has always viewed his penance as a burden. But through the power of faith and the love of family, he begins to view it as a gift.

Veteran social worker Ellen Moore has seen the worst side of humanity - the vilest acts one person can commit against another. She is a fiercely dedicated children's advocate and a devoted mother and wife. But one blistering summer day, a simple moment of distraction will have repercussions that Ellen could never have imagined.

A fantastic short story collection from critically acclaimed, and bestselling author, John Updike...

Winter in Manhattan...and someone's keeping a secret. The day her husband, Alex, picks up a backpack and goes travelling, Angela Clark promises to stay out of trouble and keep both Louboutins on the ground. So when her best friend's boyfriend confides in her, it can't hurt to help him pick out a ring at Tiffany's surely? And when her fashion magazine announces major changes, being terminally late and arguing with your boss isn't that bad, is it? Then suddenly there's another big secret Angela's got to keep.

On a streetcar, on Christmas Day, 1950, clutching the chrome rail in front of him, Martin Radey looks at the woman seated beside him, a stranger, and utters his last words: "I can't breathe." Like millions, billions before him, it is his turn to die. But death is not what he expected. The journey has only begun. From 1880 to 1950, time happens to the world around him, not to memory, because memory, he discovers, is beyond time, traveling forward with him, shaping the earth, the sky, the heart.

Alors que le pouls de New York bat au rythme des années 1960 et de la contre-culture, une jeune fille, Ruth, s'y installe pour y suivre ses études en rêvant de devenir journaliste. Elle y découvre l'amitié, le rock, l'amour... tout en se questionnant sur son identité. Pas évident d'avoir laissé derrière elle sa famille et sa terre natale, la République dominicaine... Septembre 1961. Depuis le pont du bateau sur lequel elle a embarqué, Ruth tourne le dos à son île natale, la République dominicaine. En ligne de mire : New York, l'université, un stage au Times.

Thirty-six of the most interesting writers in the Pacific Northwest came together for a week-long marathon of writing live on stage. The result? Hotel Angeline, a truly inventive novel that surprises at every turn of the page. Something is amiss at the Hotel Angeline, a rickety former mortuary perched atop Capitol Hill in rain-soaked Seattle. Fourteen-year-old Alexis Austin is fixing the plumbing, the tea, and all the problems of the world, it seems, in her landlady mother’s absence.

Jonathan Lewis-Adey was nine when his parents separated, and his mother, Sid, vanished entirely from his life. It is not until he is a grown man that Jonathan finally reconnects with his beloved lost parent, only to find, to his shock and dismay, that the woman he knew as "Sid" in Toronto has become an elegant man named Sydney living in his native Trinidad.

This program is read by the author. "Man in the Dark is an undoubted pleasure to read. Auster really does possess the wand of the enchanter." —Michael Dirda, The New York Review of Books From Paul Auster, a "literary original" (Wall Street Journal) comes a novel that forces us to confront the...

Drawing on unprecedented archival and family access, Cooler Than Cool: The Life of Elmore Leonard, is the first comprehensive biography of the master American crime writer, author of witty, gritty bestsellers like Get Shorty and Raylan. Over the course of his sixty-year career, Elmore Leonard...

Sarah and Warren's college love story ended in a single moment. Decades later, when a chance meeting brings them together, a passion ignites—threatening the foundations of the lives they've built apart. Since they parted in college, each has married, raised a family, and made a career. When they meet again, Sarah is divorced and living outside New York, while Warren is still married and living in Boston.

Sara Stanley is only 14, but she can weave tales that are impossible to resist. In the charming town of Carlisle, children and grown-ups alike flock from miles around to hear her spellbinding narratives. And when Bev King and his younger brother, Felix, arrive for the summer, they, too, are captivated by the Story Girl.

Diane is 48 years old and - according to her husband - boring...which is apparently the reason that he had an affair and left her. After taking the charge to heart, Diane decides to undertake a ribald and highly entertaining journey that will help her restore trust in herself and others. An astute commentary on women and girls, gender differences, and the curious institution of marriage in the 21st century, Autopsy of a Boring Wife is a wonderfully fresh and engaging novel of the pitfalls and missteps of an apparently “boring” life that could be any of ours.

Autumn brings its own haunting beauty to the sun-soaked beaches and dunes on Isle of Palms, where Olivia “Lovie” Rutledge lives in her beloved Primrose Cottage with her daughter, Cara. Looking back as summer fades, Lovie can remember many island summers, but especially one. . . .In 1974, America was changing, but Charleston remained eternally the same. Lovie had always done what was expected — marrying the son of a historic Charleston family, Stratton Rutledge, and turning over her fortune and fate to his control. But one thing she steadfastly refuses to relinquish: her family’s old seaside cottage. The precious summers spent on the barrier island are Lovie’s refuge. Here, she can escape with her children from the social expectations of her traditional Southern mother, and her overbearing husband’s ambition and philandering. Here, she indulges her lifelong vocation as a “Turtle Lady,” tending the loggerhead sea turtles that lay their eggs in the warm night sand and then slip back into the sea. This summer, however, is different. Visiting biologist Russell Bennett arrives on the island to research the loggerheads. What begins as a shared passion for the turtles changes to a love far more passionate and profound than Lovie has ever known — but one that forces her to face the most agonizing decision of her life.For Charleston’s elite, divorce is an unforgivable scandal, and Stratton’s influence is far-reaching. If Lovie dares to dream beyond a summer affair, she risks losing everything: her reputation, her wealth, even her precious children.Beach House Memories — a poignant and emotional tale of a strong, passionate woman torn between duty and desire, between the traditions of the old South and the social changes sweeping America — will capture your heart. For Lovie, it is an empowering journey of seasons of self-discovery. Until this autumn, this time of changing tides, of holding on and letting go. . . .“This luminous tale — set in the South Carolina Lowcountry that we both love so deeply — was hard to put down. Fans of The Beach House will at last discover what happened during the summer of 1974. But readers new to Mary Alice Monroe need not worry, for this emotional story of love and loss stands alone.” — New York Times bestselling author Dorothea Benton Frank