Literary Life

“A powerful exploration of motherhood and feminism… this novel will have readers examining their own ‘what-ifs.’” — Jill Santopolo, New York Times bestselling author of Everything After “[An] inventive novel about love, loss, identity, and compromise.”—Woman's Day “Delves...

In Catherine Lowell's smart and original debut novel, the only remaining descendant of the Brontë family embarks on a modern-day literary scavenger hunt to find the family's long-rumored secret estate, using only the clues her eccentric father left behind and the Brontës' own novels. Samantha Whipple is used to stirring up speculation wherever she goes. Since her father's untimely death, she is the presumed heir to a long-rumored trove of diaries, paintings, letters, and early novel drafts.

Óscar sueña con convertirse en un J. R. R. Tolkien dominicano y, por encima de todo, sueña con encontrar el amor de su vida. Pero puede que Óscar nunca alcance sus metas debido a una extraña maldición que ha estado en su familia por generaciones, enviando a los Wao a prisión, predisponiéndolos a accidentes trágicos y, ante todo, al desamor.

Young, ardent Dorothea Brooke defies her sister by wedding the much older Reverend Edward Casaubon, blindly hoping to assist in his scholarly pursuits. Tertius Lydgate, a progressive doctor, new and unwelcome in provincial Middlemarch, is charmed into marriage with the selfish and shallow Rosamond Vincy, a disastrous mismatch of his own. Soon blatant stubbornness, unruly jealousy, blind idealism, and calculated blackmail threaten to upend the Midlands village and lay waste to happy endings.

Critically acclaimed author David Joy, whose debut, Where All Light Tends to Go, was hailed as “a savagely moving novel that will likely become an important addition to the great body of Southern literature” (The Huffington Post), returns to the mountains of North Carolina with a powerful...

An unflinching memoir from a writer reckoning with his relationship with his troubled father and the complicated legacy that each generation hands down to the next “Justin Taylor’s relentless, peripatetic, and tender search for reconciliation with his late troubled father blooms into a...

Elizabeth and Betsy are old school friends. Born in 1948 and unready for the sixties, they had high hopes of the lives they would lead, even though their circumstances were so different. When they meet again in their thirties, Elizabeth, married to the safe, older Digby, is relieving the boredom of a cosy but childless marriage with an affair. Betsy seems to have found real romance in Paris. Are their lives taking off, or are they just making more of the wrong choices without even realising it?

To eight-year-old Bunny Morison, his mother is an angelic comforter in whose absence nothing is real or alive. To his older brother, Robert, his mother is someone he must protect, especially since the deadly influenza epidemic of 1918 is ravaging their small Midwestern town. To James Morison, his wife, Elizabeth, is the center of a life that would disintegrate all too suddenly were she to disappear. Through the eyes of these characters, William Maxwell creates a sensitive portrait of an American family and of the complex woman who is its emotional pillar.

Ingrid is desperate to sell up and move on. Recently widowed, she no longer needs the large house or the treasures (and tat) collected by her late husband, Tommy, an auctioneer. Then there’s the debt he left her with, too. So, she jumps at the chance to downsize and move to Willowbrook on a temporary lease. She’ll open a pop-up shop for just one year – to dispose of Tommy’s accumulated goods – and then move on. No getting embroiled in village life. But Ingrid hasn’t reckoned on Willowbrook’s extrovert local ladies. Or handsome local craftsman Joel, with whom there’s a definite attraction.

Linda Wagner-Martin brings a wealth of new information to this detailed portrait of Hemingway and his world, concentrating particularly on his friendships with women and the history of his four marriages.

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.

Matthew is a 16-year-old living in Jackson Heights, Queens, in 1976. After he loses his two most important male role models, his father and grandfather, his mother uses her inheritance to uproot Matthew and herself to a posh apartment building in Manhattan. Although only three miles away from his boyhood home, "the city" is a completely new and strange world to Matthew. He soon befriends (and becomes a quasi-assistant to) Lou Reed, who lives with his transgender girlfriend, Rachel, in the same building.

A dazzling biography of the French literary superstar Colette, who is also the subject of a major motion picture. “A fine and intelligent biography of Colette, with her long tumultuous life and the great body of her work scrupulously considered and presented with style.”—The New York...

Helen Moran is 32 years old, single, childless, college educated, and partially employed as a guardian of troubled young people in New York. She is accepting a furniture delivery in her shared studio apartment when her uncle calls to break the news: Helen's adoptive brother is dead. According to the Internet, there are six possible reasons why her brother might have killed himself. But Helen knows better: she knows that six reasons is only shorthand for "the abyss".

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 thirty years Liz has perfectly played the part of Mrs. Thomas Lightsey, exemplary pastor’s wife and mother. But maintaining appearances for the congregation and catering to her demanding husband takes a toll, and she’s lost herself in meeting the expectations of others. When Thomas suddenly dies, Liz feels shock, grief, and, to her surprise, the siren song of freedom. Dare she dream of a life to call her own?

Faye Martin never expected her husband to abandon her and their three children...or that she'd have to struggle every day to make ends meet. So when her 4-year-old daughter is discovered through a YouTube video and offered a starring role on a television series, it seems like her prayers have been answered. But when the reality of their new life settles in, Faye realizes that fame and fortune don't come without a price.

Set in Saskatchewan and the Ottawa Valley, this finely honed tale begins in 1929 with a small-town schoolteacher helping an underprivileged child learn to read - all under the watchful eye of the school's domineering, enigmatic principal. From there the story takes listeners on a mesmerizing journey probing the roots of obsession and revealing how the pains and passions of childhood follow us into adulthood and beyond.

This final chapter in Daniel Woolrell's Ozark trilogy peels the lid back on a dysfunctional Missouri family as infidelity threatens to consume their world in violence and terror. Shug Akins is a lonely, overweight thirteen-year-old boy. His mother, Glenda, is the one person who loves him—she...

When widowed mule breeder Cy Bellman reads in the newspaper that colossal ancient bones have been discovered in the salty Kentucky mud, he sets out from his small Pennsylvania farm to see for himself if the rumors are true: that the giant monsters are still alive and roam the uncharted wilderness beyond the Mississippi River. Promising to write and to return in two years, he leaves behind his daughter, Bess, to the tender mercies of his taciturn sister and heads west.