Literary Life

A piercing and compassionate debut novel about how the new generations atone for the sins of the old in small-town America.

When his mentor at Harvard University suddenly leaves for Washington, Paul Cattleman finds himself adrift in the wilds of academia. He's lost his fellowship position for the fall semester, can find work only in what he considers to be intellectual cesspits--schools that would brand the young history professor as forever unsuitable for the Ivy League--and is one thesis short of a PhD. Rather than doom his career, he takes a temporary job in Los Angeles, a city whose superficial charms signal an adventure.

Mercia Murray is a woman of fifty-two years who has been left. Abandoned by her partner in Scotland, where she has been living for twenty-five years, Mercia returns to her homeland of South Africa to find her family overwhelmed by alcoholism and secrets.

Acclaimed artist Elaine Gordon can't believe her loving husband is gone. After a lifetime spent utterly devoted to her soul mate and their marriage, Elaine is now tetherless, faced with widowhood and all the decisions that come with it - not least of which is what to do with her rambling, now-empty family home.

How far will you go to save someone you love and trust when they’ve kept a dangerous secret for years? That’s the question facing Lance Kingston, a successful Houston magazine executive whose recent marriage to beautiful, high-powered attorney Tia Jiles seemed to promise a bright future for both of them. But under the surface, a fierce and frightening storm was brewing. That’s because Tia never revealed to Lance what she and her family have known since Tia was 17....

Michael Piafsky's captivating, Tarot-inspired debut depicts the dramatic arc of an Everyman's life from childhood to old age. An Everyman searches for truth and meaning in a life fraught with unsettling challenges, joyful milestones, and the unconscious awareness of the passage of time. The 78 evocative cards of the Tarot deck frame the narrator's story as he journeys through the phases of his life from childhood to old age. Michael Piafsky's dazzling debut novel offers a new and important voice to lovers of literary fiction.

I Malavoglia è il romanzo più famoso di Giovanni Verga, ambientato ad Aci Trezza, alla fine del 1800. Il romanzo non ha un solo protagonista, né una sola famiglia, i Malavoglia, come protagonista, ma è il coro di tutto il paese e di un tipo di vita che segue , senza ribellarsi, i proverbi e le tradizioni, le convinzioni e i pregiudizi dell’ambiente.

In 1930, 25-year-old Violet travels with her 16-year-old sister Lily from Scranton, Pennsylvania, to the Good Shepherd Infant Asylum in Philadelphia, so Lily can deliver her illegitimate child in secret. In doing so, Violet jeopardizes her engagement to her longtime sweetheart, Stanley Adamski. Meanwhile, Mother Mary Joseph, who runs the Good Shepherd, has no idea the asylum's physician, Dr. Peters, is involved in eugenics and experimenting on the girls with various sterilization techniques.

For more than 20 years, Ella has learned to live without her mother, Maggie, who disappeared into a fog of mental illness when Ella turned 10. Despite this trauma, Ella has forged ahead, becoming a veterinarian, getting married, and most of all, developing a deep, trusting bond with her father, John, a ferry captain in Seattle. Ella’s contented life is shattered when her father is hit by a car and killed. Going through his papers, she learns that her father maintained a secret relationship with her mother.

Five years ago Susannah Harper's son, Joel, went missing without trace. Bereft of her son and then of her husband, Susannah has rebuilt her life around helping others. But then, on the last night of Hull Fair, a fortune-teller makes an eerie prediction. She tells her that this Christmas Eve, Joel will finally come back to her. As her carefully constructed life begins to unravel, Susannah is forced to confront the buried truths of her family's past.

Char Hawthorn, college professor, wife and stepmother to a spirited fifteen-year-old daughter, loves her family and the joyful rhythms of work and parenting. But when her husband dies in a car accident, the "step" in Char's title suddenly matters a great deal. In the eyes of the law, all rights to daughter Allie belong to Lindy, Allie's self-absorbed biological mother, who wants to girl to move to her home in California.

Hailed by Newsweek as “a superb and humane social critic” with, according to The Wall Street Journal, “all the true instincts of a major novelist,” Jay McInerney unveils a story of love, family, conflicting desires, and catastrophic loss in his most powerfully searing work thus far...

Since Nick Marshall’s wife died, he’s been struggling to keep a lid on his PTSD and raise his stepdaughter Chloe and her younger half-sister, Abby. He’s always run a tight ship, but when he learns that Chloe’s flunking out, he becomes even more rigid and controlling: no extracurricular activities, just chores and schoolwork until she brings her grades up.

The stories in Here Until August follow the fates of characters who, by choice or by force, are traveling beyond the boundaries of their known worlds. These are people who move with the seasons. We meet them negotiating reluctant or cowardly departures, navigating uncertain returns, or biding the disquieting calm that so often precedes moments of decisive action.

Things that Fall from the Sky is a stunning narrative that explores the unexpected and inexplicable nature of reality. Three lives are changed forever by a series of random events: a young girl loses her mother when a block of ice falls from the sky; a woman wins the jackpot twice; and a man is struck by lightning four times. Selja Ahava weaves together these unique stories in a charming, one-of-a-kind tale about just how far people will go to force life into a logical pattern they can make sense of.

Twelve women connected by the death of another, realizing what they most want from life and reaching for it - this is the year of discovery, the year of new beginnings. Margot Yates has known loss. First her husband died of a heart attack, then her daughter of breast cancer. Margot has tried to accept all that life has put before her, but her faith is badly shaken with Meredith’s passing. Facing the uncertainty of a future alone, she has no plans to find love again, until Jack Davis attempts to change her mind.

A surreal love letter to this private side of the Met, Metropolitan Stories unfolds in a series of amusing and poignant vignettes in which we discover larger-than-life characters, the downside of survival, and the powerful voices of the art itself. The result is a novel bursting with magic, humor, and energetic detail, but also a beautiful book about introspection, an ode to lives lived for art, ultimately building a powerful collage of human experience and the world of the imagination.

John Ritter, a frustrated artist, demonstrates that self-destruction can be a form of protest - or maybe just the last resort for those who refuse to grow up. After years of adventure on the West Coast, he returns to Cincinnati to care for his grandmother, who suffers from Alzheimer's, and to protect her farmland from commercial development. Still in love with his ex-girlfriend and his youthful ideals, John lives in denial of the facts that his ex has moved on, that he is ill-equipped to serve as a caretaker, and that his life is in limbo.

To escape their griping grown children, husbands, and lovers, and an abundance of grandchildren underfoot, three self-proclaimed "old bags", Dania, Ruth, and Bess, head for a quiet island on the Aegean Sea. They'll spend a year by the water - watching the sunset, eating grilled fish and fresh olives, sipping ouzo. They deserve it, they say. After all those years, the three women will finally have some peace. Except they can't.

Lizzie Addler's dream of working in Italy is about to come true - that is if she can convince passionate Italian chef Dante DeFiore to keep his side of their bargain. Dante might be hotter than the Italian sun, but he's as cool as ice toward Lizzie.... Dante hasn't the time to pander to Lizzie's dreams of culinary fame - he has a restaurant to run! But as Lizzie proves herself to be a spectacular addition to his kitchen - and to his life - Dante wonders...can he keep her forever?