Literary Lives

""That rarest phenomenon: a war novel that feels at once timeless and precisely of the moment…"" —Washington Post A poignant coming-of-age story with the sensitivity and haunting power of What Belongs to You and Swimming in the Dark, about a young boy wrestling with his sexuality as war...

Marriage counselor Paige Reinhardt is counting down the days to summer, eager to reconnect with her workaholic husband at their cozy rental cottage in the Hamptons. But soon a mysterious crisis at Dave's work ruins their getaway plans. Paige is still figuring out how to handle the unexplained chill in her marriage when her troubled sister suddenly returns after a two-decade silence. Now, instead of enjoying the lazy summer days along the ocean, Paige is navigating the rocky waters of a forgotten bond with her sister in the sweltering city heat.

In the summer of 1969, 14-year-old Lucas Painter carries a huge weight on his shoulders. His brother is fighting in Vietnam. His embattled parents are locked in a never-ending war. And his best friend, Connor, is struggling with his own family issues. To find relief from the chaos, Lucas takes long, meandering walks, and one day he veers into the woods.

This astonishing novel was chosen as a Best Book of the Year by the Los Angeles Times, Entertainment Weekly, Publisher's Weekly and Newsweek. Contained within is the story of Edgar Mint, the half-Apache, mostly orphaned child who overcomes a serious childhood injury to embark on a life of tragedies, including a boarding school for Native Americans and a dysfunctional Mormon foster family.

Fred Scully waits at the arrival gate of an international airport, anxious to see his wife and daughter. After two years in Europe, they are finally settling down. He sees a new life before them, a stable outlook again, a fresh start, a cottage in the Irish countryside that he's renovated by hand. He's waited, sweated on this reunion. He does not like to be alone—he's that kind of man.The flight lands, the doors at the airport hiss open...Scully's life falls apart.

A playful and moving book of essays by a "born storyteller" (Seattle Times) who invites us into the miraculous and transcendent moments of the everyday When Brian Doyle passed away at the age of sixty after a bout with brain cancer, he left behind a cult-like following of devoted readers who...

It is 1898, and groups of starving Puerto Ricans, los hambrientos, roam the parched countryside and dusty towns begging for food. Under the yoke of Spanish oppression, the Caribbean island is forced to prepare to wage war with the United States. Up in the mountainous coffee region of Utuado, Vicente Vega and Valentina Sanchez labor to keep their small farm from the creditors. When the Spanish-American War and the great San Ciriaco Hurricane of 1899 bring devastating upheaval, the young couple is lured, along with thousands of others, to the sugar plantations of Hawaii.

Winona Cole, an orphaned child of the Lakota Indians, finds herself growing up in an unconventional household on a farm in West Tennessee. Raised by her adoptive father John Cole and his brother-in-arms Thomas McNulty, this odd little family scrapes a living on Lige Magan's farm with the help of two freed slaves, the Bougereau siblings. They try to keep the brutal outside world at bay, along with their memories of the past.

REESE’S BOOK CLUB PICK “[A] richly textured and deeply moving debut” (The New York Times Book Review, Editors’ Choice) about one unforgettable Southern Black family and its youngest daughter’s coming of age in the 1990s. “A triumph . . . Redwood Court is storytelling at its best...

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...

Kate Chase Sprague was born in 1840 in Cincinnati, Ohio, the second daughter to the second wife of a devout but ambitious lawyer. Her father, Salmon P. Chase, rose to prominence in the antebellum years and was appointed secretary of the treasury in Abraham Lincoln' s cabinet, while aspiring to even greater heights. Beautiful, intelligent, regal, and entrancing, young Kate Chase stepped into the role of establishing her thrice-widowed father in Washington society and as a future presidential candidate.

It's early 2020, and legendary producer Jacob Rosenthal is eager to make his next film, Coal, adapted from the bestselling novel by the celebrated writer Rex Patterson. The project-which takes on the controversial topic of race in America-is Jacob's envisioned magnum opus, and likely his swan song. He selects David Levit to direct, a major opportunity for the classically trained actor/director whose own films, while garnering critical acclaim, have not resulted in box office success.

From the best-selling author of Love Story and Doctors comes a powerful and moving saga of three extraordinary individuals as they compete for the ultimate glory: the Nobel Prize. Erich Segal takes us inside the research labs and clinics, the homes and hearts, of the world's most elite doctors and scientists—two men and one woman—whose genius, dedication, and passion cannot always win for them the love and recognition they so desperately seek.

An dazzlingly inventive novel about modern family, from the author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time The set-up of Mark Haddon's brilliant new novel is simple: Richard, a wealthy doctor, invites his estranged sister Angela and her family to join his for a week at a vacation...

Caught somewhere between love, hate, and indifference, Emily Bowen’s marriage is hanging on by a thread. After being let go from his job, her husband pulled away from her, and the distance continues to grow during their family’s sabbatical in Switzerland. With their relationship as cold as the wind baying outside, Emily finds unexpected warmth in a man from her past. As she contemplates seizing the connection she’s been craving, Emily must decide if she’s willing to sacrifice the life she’s built for an unseen future.

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.

"A full, big hearted novel.”—Taylor Jenkins Reid, New York Times bestselling author of Daisy Jones & the Six Nestled in the suburbs of Atlanta, a family learns the funniest punchlines can hide the hardest truths in this evocative women’s fiction novel from the author of Well-Behaved Indian...

Summer, 1947. Kate Herrick, a war widow, returns to her childhood home for a final visit before the house is sold. But Rose Cottage is not the idyllic paradise she remembers from her youth and someone has been there before her. As Kate uncovers an old secret that haunts the home she thought she knew, she is forced to confront a dark truth from her own past.... Beyond the weedy garden with its riot of rose bushes, nothing had changed. And someone was crossing the bridge to approach the garden gate. Someone I knew well....

Meet Hickey, an American school teacher in his late 30s, an American school teacher who burns his bridges with the school board and goes to Africa as an aid worker. Working for an agency in Nairobi, one of his jobs is to drive food and medical supplies to Southern Sudan to an aid station run by Ruth, a middle-aged woman, who acts as nurse, doctor, hospice worker, feeder of starving children, and witness. Ruth is gruff but efficient, and Hickey, who is usually drawn to youth and beauty, is struck by her devotion. Returning to Nairobi, he can’t forget what he has seen.

In his three novellas, In Short Measures, Strong Conspirators, and Sally Forth, Michael Ruhlman delves deeply into the nuanced complexity of romantic and sexual love - and the inevitable evolution of the heart over the span of years and decades. Each novella asks questions about the nature of love in terms of loyalty and fidelity - what are one's obligations toward one's spouse, one's family, and one's heart?