Literary Lives

Prof is an ex-prisoner, activist and retired academic, who resolves to live a life of darkness after his release from prison. He holes up in his apartment, pushing away friends and family, and embraces his status as an urban legend in the neighborhood until a knock at the door shakes his existence. His visitor is Desire, an orphan and final year student, who has grown up idolizing Prof, following a fateful encounter in her hometown of Maroko, Nigeria as a child. Tentatively, the two begin to form a bond, as she returns every night at 9 p.m. to see him.

From award-winning novelist Mary Morris comes the remarkable story of a remote New Mexican town coming to grips with a dark history it never imagined. In 1492, the Jewish and Muslim populations of Spain were expelled, and Columbus set sail for America. Luis de Torres, a Spanish Jew, accompanies Columbus as his interpreter. His journey is only the beginning of a long migration, across many generations.

Pulitzer Prize-winning, New York Times best-selling author Larry McMurtry is one of America's best novelists. Several of his books are modern classics, including Lonesome Dove and Terms of Endearment, which was adapted into an Academy Award-winning motion picture. Now McMurtry delivers a funny yet sobering road trip novel reminiscent of Thelma and Louise and featuring two of the most original women to appear in fiction for quite some time.

Laurel Lockwood lost her son once through neglect. She's spent the rest of her life determined to make up for her mistakes, and she has succeeded in becoming a committed, protective parent-maybe even overprotective. Still, she loosens her grip just enough to let Andy attend a local church social-a decision that terrifies her when the church is consumed by fire. But Andy survives...and remarkably, saves other children from the flames.

Sins from the past have left a lingering stench in the Mitchell family. Amid a tumultuous roller-coaster ride through financial ruin, professional humiliation, personal failure, and marital discord, Joel, the youngest son, who was once considered the most eligible bachelor, has finally come to terms with his shortcomings and self-centered decisions.

In her tour-de-force first novel, Juliann Garey takes us inside the restless mind, ravaged heart, and anguished soul of Greyson Todd, a successful Hollywood studio executive who leaves his wife and young daughter and for a decade travels the world giving free reign to the bipolar disorder he's been forced to keep hidden for almost 20 years.

Looking Back follows the intertwined lives of three bright young women. Cecile is a beautiful child of privilege; Amanda is ambitious but poor; Norma is the academic star, yet the least self-assured. They are inseparable at college. And when the three classmates graduate and move into careers and marriage, they remain close. But, secretly, one of them will begin a relationship that undermines their trust and alters the course of each life it touches.

As the Japanese begin their assault on Singapore, Sarah Fuller is forced to leave her parents and fiancé, Philip, behind. The long journey to England is fraught with danger, and Sarah and her sister Jane don’t even know if their great-aunt is alive, let alone waiting for them. They arrive in Cliffehaven, on the south coast of England, and here Sarah must find work to support them both. When the Women's Timber Corps takes over the local estate, Sarah enlists as a lumberjill.

Once upon a time four aspiring authors met at their very first writers' conference. Ten years later they're still friends, survivors of the ultra-competitive New York publishing world. Mallory St. James is a workaholic whose best sellers support a lavish lifestyle. Tanya Mason is a single mother juggling two jobs, two kids, and too many deadlines. Faye Truett is the wife of a famous televangelist and the author of inspirational romances: No one would ever guess her explosive secret.

As the child of a German movie producer father who lives in Italy and a beautiful, artistically talented mother who resides in New York, Liliane's life is divided between those two very different worlds. A shy and observant only child with a vivid imagination, Liliane uncovers the stories of family members as diverse as Moses Mendelssohn, Mary Queen of Scots and an early Mexican adventurer, and pieces together their vivid histories, through both World Wars and across continents.

This "utterly spectacular" book weighs the impact modern medical technology has had on the author's life against the social and environmental costs inevitably incurred by the mining that makes such innovation possible (Rachel Louise Snyder, author of No Visible Bruises). What if a lifesaving...

“[Paula] Saunders skillfully illuminates how time heals certain wounds while deepening others. . . . A mediation of the violence of American ambition.”—The New York Times Book Review NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY REAL SIMPLE “A deeply involving portrait of the American...

For readers of Room and The Glass Castle, an astonishing memoir of one woman's rise above an unimaginable childhood. Maude Julien's parents were fanatics who believed it was their sacred duty to turn her into the ultimate survivor -- raising her in isolation, tyrannizing her childhood and...

La apasionante historia de Nueva York desde sus orígenes hasta la actualidad. Los 400 años de Historia de la ciudad de Nueva York se conforma de miles de historias, escenarios y personajes extraordinarios. Partiendo de la vida de los indios que habitaban sus tierras vírgenes y los primeros colonos holandeses hasta llegar a la dramática construcción del Empire State Building o la creación del edificio Dakota en el que vivía John Lennon.

Shyama, a 48-year-old London divorcée, already has an unruly teenage daughter, but that doesn't stop her and her younger lover, Toby, from wanting a child together. Their relationship may look like a cliché, but despite the news from her doctor that she no longer has any viable eggs, Shyama's not ready to give up on their dream of having a baby. So they decide to find an Indian surrogate to carry their child, which is how they meet Mala, a young woman trapped in an oppressive marriage in a small Indian town.

A Guide to Being Born is organized around the stages of life - love, conception, gestation, birth - and the transformations that happen as people experience deeply altering life events, falling in love, becoming parents, looking toward the end of life. In each of these eleven stories Ausubel's stunning imagination and humor are moving, entertaining, and provocative, leading readers to see the familiar world in a new way.

A lyrical memoir of essays and poems from the Booker shortlisted author of Treacle Walker—a profound reflection on the creative journey and the influences that have shaped one of Britain’s most beloved writers. Critics praise Alan Garner, calling him “better than anyone else writing in...

Falstaff is both a comic and tragic central protagonist in Shakespeare's three Henry plays. He is companion to Prince Hal (the future Henry V), who loves him, goads him, teases him, indulges his vast appetites, and commits all sorts of mischief with him. Award-winning author and esteemed professor Harold Bloom examines Falstaff with the deepest compassion and sympathy and also with unerring wisdom. He uses the relationship between Falstaff and Hal to explore the devastation of severed bonds and the heartbreak of betrayal.

For the women of the Sisterhood, planning a lavish reception for their longtime ally, attorney Lizzie Fox, at their lux mountain retreat is the ideal way to unwind after their latest successful mission. The only cloud over the happy occasion is that their mentor, Charles, is still mysteriously absent. But amid the friendly bickering about floral arrangements, cake tiers, and wedding favors, the ladies of Pinewood receive a frantic phone call....

Istanbul, 1999. Nach dreißig Jahren in Deutschland erfüllt sich Hüseyin seinen Traum: Eine eigene Wohnung in Istanbul. Doch am Tag des Einzugs stirbt er an einem Herzinfarkt. Als seine Frau und die vier erwachsenen Kinder aus Deutschland zur Beerdigung anreisen, kommen jahrzehntelang verschwiegene Geheimnisse und unverheilte Wunden ans Licht. Vielschichtig und mutig spürt "Dschinns" der Frage nach, was Familie ausmacht. Können wir die Wahrheit ertragen? Oder wird sie am Ende alles zum Einsturz bringen?