In 1938, Francis Phelan, a murderer, is reduced to flop houses and hobo jungles and returns to a depressed Albany, where-as a gravedigger-he shuffles his rag tag way to...
Of the many pitfalls lurking for the historical novel, the most dangerous is history itself. The best writers either warp it for selfish purposes (Gore Vidal), dig for the untold, interior history (Toni Morrison), or both (Jeannette Winterson)....
It is 1943, and the German Army has been defeated at Stalingrad. The Russians have taken 91,000 prisoners; 145,000 German soldiers have been killed. The tide is beginning to turn. But on Guernsey and the rest of the Channel Islands, the only...
In the summer of 1946, while secluded in August Strindberg’s small cabin in the Stockholm archipelago, Stig Dagerman wrote Island of the Doomed. This novel was unlike any other yet seen in Sweden and would establish him as the country’s...
A pilot for the Mary Jean Cosmetics Corporation — a hopeless geek trapped in a cool guy's body — Tucker Case's troubles begin one very drunk morning at the Seattle airport Holiday Inn Lounge. Surrendering to the strident will of a call girl who...
First published in 1970, nine years after Hemingway’s death, this is the story of an artist and adventurer—a man much like Hemingway himself. Beginning in the 1930s, Islands in the Stream follows the fortunes of Thomas Hudson, from his...
In 1908, under orders to defend a tiny, isolated Pacific atoll from an improbable French invasion, Mexican captain Ramón Arnaud, his young bride, Alicia, and eleven soldiers and their families set sail for the so-called Isle of Passion. In this...
This facsimile of Melville's historical novel appears in a paperback classroom edition, with a commentary by Hennig Cohen. "Israel Potter" is the story of a neglected hero of the American...