Beautiful, flirtatious, and recently widowed, Lady Susan Vernon seeks an advantageous second marriage for herself, while attempting to push her daughter into a dismal match. As the provocative plot unfolds, characters are revealed and the...
Early works of an author who has hit the big-time are often reissued for reasons more venal than literary. None of the pre- and post- publications of Tracy Chevalier come anywhere near the standard of The Girl with the Pearl Earring, but that...
Steel Rails, Brittle Lives
In early 1998, author Lucius Shepard embarked on a new journey…Shepard joined the “hobo nation”—riding the rails throughout the western half of the United States, his “neighbors” the disenfranchised, the...
The incredible words in the diary stood — clearly accusing: Last night I sharpened the kitchen knives for her. When I finished the largest carving knife she took it and held it so tightly her knuckles showed white. “This is my pet,” she said....
In this stunning collection, internationally acclaimed writer David Malouf gives us bookish boys and taciturn men, strong women and wayward sons, fathers and daughters, lovers and husbands, a composer and his muse. These are their stories, whole...
Desire Provoked is an amusing look at modern living, while also a meditation on fatherhood, marriage and ambition. The cartographer protagonist of the novel, Sam Adams, can’t seem to map out his own life while he maps everything else for a...
Twenty-year-old Sharon Rabbitte is pregnant. She's also unmarried, living at home, working in a grocery store, and keeping the father's identity a secret. Her own father, Jimmy Sr., is shocked by the news. Her mother says very little. Her friends...
Our Young Man follows the life of a gorgeous Frenchman, Guy, as he goes from the industrial city of Clermont-Ferrand to the top of the modeling profession in New York City's fashion world, becoming the darling of Fire Island's gay community. Like...
Captain Tom Barnes is leading British troops in a war zone. Two boys are growing up there, sharing a prized bicycle and flying kites, before finding themselves separated once the soldiers appear in their countryside. On all sides of this conflict,...
From the critically acclaimed author of the novel The Good Brother and memoir My Father the Pornographer, Out of the Woods is Chris Offutt’s fiercely original short story collection the New York Times calls “a magical book”.
Arriving seven...