NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER An epic Don Quixote for the modern age, a brilliant, funny, world-encompassing wonder ( Time ) from internationally bestselling author Salman Rushdie SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE Lovely, unsentimental, heart-affirming . . . a remembrance of what holds our human lives in some equilibrium--a way of feeling and a way of telling. Love and language.--Jeanette Winterson, The New York Times Book Review NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY TIME AND NPR Inspired by the Cervantes classic, Sam DuChamp, mediocre writer of spy thrillers, creates Quichotte, a courtly, addled salesman obsessed with television who falls in impossible love with a TV star. Together with his (imaginary) son Sancho, Quichotte sets off on a picaresque quest across America to prove worthy of her hand, gallantly braving the tragicomic perils of an age where Anything-Can-Happen. Meanwhile, his creator, in a midlife crisis, has equally urgent challenges of his own. Just as Cervantes wrote Don Quixote to satirize the culture of his time, Rushdie takes the reader on a wild ride through a country on the verge of moral and spiritual collapse. And with the kind of storytelling magic that is the hallmark of Rushdies work, the fully realized lives of DuChamp and Quichotte intertwine in a profoundly human quest for love and a wickedly entertaining portrait of an age in which fact is so often indiscernible from fiction. Praise for Quichotte Brilliant . . . a perfect fit for a moment of transcontinental derangement. -- Financial Times Quichotte is one of the cleverest, most enjoyable metafictional capers this side of postmodernism. . . . The narration is fleet of foot, always one step ahead of the reader--somewhere between a pinball machine and a three-dimensional game of snakes and ladders. . . . This novel can fly, it can float, its anecdotal, effervescent, charming, and a jolly good story to boot. -- The Sunday Times Quichotte [is] an updating of Cervantess story that proves to be an equally complicated literary encounter, jumbling together a chivalric quest, a satire on Trumps America and a whole lot of postmodern playfulness in a novel that is as sharp as a flick-knife and as clever as a barrel of monkeys. . . . This is a novel that feeds the heart while it fills the mind. -- The Times (UK)
B>NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout explores the mysteries of marriage and the secrets we keep, as a former couple reckons with where theyve come from--and what theyve left behind. br>/b>br>b>ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Maureen Corrigan, NPRs Fresh Air ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, Time, Vulture, She Readsbr>br>Elizabeth Strout is one of my very favorite writers, so the fact that Oh William! may well be my favorite of her books is a mathematical equation for joy. The depth, complexity, and love contained in these pages is a miraculous achievement.--Ann Patchett, author of The Dutch House/b>br>br>I would like to say a few things about my first husband, William. br>br>Lucy Barton is a writer, but her ex-husband, William, remains a hard man to read. William, she confesses, has always been a mystery to me. Another mystery is why the two have remained connected after all these years. They just are. br>br>So Lucy is both surprised and not surprised when William asks her to join him on a trip to investigate a recently uncovered family secret--one of those secrets that rearrange everything we think we know about the people closest to us. What happens next is nothing less than another example of what Hilary Mantel has called Elizabeth Strouts perfect attunement to the human condition. There are fears and insecurities, simple joys and acts of tenderness, and revelations about affairs and other spouses, parents and their children. On every page of this exquisite novel we learn more about the quiet forces that hold us together--even after weve grown apart. br>br>At the heart of this story is the indomitable voice of Lucy Barton, who offers a profound, lasting reflection on the very nature of existence. This is the way of life, Lucy says: the many things we do not know until it is too late.
B>From the New York Times bestselling author of The Girls comes an eagerly anticipated story collection exploring the dark corners of human experience.br>/b> br>b>Daddys ten masterful, provocative stories confirm that Cline is a staggering talent.--Esquire Brilliant . . . Cline is an astonishingly gifted stylist. . . . These stories vibrate with life.--The New York Times Book Review/b> br> b>br>NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY/b>br>br>An absentee father collects his son from boarding school after a shocking act of violence. A nanny to a celebrity family hides out in Laurel Canyon in the aftermath of a tabloid scandal. A young woman sells her underwear to strangers. A notorious guest arrives at a placid, not-quite rehab in the Southwest.br>br>In ten remarkable stories, Emma Cline portrays moments when the ordinary is disturbed, when daily life buckles, revealing the perversity and violence pulsing under the surface. She explores characters navigating the edge, the limits of themselves and those around them: power dynamics in families, in relationships, the distance between their true and false selves. They want connection, but what they provoke is often closer to self-sabotage. What are the costs of ones choices? Of the moments when we act, or fail to act? These complexities are at the heart of Daddy, Emma Clines sharp-eyed illumination of the contrary impulses that animate our inner lives.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING PHENOMENON More than 6 million copies sold A Reese Witherspoon x Hello Sunshine Book Club Pick A Business Insider Defining Book of the Decade "I can't even express how much I love this book! I didn't want this story to end!"--Reese Witherspoon "Painfully beautiful."-- The New York Times Book Review For years, rumors of the "Marsh Girl" have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl. But Kya is not what they say. Sensitive and intelligent, she has survived for years alone in the marsh that she calls home, finding friends in the gulls and lessons in the sand. Then the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. When two young men from town become intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new life--until the unthinkable happens. Where the Crawdads Sing is at once an exquisite ode to the natural world, a heartbreaking coming-of-age story, and a surprising tale of possible murder. Owens reminds us that we are forever shaped by the children we once were, and that we are all subject to the beautiful and violent secrets that nature keeps.
WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE The beloved first novel featuring Olive Kitteridge, from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Oprahs Book Club pick Olive, Again Fiction lovers, remember this name: Olive Kitteridge . . . . Youll never forget her. --USA Today NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post Book World USA Today San Francisco Chronicle Chicago Tribune Seattle Post-Intelligencer People Entertainment Weekly The Christian Science Monitor The Plain Dealer The Atlantic Rocky Mountain News Library Journal At times stern, at other times patient, at times perceptive, at other times in sad denial, Olive Kitteridge, a retired schoolteacher, deplores the changes in her little town of Crosby, Maine, and in the world at large, but she doesnt always recognize the changes in those around her: a lounge musician haunted by a past romance; a former student who has lost the will to live; Olives own adult child, who feels tyrannized by her irrational sensitivities; and her husband, Henry, who finds his loyalty to his marriage both a blessing and a curse. As the townspeople grapple with their problems, mild and dire, Olive is brought to a deeper understanding of herself and her life--sometimes painfully, but always with ruthless honesty. Olive Kitteridge offers profound insights into the human condition--its conflicts, its tragedies and joys, and the endurance it requires. The inspiration for the Emmy Awardwinning HBO miniseries starring Frances McDormand, Richard Jenkins, and Bill Murray
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER OPRAHS BOOK CLUB PICK From the National Book Awardwinning author of Between the World and Me, a boldly conjured debut novel about a magical gift, a devastating loss, and an underground war for freedom. This potent book about Americas most disgraceful sin establishes [Ta-Nehisi Coates] as a first-rate novelist.-- San Francisco Chronicle NOMINATED FOR THE NAACP IMAGE AWARD NAMED ONE OF PASTE S BEST NOVELS OF THE DECADE NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Time NPR The Washington Post Chicago Tribune Vanity Fair Esquire Good Housekeeping Paste Town & Country The New York Public Library Kirkus Reviews Library Journal Nearly every paragraph is laced through with dense, gorgeously evocative descriptions of a vanished world and steeped in its own vivid vocabulary.-- Entertainment Weekly Young Hiram Walker was born into bondage. When his mother was sold away, Hiram was robbed of all memory of her--but was gifted with a mysterious power. Years later, when Hiram almost drowns in a river, that same power saves his life. This brush with death births an urgency in Hiram and a daring scheme: to escape from the only home hes ever known. So begins an unexpected journey that takes Hiram from the corrupt grandeur of Virginias proud plantations to desperate guerrilla cells in the wilderness, from the coffin of the Deep South to dangerously idealistic movements in the North. Even as hes enlisted in the underground war between slavers and the enslaved, Hirams resolve to rescue the family he left behind endures. This is the dramatic story of an atrocity inflicted on generations of women, men, and children--the violent and capricious separation of families--and the war they waged to simply make lives with the people they loved. Written by one of todays most exciting thinkers and writers, The Water Dancer is a propulsive, transcendent work that restores the humanity of those from whom everything was stolen. Praise for The Water Dancer Ta-Nehisi Coates is the most important essayist in a generation and a writer who changed the national political conversation about race with his 2015 memoir, Between the World and Me . So naturally his debut novel comes with slightly unrealistic expectations--and then proceeds to exceed them. The Water Dancer . . . is a work of both staggering imagination and rich historical significance. . . . Whats most powerful is the way Coates enlists his notions of the fantastic, as well as his fluid prose, to probe a wound that never seems to heal. . . . Timeless and instantly canon-worthy. -- Rolling Stone
Maya Angelous debut memoir is a modern American classic beloved worldwide. Her life story is told in the documentary film And Still I Rise, as seen on PBSs American Masters . Here is a book as joyous and painful, as mysterious and memorable, as childhood itself. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings captures the longing of lonely children, the brute insult of bigotry, and the wonder of words that can make the world right. Maya Angelous debut memoir is a modern American classic beloved worldwide. Sent by their mother to live with their devout, self-sufficient grandmother in a small Southern town, Maya and her brother, Bailey, endure the ache of abandonment and the prejudice of the local powhitetrash. At eight years old and back at her mothers side in St. Louis, Maya is attacked by a man many times her age--and has to live with the consequences for a lifetime. Years later, in San Francisco, Maya learns that love for herself, the kindness of others, her own strong spirit, and the ideas of great authors (I met and fell in love with William Shakespeare) will allow her to be free instead of imprisoned. Poetic and powerful, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings will touch hearts and change minds for as long as people read. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings liberates the reader into life simply because Maya Angelou confronts her own life with such a moving wonder, such a luminous dignity.--James Baldwin
A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged, nuclear landscape save the ash on the wind. They have nothing: just a pistol to defend themselves, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food - and each other. This title imagines a future in which no hope remains.
One of the most visionary, original, and quietly influential writers currently working* returns with a sequel to the New York Times bestselling novel The Peripheral . Verity Jane, gifted app-whisperer, has been out of work since her exit from a brief but problematic relationship with a Silicon Valley billionaire. Then she signs the wordy NDA of a dodgy San Francisco start-up, becoming the beta tester for their latest product: a digital assistant, accessed through a pair of ordinary-looking glasses. Eunice, the disarmingly human AI in the glasses, soon manifests a face, a fragmentary past, and an unnervingly canny grasp of combat strategy. Verity, realizing that her cryptic new employers dont yet know this, instinctively decides that its best they dont. Meanwhile, a century ahead, in London, in a different timeline entirely, Wilf Netherton works amid plutocrats and plunderers, survivors of the slow and steady apocalypse known as the jackpot. His employer, the enigmatic Ainsley Lowbeer, can look into alternate pasts and nudge their ultimate directions. Verity and Eunice have become her current project. Wilf can see what Verity and Eunice cant: their own version of the jackpot, just around the corner. And something else too: the roles they both may play in it. * The Boston Globe
Named one of the most anticipated books of 2019 by Vulture , Entertainment Weekly , Buzzfeed, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe , Oprah.com, Huffington Post, The A.V. Club, Nylon, The Week, The Rumpus, The Millions, The Guardian, Publishers Weekly, and more. A lyrical work of self-discovery thats shockingly intimate and insistently universa lN ot so much briefly gorgeous as permanently stunning. --Ron Charles, The Washington Post Poet Ocean Vuongs debut novel is a shattering portrait of a family, a first love, and the redemptive power of storytelling On Earth Were Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a familys history that began before he was born -- a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam -- and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity. Asking questions central to our American moment, immersed as we are in addiction, violence, and trauma, but undergirded by compassion and tenderness, On Earth Were Briefly Gorgeous is as much about the power of telling ones own story as it is about the obliterating silence of not being heard. With stunning urgency and grace, Ocean Vuong writes of people caught between disparate worlds, and asks how we heal and rescue one another without forsaking who we are. The question of how to survive, and how to make of it a kind of joy, powers the most important debut novel of many years.
A New York Times bestseller and Oprah Book Club 2.0 selection, the epic, unforgettable story of a man determined to protect the woman he loves from the town desperate to destroy her. This beautiful and devastating debut heralds the arrival of a major new voice in fiction. Ephram Jennings has never forgotten the beautiful girl with the long braids running through the piney woods of Liberty, their small East Texas town. Young Ruby Bell, the kind of pretty it hurt to look at, has suffered beyond imagining, so as soon as she can, she flees suffocating Liberty for the bright pull of 1950s New York. Ruby quickly winds her way into the ripe center of the city--the darkened piano bars and hidden alleyways of the Village--all the while hoping for a glimpse of the red hair and green eyes of her mother. When a telegram from her cousin forces her to return home, thirty-year-old Ruby finds herself reliving the devastating violence of her girlhood. With the terrifying realization that she might not be strong enough to fight her way back out again, Ruby struggles to survive her memories of the towns dark past. Meanwhile, Ephram must choose between loyalty to the sister who raised him and the chance for a life with the woman he has loved since he was a boy. Full of life, exquisitely written, and suffused with the pastoral beauty of the rural South, Ruby is a transcendent novel of passion and courage. This wondrous page-turner rushes through the red dust and gossip of Main Street, to the pit fire where men swill bootleg outside Blooms Juke, to Celia Jenningss kitchen, where a cake is being made, yolk by yolk, that Ephram will use to try to begin again with Ruby. Utterly transfixing, with unforgettable characters, riveting suspense, and breathtaking, luminous prose, Ruby offers an unflinching portrait of mans dark acts and the promise of the redemptive power of love. Ruby was a finalist for the PEN America Robert Bingham Debut Novel Award, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, and an Indie Next Pick.
As further evidence of his family's bad fortune which they attribute to a curse on a distant relative, Stanley Yelnats is sent to a hellish correctional camp in the Texas desert where he finds his first real friend, a treasure, and a new sense of himself. As further evidence of his family's bad fortune, Stanley Yelnats is sent to a hellish correctional camp in the Texas desert where he finds his first real friend, a treasure, and a new sense of himself
#1 New York Times bestselling author and Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout continues the life of her beloved Olive Kitteridge, a character who has captured the imaginations of millions of readers. Prickly, wry, resistant to change yet ruthlessly honest and deeply empathetic, Olive Kitteridge is a compelling life force ( San Francisco Chronicle ). The New Yorker has said that Elizabeth Strout animates the ordinary with an astonishing force, and she has never done so more clearly than in these pages, where the iconic Olive struggles to understand not only herself and her own life but the lives of those around her in the town of Crosby, Maine. Whether with a teenager coming to terms with the loss of her father, a young woman about to give birth during a hilariously inopportune moment, a nurse who confesses a secret high school crush, or a lawyer who struggles with an inheritance she does not want to accept, the unforgettable Olive will continue to startle us, to move us, and to inspire moments of transcendent grace. Advance praise for Olive, Again Theres no simple truth about human existence, Strout reminds us, only wonderful, painful complexity. Well, thats life, Olive says. Nothing you can do about it. Beautifully written and alive with compassion, at times almost unbearably poignant. A thrilling book in every way. -- Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
An allegorical guide to living, the protagonist, simply called "the prophet", delivers spiritual, yet practical, homilies on a variety of topics central to daily life: love, marriage and children; work and play; beauty, truth, joy and sorrow, death and many more.
The Booker Prize-winning former president of American PEN shares the extraordinary story of how he was forced underground for more than nine years after he was sentenced to holy death by the Ayatollah Khomeini for his controversial novel, The Satanic Verses , describing how his family and he constantly moved and were under police protection in a dangerous life at the forefront of the battle for free speech.
In this second volume of her poignant autobiographical series, Maya Angelou powerfully captures the struggles and triumphs of her passionate life with dignity, wisdom, humor, and humanity. A curiously heartening story in which decency, honor, truth, love do exist, imperfectly, fractionally and flickeringly, not in some Platonic realm of the ideal, but in the flawed lives of real men and women. --The Washington Post Gather Together in My Name continues Maya Angelous personal story, begun so unforgettably in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings . The time is the end of World War II and there is a sense of optimism everywhere. Maya Angelou, still in her teens, has given birth to a son. But the next few years are difficult ones as she tries to find a place in the world for herself and her child. She goes from job to joband from man to man. She tries to return homeback to Stamps, Arkansasbut discovers that she is no longer part of that world. Then Mayas life takes a dramatic turn, and she faces new challenges and temptations.
Follows the divergent paths of a rookie hitter for the Chicago Cubs and a hard-hitting Mets pitcher. By the #1 best-selling author of The Litigators and Bleachers .
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A modern American epic set against the panorama of contemporary politics and culture--a hurtling, page-turning mystery that is equal parts The Great Gatsby and The Bonfire of the Vanities NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR PBS HARPERS BAZAAR ESQUIRE FINANCIAL TIMES THE TIMES OF INDIA On the day of Barack Obamas inauguration, an enigmatic billionaire from foreign shores takes up residence in the architectural jewel of the Gardens, a cloistered community in New Yorks Greenwich Village. The neighborhood is a bubble within a bubble, and the residents are immediately intrigued by the eccentric newcomer and his family. Along with his improbable name, untraceable accent, and unmistakable whiff of danger, Nero Golden has brought along his three adult sons: agoraphobic, alcoholic Petya, a brilliant recluse with a tortured mind; Apu, the flamboyant artist, sexually and spiritually omnivorous, famous on twenty blocks; and D, at twenty-two the baby of the family, harboring an explosive secret even from himself. There is no mother, no wife; at least not until Vasilisa, a sleek Russian expat, snags the septuagenarian Nero, becoming the queen to his king--a queen in want of an heir. Our guide to the Goldens world is their neighbor René, an ambitious young filmmaker. Researching a movie about the Goldens, he ingratiates himself into their household. Seduced by their mystique, he is inevitably implicated in their quarrels, their infidelities, and, indeed, their crimes. Meanwhile, like a bad joke, a certain comic-book villain embarks upon a crass presidential run that turns New York upside-down. Set against the strange and exuberant backdrop of current American culture and politics, The Golden House also marks Salman Rushdies triumphant and exciting return to realism. The result is a modern epic of love and terrorism, loss and reinvention--a powerful, timely story told with the daring and panache that make Salman Rushdie a force of light in our dark new age. Praise for The Golden House [A] modern masterpiece . . . telling a story full of wonder and leaving you marveling at how it ever came out of the authors head. --Associated Press Wildly satiric and yet piercingly real . . . If F. Scott Fitzgerald, Homer, Euripides, and Shakespeare collaborated on a contemporary fall-of-an-empire epic set in New York City, the result would be The Golden House . --Poets & Writers A tonic addition to American--no, world!--literature . . . a Greek tragedy with Indian roots and New York coordinates. -- San Francisco Chronicle
Eragon and his dragon, Saphira, have just saved the rebel state from destruction by the mighty forces of King Galbatorix, cruel ruler of the Empire. Now Eragon must travel to Ellesméra, land of the elves, for further training in magic and swordsmanship, the vital skills of the Dragon Rider. It is the journey of a lifetime, filled with awe-inspiring new places and people, each day a fresh adventure. But chaos and betrayal plague him at every turn, and Eragon isn't sure whom he can trust.
Meanwhile, his cousin Roran must fight a new battle back home in Carvahall - one that puts Eragon in even graver danger.
Will the king's dark hand strangle all resistance? Eragon may not escape with even his life . . .
B>#1 NEW YORK TIMES, WALL STREET JOURNAL, AND BOSTON GLOBE BESTSELLER /b> b>One of the most acclaimed books of our time: an unforgettable memoir about a young woman who, kept out of school, leaves her survivalist family and goes on to earn a PhD from Cambridge University/b>br> br>b>Extraordinary . . . an act of courage and self-invention.--The New York Times/b>br> br>b>NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW ONE OF PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMAS FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR BILL GATESS HOLIDAY READING LIST FINALIST: National Book Critics Circles Award In Autobiography and John Leonard Prize For Best First Book PEN/Jean Stein Book Award Los Angeles Times Book Prize/b>br> br>Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, Tara Westover was seventeen the first time she set foot in a classroom. Her family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education, and no one to intervene when one of Taras older brothers became violent. When another brother got himself into college, Tara decided to try a new kind of life. Her quest for knowledge transformed her, taking her over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge University. Only then would she wonder if shed traveled too far, if there was still a way home.br> br>b>Beautiful and propulsive . . . Despite the singularity of [Westovers] childhood, the questions her book poses are universal: How much of ourselves should we give to those we love? And how much must we betray them to grow up?--Vogue/b>br>b>br>NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post O: The Oprah Magazine Time NPR Good Morning America San Francisco Chronicle The Guardian The Economist Financial Times Newsday New York Post theSkimm Refinery29 Bloomberg Self Real Simple Town & Country Bustle Paste Publishers Weekly Library Journal LibraryReads Book Riot Pamela Paul, KQED New York Public Library/b>
The reminiscences of a New York lawyer, Jim Burden, about his boyhood in Nebraska, particularly a young Bohemian girl named Antonia Shimerda, are set against the backdrop of the American assimilation of the immigrant
When a natural disaster predicted by God's Gardeners leader Adam One obliterates most human life, two survivors trapped inside respective establishments that metaphorically represent paradise and hell wonder if any of their loved ones have survived.
B>Bestselling and award-winning author Megan Abbott''s revelatory, mesmerizing, and game-changing new novel set against the hothouse of a family-run ballet studio, and an interloper who arrives to bring down the carefully crafted Eden-like facade./b>br>br>Ballet flows through their veins. Dara and Marie Durant were dancers since birth, with their long necks and matching buns and pink tights, homeschooled and trained by their mother. Decades later the Durant School of Dance is theirs. The two sisters, together with Charlie, Dara''s husband and once their mother''s prize student, inherited the school after their parents died in a tragic accident nearly a dozen years ago. Marie, warm and soft, teaches the younger students; Dara, with her precision, trains the older ones; and Charlie, back broken after years of injuries, rules over the back office. Circling around each other, the three have perfected a dance, six days a week, that keeps the studio thriving. But when a suspicious accident occurs, just at the onset of the school''s annual performance of The Nutcracker, a season of competition, anxiety, and exhilaration, an interloper arrives and threatens the delicate balance of everything they''ve worked for. br>br>Taut and unnerving, The Turnout is Megan Abbott at the height of her game. With uncanny insight and hypnotic writing, it is a sharp and strange dissection of family ties and sexuality, femininity and power, and a tale that is both alarming and irresistible.
