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David Masiel's first novel, 2182 Kilohertz, was one of the most greatly praised books of 2002. A riveting adventure of an unlikely hero's quest for personal redemption in frigid arctic waters, it earned its author comparisons to such giants of nautical fiction as Melville and Conrad. Now Masiel more than meets the promise of his debut with a harrowing odyssey of love and betrayal on the high seas–and in the shadowy corners of the human heart. At fifty-nine, Harold Snow has seen his share of death. His baptism of fire came on his twenty-first birthday, on a navy ship in the Coral Sea, when a Japanese kamikaze pilot slammed into the deck. Years later, in the aftermath of a typhoon in the Bay of Bengal, he lay awake on a ship surrounded by thousands of drowned corpses and listened to the sharks feed.Now, serving as boatswain aboard the Tarshish, a decrepit tanker whose papers are as suspect as its seaworthiness, a weary Snow feels death creeping closer than ever. It's there in the lethal cargo of volatile chemicals the ship carries in its leaky hold. It stares back from the brutal eyes of the first mate, Bracelin, with whom Snow has embarked on a desperate and highly illegal venture to steal a black-market fortune. It's in the dangerous welter of emotions he feels for Beth, the beautiful half-English, half-Liberian crewmate lusted after by every other male onboard. It clings to young George Maciel, grandson of Snow's oldest friend, a seminary dropout whose disastrous arrival earns him a reputation as a Jonah. And it's there in the memory of Van Sickle, a dead man who haunts Snow with visions of his own dark past. Snow's risky plans begin to go awry when the Tarshish is refused entry to the Bay of San Francisco. Forced to return to the open Pacific, Snow and Bracelin embark on a scattershot voyage of shoestring improvisation that will take the disintegrating hulk–sailing under forged papers and a new name–from South America to Africa. Along the way they will encounter hurricanes, crooked customs officials, and tropical ports seething with vice and revolution. This outer voyage is mirrored by a dark and twisted inner journey that will strip Snow down to his bare essence as a man. And as George and Beth flaunt their involvement, and Bracelin embraces cold-blooded murder, Snow will face a stark choice between life and death, damnation and redemption, at the western limit of the world.

A professor's life is turned upside down when he takes in his charming, wildly dangerous nephew, whose wealthy parents have just died under mysterious circumstances, in this propulsive, edge-of-your-seat debut psychological thriller.“An absolute page-turner... I read it in a single sitting.”—Miranda Cowley Heller, bestselling author of The Paper Palace The cleverest psychopaths hide in plain sight.Gil is living a quiet life as a creative writing professor in a bucolic Vermont town, when he receives some shocking news: His sister and her husband have been killed in a car accident, and their only son is coming to live with him and his family. Gil and his wife are apprehensive about taking in seventeen-year-old Matthew. Yes, he has just lost both his parents, but they haven't seen him in seven years—and the last time the families were together, Matthew lured their young daughter into a terrifying, life-threatening situation. Since that incident, Gil has been estranged from his sister and her flashy, wealthy banker husband. Now Matthew is their charge, living under their roof. The boy seems charming, smart, and urbane, if strangely unaffected by his parents'deaths. Gil hopes they can put the past behind them, though he's surprised when Matthew signs up for his creative writing class. Then Matthew begins turning in chilling stories about the imagined deaths of Gil's family and his own parents. Bewildered and panicked, Gil ultimately decides he must take matters into his own hands—before life imitates art. Told in limber, mesmerizing prose, A Flaw in the Design is a twisting novel of suspense that brilliantly explores the tensions surrounding class, family, and the drive to control one's own story.

Running from her father's brutal legacy, Joseph Stalin's daughter defects to the United States during the turbulence of the 1960s. For fans of We Were the Lucky Ones and A Gentleman in Moscow, this sweeping historical novel and unexpected love story is inspired by the remarkable life of Svetlana Alliluyeva. “The Red Daughter does exactly what good historical fiction should do: It sends you down the rabbit hole to read and learn more.”—The New York Times Book Review In one of the most momentous events of the Cold War, Svetlana Alliluyeva, the only daughter of the Soviet despot Joseph Stalin, abruptly abandoned her life in Moscow in 1967, arriving in New York to throngs of reporters and a nation hungry to hear her story. By her side is Peter Horvath, a young lawyer sent by the CIA to smuggle Svetlana into America. She is a contradictory celebrity: charismatic and headstrong, lonely and haunted, excited and alienated by her adopted country's radically different society. Persuading herself that all she yearns for is a simple American life, she attempts to settle into a suburban existence in Princeton, New Jersey. But one day an invitation from the widow of the architect Frank Lloyd Wright arrives, and Svetlana impulsively joins her cultlike community at Taliesin West. When this dream ends in disillusionment, Svetlana reaches out to Peter, the one person who understands how the chains of her past still hold her prisoner. Their relationship changes and deepens, moving from America to England to the Soviet Union and back again, unfolding under the eyes of her CIA minders, and Svetlana's and Peter's private lives are no longer their own. Novelist John Burnham Schwartz's father was in fact the young lawyer who escorted Svetlana Alliluyeva to the United States. Drawing upon private papers and years of extensive research, Schwartz imaginatively re-creates the story of an extraordinary, troubled woman's search for a new life and a place to belong, in the powerful, evocative prose that has made him an acclaimed author of literary and historical fiction.Praise for The Red Daughter “Svetlana Alliluyeva's life was endlessly fascinating, often heartbreaking, and ultimately heroic. I don't think any writer alive could have told her story more beautifully than John Burnham Schwartz.”—David Benioff, co-creator of HBO's Game of Thrones and author of City of Thieves “The Red Daughter is an intimate, intricate look at the collision of geopolitics with a private life: surprising and engaging from beginning to end.”—Jennifer Egan

By turns hilarious and bittersweet, Andy Mozina's winning debut novel introduces a charming new hero for our times: a dysfunctional, divorced family man whose passion for life comes straight from the harp. Matthew Grzbc is a talented musician who plays the concert harp. He is a divorced dad who lives in Chicago, has a sexy girlfriend, and has a major, potentially life-changing audition with an orchestra on the horizon. At least that's how he appears on paper. But take a closer look and a very different man starts to emerge: an obsessive, self-sabotaging Midwesterner, fumbling through his relationship with his curiously neurotic six-year-old daughter and headed for destruction in his romantic life by grasping at any remotely affectionate warm body, including that of his ex-wife. Instead of playing to sold-out concert halls, he spends his days plucking out “Send in the Clowns” at hotel brunches, and his weekends serenading the captive audience at the local hospice. When his father dies unexpectedly (while listening to a meditation tape), Matt's life begins to come untethered. In quick succession his ex-wife gets engaged, his girlfriend begins to pull away, and his daughter starts acting out. With his audition rapidly approaching, Matt is paralyzed by panic—why can't he hold it together and follow his dream? And what does that even mean, if you're not sure what it is you really want? Funny, poignant, and thoroughly engaging, Contrary Motion is a journey deep inside a male mind as it searches—desperately—for a way to balance life, love, and a harp. Praise for Contrary Motion “Mozina's finely detailed, painfully funny novel is a rollicking performance that will keep readers on the edge of their seats.”—Booklist (starred review) “Mozina has created a likeable, believable main character, the sort of guy alongside whom you could easily spend hours dissecting life over a couple of beers. It's the first novel for Mozina,... and it's sure to leave readers asking for more. Mozina's storytelling is easy and humorous, taking the stuff of everyday life and presenting it in a way that both entertains and draws out emotion.”—BookPage “Standing between world-class harpist Matt Grzbc and his dream, a permanent position in a top orchestra, is just about everybody in his life. This brilliant debut novel zigzags across Chicago's neighborhoods, exploring the obsession a striving artist must have for his craft, as he also makes a living and nourishes those near him, especially his eccentric and precocious six-year-old daughter. Contrary Motion is a wonderful story—beautifully written, hilarious, tortured, and filled with heavenly music.”—Bonnie Jo Campbell, author of National Book Award finalist American Salvage “Charming... The painfully self-aware Matt has a great sense of humor, but his comic insights don't help him much as he faces a confounding array of personal problems.... The pleasures of [Mozina's] writing never flag.”—Kirkus Reviews “No portrait of an artist brings alive vulnerability, hilarity, desperation, hipness, absurdity, and painful steadfastness as splendidly as Andy Mozina's Contrary Motion. A dazzling, unforgettable novel.”—Mark Wisniewski, author of Watch Me Go

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR • From the renowned author of “The Lottery” and The Haunting of Hill House, a spectacular volume of previously unpublished and uncollected stories, essays, and other writings.Features “Family Treasures,” nominated for the Edgar Award for Best Short Story Shirley Jackson is one of the most important American writers of the last hundred years. Since her death in 1965, her place in the landscape of twentieth-century fiction has grown only more exalted. As we approach the centenary of her birth comes this astonishing compilation of fifty-six pieces—more than forty of which have never been published before. Two of Jackson's children co-edited this volume, culling through the vast archives of their mother's papers at the Library of Congress, selecting only the very best for inclusion. Let Me Tell You brings together the deliciously eerie short stories Jackson is best known for, along with frank, inspiring lectures on writing; comic essays about her large, boisterous family; and whimsical drawings. Jackson's landscape here is most frequently domestic: dinner parties and bridge, household budgets and homeward-bound commutes, children's games and neighborly gossip. But this familiar setting is also her most subversive: She wields humor, terror, and the uncanny to explore the real challenges of marriage, parenting, and community—the pressure of social norms, the veins of distrust in love, the constant lack of time and space.For the first time, this collection showcases Shirley Jackson's radically different modes of writing side by side. Together they show her to be a magnificent storyteller, a sharp, sly humorist, and a powerful feminist. This volume includes a Foreword by the celebrated literary critic and Jackson biographer Ruth Franklin.Praise for Let Me Tell You“Stunning.”—O: The Oprah Magazine“Let us now—at last—celebrate dangerous women writers: how cheering to see justice done with [this collection of] Shirley Jackson's heretofore unpublished works—uniquely unsettling stories and ruthlessly barbed essays on domestic life.”—Vanity Fair “Feels like an uncanny dollhouse: Everything perfectly rendered, but something deliciously not quite right.”—NPR “There are... times in reading [Jackson's] accounts of desperate women in their thirties slowly going crazy that she seems an American Jean Rhys, other times when she rivals even Flannery O'Connor in her cool depictions of inhumanity and insidious cruelty, and still others when she matches Philip K. Dick at his most hallucinatory. At her best, though, she's just incomparable.”—The Washington Post “Offers insights into the vagaries of [Jackson's] mind, which was ruminant and generous, accommodating such diverse figures as Dr. Seuss and Samuel Richardson.”—The New York Times Book Review“The best pieces clutch your throat, gently at first, and then with growing strength.... The whole collection has a timelessness.”—The Boston Globe“[Jackson's] writing, both fiction and nonfiction, has such enduring power—she brings out the darkness in life, the poltergeists shut into everyone's basement, and offers them up, bringing wit and even joy to the examination.”—USA Today“The closest we can get to sitting down and having a conversation with... one of the most original voices of her generation.”—The Huffington Post

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry comes an exquisite love story about Queenie Hennessy, the remarkable friend who inspired Harold's cross-country journey.“This lovely book is full of joy. Much more than the story of a woman's enduring love for an ordinary, flawed man, it's an ode to messy, imperfect, glorious, unsung humanity.”—The Washington PostA runaway international bestseller, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry followed its unassuming hero on an incredible journey as he traveled the length of England on foot—a journey spurred by a simple letter from his old friend Queenie Hennessy, writing from a hospice to say goodbye. Harold believed that as long as he kept walking, Queenie would live. What he didn't know was that his decision to walk had caused her both alarm and fear. How could she wait? What would she say? Forced to confront the past, Queenie realizes she must write again. In this poignant parallel story to Harold's saga, acclaimed author Rachel Joyce brings Queenie Hennessy's voice into sharp focus. Setting pen to paper, Queenie makes a journey of her own, a journey that is even bigger than Harold's; one word after another, she promises to confess long-buried truths—about her modest childhood, her studies at Oxford, the heartbreak that brought her to Kingsbridge and to loving Harold, her friendship with his son, the solace she has found in a garden by the sea. And, finally, the devastating secret she has kept from Harold for all these years. A wise, tender, layered novel that gathers tremendous emotional force, The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy underscores the resilience of the human spirit, beautifully illuminating the small yet pivotal moments that can change a person's life.

In the stunning tradition of Lisa See, Maeve Binchy, and Alice Hoffman, The Tin Horse is a rich multigenerational story about the intense, often fraught bond sisters share and the dreams and sorrows that lay at the heart of the immigrant experience. It has been more than sixty years since Elaine Greenstein's twin sister, Barbara, ran away, cutting off contact with her family forever. Elaine has made peace with that loss. But while sifting through old papers as she prepares to move to Rancho Mañana—or the “Ranch of No Tomorrow” as she refers to the retirement community—she is stunned to find a possible hint to Barbara's whereabouts all these years later. And it pushes her to confront the fierce love and bitter rivalry of their youth during the 1920s and'30s, in the Los Angeles Jewish neighborhood of Boyle Heights. Though raised together in Boyle Heights, where kosher delis and storefront signs in Yiddish lined the streets, Elaine and Barbara staked out very different personal territories. Elaine was thoughtful and studious, encouraged to dream of going to college, while Barbara was a bold rule-breaker whose hopes fastened on nearby Hollywood. In the fall of 1939, when the girls were eighteen, Barbara's recklessness took an alarming turn. Leaving only a cryptic note, she disappeared. In an unforgettable voice layered with humor and insight, Elaine delves into the past. She recalls growing up with her spirited family: her luftmensch of a grandfather, a former tinsmith with tales from the Old Country; her papa, who preaches the American Dream even as it eludes him; her mercurial mother, whose secret grief colors her moods—and of course audacious Barbara and their younger sisters, Audrey and Harriet. As Elaine looks back on the momentous events of history and on the personal dramas of the Greenstein clan, she must finally face the truth of her own childhood, and that of the twin sister she once knew. In The Tin Horse, Janice Steinberg exquisitely unfolds a rich multigenerational story about the intense, often fraught bonds between sisters, mothers, and daughters and the profound and surprising ways we are shaped by those we love. At its core, it is a book not only about the stories we tell but, more important, those we believe, especially the ones about our very selves.Praise for The Tin Horse“Steinberg, the author of five mysteries, has transcended genre to weave a rich story that will appeal to readers who appreciate multigenerational immigrant family sagas as well as those who simply enjoy psychological suspense.”—BookPage

In this midcareer collection of twenty-three short stories, John Updike tackles such problems as separation, divorce, and remarriage, parents and children, guns and prostitution, leprosy, swooning, suffocation, and guilt. His self-seeking heroes tend to be forty; his heroines are asleep, seductive, longing, or reproachful. None of these characters is innocent, and all are looking vainly for the road back to an imagined Paradise. Pain and comedy closely coexist in this mainly domestic world of the 1970s, where life is indistinguishable from a television commercial (but what is it advertising?) and every morning's paper brings news of lost Atlantises.

For fans of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society, The Postmistress, and Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, a story of love, war, loss, and the scars they leave set during the years of World War II and its aftermath. It's 1941. Babe throws like a boy, thinks for herself, and never expects to escape the poor section of her quiet Massachusetts town. Then World War II breaks out, and everything changes. Her friend Grace, married to a reporter on the local paper, fears being left alone with her infant daughter when her husband ships out; Millie, the third member of their childhood trio, now weds the boy who always refused to settle down; and Babe wonders if she should marry Claude, who even as a child could never harm a living thing. As the war rages abroad, life on the home front undergoes its own battles and victories; and when the men return, and civilian life resumes, nothing can go back to quite the way it was. From postwar traumas to women's rights, racial injustice to anti-Semitism, Babe, Grace, and Millie experience the dislocations, the acute pains, and the exhilaration of a society in flux. Along the way, they will learn what it means to be a wife, a mother, a friend, a fighter, and a survivor. Beautiful, startling, and heartbreaking, Next to Love is a love letter to the brave women who shaped a nation's destiny. “Impossible to put down.” —Stacy Schiff Look for special features inside. Join the Circle for author chats and more.

“An elegant page-turner of nineteenth-century detective fiction.”–The Washington Post Book WorldOne rainy morning in 1871 in lower Manhattan, Martin Pemberton a freelance writer, sees in a passing stagecoach several elderly men, one of whom he recognizes as his supposedly dead and buried father. While trying to unravel the mystery, Pemberton disappears, sending McIlvaine, his employer, the editor of an evening paper, in pursuit of the truth behind his freelancer's fate. Layer by layer, McIlvaine reveals a modern metropolis surging with primordial urges and sins, where the Tweed Ring operates the city for its own profit and a conspicuously self-satisfied nouveau-riche ignores the poverty and squalor that surrounds them. In E. L. Doctorow's skilled hands, The Waterworks becomes, in the words of The New York Times, “a dark moral tale... an eloquently troubling evocation of our past.”“Startling and spellbinding... The waters that lave the narrative all run to the great confluence, where the deepest issues of life and death are borne along on the swift, sure vessel of [Doctorow's] poetic imagination.”–The New York Times Book Review“Hypnotic... a dazzling romp, an extraordinary read, given strength and grace by the telling, by the poetic voice and controlled cynical lyricism of its streetwise and world-weary narrator.”–The Philadelphia Inquirer“A gem of a novel, intimate as chamber music... a thriller guaranteed to leave readers with residual chills and shudders.”–Boston Sunday Herald“Enthralling... a story of debauchery and redemption that is spellbinding from first page to last.”–Chicago Sun-Times“An immense, extraordinary achievement.”–San Francisco Chronicle

BONUS: This edition contains a The Blue Notebook discussion guide and an excerpt from James A. Levine's Bingo's Run.An unforgettable, deeply affecting debut novel, The Blue Notebook tells the story of Batuk, a precocious fifteen-year-old girl from rural India who is sold into sexual slavery by her father. As she navigates the grim realities of Mumbai's Common Street, Batuk manages to put pen to paper, recording her private thoughts and writing fantastic tales that help her transcend her daily existence. Beautifully crafted, surprisingly hopeful, and filled with both tragedy and humor, The Blue Notebook shows how even in the most difficult situations, people use storytelling to make sense of and give meaning to their lives.

Clarinetist Ike Morphy, his dog Herbie Mann, and a pair of pigeons who roost on his air conditioner are about to be evicted from their apartment on West 106th Street, also known as Duke Ellington Boulevard. Ike has never had a lease, just a handshake agreement with the recently deceased landlord; and now that landlord's son stands to make a killing on apartment 2B.Centering on the fate of one apartment before, during, and after the height of New York's real estate boom, Ellington Boulevard's characters include the Tenant and His Dog; the Landlord, a recovered alcoholic and womanizer who has newly found Judaism and a wife half his age; the Broker, an out-of-work actor whose new profession finally allows him to afford theater tickets he has no time to use; the Broker's New Boyfriend, a second-rate actor who composes a musical about the sale of 2B (“Is there no one I can lien on if this boom goes bust?”). There's also the Buyer, a trusting young editor at a dying cultural magazine, who falls in love with the Tenant; the Buyer's Husband, a disaffected graduate student taken to writing bawdy faux-academic papers; and the Buyer's Husband's Girlfriend, a children's book writer with a tragic past.With the humor and poignancy that made Langer's first novel, Crossing California, a favorite book of the year among critics across the country, Ellington Boulevard is an ode to New York. It's the story of why people come to a city they can't afford, take jobs they despise, sacrifice love, find love, and eventually become the people they never thought they'd be—for better and for worse.

A Romeo and Juliet story set against the strict Muslim laws of Saudi Arabia, Sulaiman Addonia's astonishing debut novel is a sensuous and intensely wrought story of a young immigrant and a girl behind a veil who defy law and risk their lives to be together.Under a relentless summer sun, women dressed like long dark shadows and men decked out in light cotton robes roam the streets of Jeddah. While most of Naser's friends have left town to escape the heat, he must stay behind to work. An African immigrant and outsider, Naser spends his spare time frequenting a friend's café, writing letters to his mother in Eritrea, and daydreaming about the glamorous girlfriend he hopes to one day have. Naser and his younger brother were sent to Saudi Arabia to avoid the war back home, but though they live with their conservative Muslim uncle they remain under the watchful, wrathful eyes of the religious police, who monitor the community's every action, govern the near indestructible boundaries between men and women–walls in mosques, panels on buses, separate visiting quarters in houses, and, of course, the black veil, or abaya, that adorns the women–and punish any disobedience by public beating or death.But a splash of color arrives in Naser's world when unexpectedly a small piece of paper is dropped at his feet. It is a love note from a girl whose face he has never seen and whose voice he has never heard. To identify her among the sea of veiled women, she instructs him to look for a pair of pink shoes peeking out from under her draped abaya. Intrigued and encouraged, Naser rebels against Wahhabist Islamic convention and begins a clandestine correspondence with the girl. Yet even as the barriers that divide them begin to crumble under the weight of their passionate prose and devotion, the lovers'illicit affair will face the ultimate and most heartrending test.

In this heartrending and inspiring novel set against the gorgeous, vast landscape of South Africa under apartheid, award-winning playwright Pamela Gien tells the story of two families–one black, one white–separated by racism, connected by love. Even at the age of six, lively, inquisitive Elizabeth Grace senses she's a child of privilege, “a lucky fish.” Soothing her worries by raiding the sugar box, she scampers up into the sheltering arms of the lilac-blooming syringa tree growing behind the family's suburban Johannesburg home.Lizzie's closest ally and greatest love is her Xhosa nanny, Salamina. Deeper and more elemental than any traditional friendship, their fierce devotion to each other is charged and complicated by Lizzie's mother, who suffers from creeping melancholy, by the stresses of her father's medical practice, which is segregated by law, and by the violence, injustice, and intoxicating beauty of their country. In the social and racial upheavals of the 1960s, Lizzie's eyes open to the terror and inhumanity that paralyze all the nation's cultures–Xhosa, Zulu, Jew, English, Boer. Pass laws requiring blacks to carry permission papers for white areas and stringent curfews have briefly created an orderly state–but an anxious one. Yet Lizzie's home harbors its own set of rules, with hushed midnight gatherings, clandestine transactions, and the girl's special task of protecting Salamina's newborn child–a secret that, because of the new rules, must never be mentioned outside the walls of the house.As the months pass, the contagious spirit of change sends those once underground into the streets to challenge the ruling authority. And when this unrest reaches a social and personal climax, the unthinkable will happen and forever change Lizzie's view of the world. When The Syringa Tree opened off-Broadway in 2001, theater critics and audiences alike embraced the play, and it won many awards. Pamela Gien has superbly deepened the story in this new novel, giving a personal voice to the horrors and hopes of her homeland. Written with lyricism, passion, and life-affirming redemption, this compelling story shows the healing of the heart of a young woman and the soul of a sundered nation.

Meet the Laments—the affably dysfunctional globetrotting family at the center of George Hagen's exuberant debut novel.Howard is an engineer who dreams of irrigating the Sahara and lives by the motto “Laments move!” His wife Julia is a fiery spirit who must balance her husband's oddly peripatetic nature with unexpected aspirations of her own. And Will is the “waif with a paper-thin heart” who is given to Howard and Julia in return for their own child who has been lost in a bizarre maternity ward mishap. As Will makes his way from infancy to manhood in a family that careens from continent to continent, one wonders where the Laments will ever belong.In Bahrain, Howard takes a job with an oil company and young Will makes his first friend. But in short order he is wrenched off to another land, his mother's complicated friendship with the American siren Trixie Howitzer causing the family to bolt. In Northern Rhodesia, during its last days as a white colony, the twin enfants terribles Marcus and Julius are born, and Will falls for the gardener's daughter, a girl so vain that she admires her image in the lid of a biscuit tin. But soon the family's life is upturned again, thie time by their neighbor Major Buck Quinn, with his suburban tirades against black self-rule. Envisioning a more civilized life on “the sceptered isle,” the Laments board an ocean liner bound for England. Alas, poor Will is greeted by the tribal ferocity of his schoolmates and a society fixated on the Blitz. No sooner has he succumbed to British pop culture in the guise of mop-top Sally Byrd and her stacks of 45s, than the Laments uproot themselves once again, and it's off to New Jersey, where life deals crisis and opportunity in equal measure.Undeniably eccentric, the Laments are also universal. Every family moves on in life. Children grow up, things are left behind; there is always something to lament. Through the Lament's restlessness, responses to adversity, and especially their unwieldy love for one another, George Hagen gives us a portrait of every family that is funny, tragic, and improbably true.

The Ransomes had been burgled.'Robbed,'Mrs. Ransome said.'Burgled,'Mr. Ransome corrected. Premises were burgled; persons were robbed. Mr. Ransome was a solicitor by profession and thought words mattered. Though'burgled'was the wrong word too. Burglars select; they pick; they remove one item and ignore others. There is a limit to what burglars can take: they seldom take easy chairs, for example, and even more seldom settees. These burglars did. They took everything.This swift-moving comic fable will surprise you with its concealed depths. When the sedate Ransomes return from the opera to find their Notting Hill flat stripped absolutely bare—down to the toilet paper off the roll (a hard-to-find shade of forget-me-not blue)—they face a dilemma: Who are they without the things they've spent a lifetime accumulating? Suddenly the world is full of unlimited and frightening possibility. But just as they begin adjusting to this giddy freedom, a newfound interest in sex, and a lack of comfy chairs, a surreal reversal of events causes them to question their assumptions yet again. The Ransomes'bafflement is the reader's delight. Alan Bennett's gentle but scathing wit, unerring ear for dialogue, and sense of the absurd make The Clothes They Stood Up In a memorable exploration of where in life true riches lie.

The Jewish American novelist Henry Bech—procrastinating, libidinous, and tart-tongued, his reputation growing while his powers decline—made his first appearance in 1965, in John Updike's “The Bulgarian Poetess.” That story won the O. Henry First Prize, and it and the six Bech adventures that followed make up this collection. “Bech is the writer in me,” Updike once said, “creaking but lusty, battered but undiscourageable, fed on the blood of ink and the bread of white paper.” As he trots the globe, promotes himself, and lurches from one woman's bed to another's, Bech views life with a blend of wonder and cynicism that will make followers of the lit-biz smile with delight and wince in recognition.

“An outstandingly intelligent and significant novel” about greed and environmental devastation from the author of the Booker Prize-nominated Night Over Day Over Night •Booklist Logger Noah Mackenzie has a bitter history with the Algonquin wilderness, and now he's determined to clear-cut the part he considers his own. The only person in the remote Maine town of Abenaki Junction putting up any fight for the forest is Madeleine Cody, publisher of a small newspaper, the Forest Sentinel. Using the paper to draw attention to the plight of the Algonquin forest, Madeleine has endeavored to put an end to excessive deforestation, through nonviolent means. But when Adam Gabriel—an ex-fighter pilot, Abenaki Junction born-and-raised—returns to the town from spiking trees out West, the protest takes a dangerous new direction. Praise for Archangel “Paul Watkins is without question one of the most gifted writers of his generation.”—Tobias Wolff “Crisp, satisfying.... The forest over which the characters are struggling takes on a memorable vibrancy and life.”—Elle “Rich characterizations and a seamless narrative bring to roaring life this tale of environmental conflict.... Watkins evokes the grandeur of the woods as well as the wild unpredictability of both natural and social violence.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review) “A wonderful literary adventure novel, squarely in the tradition of Deliverance and Legends of the Fall.”—Howard Frank Mosher