A classic in the making: a mesmerizing novel about marriage and ambition, sexuality and secrecy, and the true costs of building an empire.
At the turn of the 20th century, Vivian Lesperance is determined to flee her origins in Utica, New York, and avoid repeating her parents’ dull, limited life. When she meets Oscar Schmidt, a middle manager at a soap company, Vivian finds a partner she can guide to build the life she wants—not least because, more interested in men himself, Oscar will leave Vivian to tend to her own romances with women.
But Vivian’s plans require capital,
read more
Robert Shapard’s exquisitely crafted short stories take readers to enchantingly peculiar realms: A young girl poignantly rejects immortality in favor of love. A startling revelation confronts a son who discovers his father’s head is only burlap with piercing Marks-A-Lot eyes. A couple in their early 30s engage in sex role-play involving the destruction of Mars. A young woman valet parker at an all-night diner in Los Angeles is ensnared by the world’s most famous monster. A boy’s life is irrevocably altered by witnessing a Mexican family’s farm-truck accident. An old, hungover science professor imparts the Earth’s greatest secret to his students.
read more
Elizabeth Costello’s atmospheric and lyrical debut follows a mother and a daughter pursuing art, science, and autonomy in post war America. Part feminist noir, part queer coming of age, The Good War is an intense, beautifully written novel that explores the intimate bonds of family and big questions about the meaning of heroism and sacrifice.
In 1948, Louise Galle, a chemist and former Rosie-the-Riveter, is pursued by a wounded veteran who, with her deceased husband, was a prisoner in the Philippines during World War II. In New York City in 1964, Louise’s daughter Charlotte falls for the butch next door and receives an undeniable call to make art.
read more
The long-awaited return of a quintessentially American storyteller
“You’re as likely to be hit twice by lightning on a Monday as see a wood chipper pull a man into its maw.”
So begins North of Ordinary, John Rolfe Gardner’s virtuosic story collection of survivors getting by despite the odds in a shifting world. In these pages, we meet a nervous young apprentice to a weathered tree climber; a dangerously obsessed student at a Southern Bible college; an attractive schemer trying to build an audience for her tiny radio station; an undercover,
read more
An old New York Catskills hotel is converted into a Reeducation center for star #MeToo offenders in a story full of cunning and craft, double meanings and doppelgangers.
A finalist for the National Jewish Book Award strikes again with another brilliant satire–a treat for readers of Philip Roth, Dara Horn, Nathan Englander, and others.
Somewhere in the Catskills there’s a camp, it’s called Camp Jeff. The place is named for Jeffrey Epstein, not that Jeffrey Epstein, this is the good Jeffrey Epstein, a benefactor who wants his name on the building, though the bad one’s not entirely irrelevant to this story.
read more
From the author of This Is Happiness, a compassionate, life-affirming novel about the Christmas season that transforms the small Irish town of Faha.
Doctor Jack Troy was born and raised in Faha, but his responsibilities for the sick and his care for the dying mean he has always been set apart from the town. His eldest daughter, Ronnie, has grown up in her father’s shadow, and remains there, having missed one chance at love – and passed up another offer of marriage from an unsuitable man.
But in the Advent season of 1962,
read more
