Literary Lives

William McCloskey’s best-selling novel Highliners established him as an authority on the dangers and hardships of the Alaskan fishing industry. Now in an epic sequel, Breakers returns to Kodiak to chart the fortunes of McCloskey’s beloved characters as they make their living from the sea.

In a South Africa torn by civil war, Michael K sets out to take his mother back to her rural home. On the way there she dies, leaving him alone in an anarchic world of brutal roving armies. Imprisoned, Michael is unable to bear confinement and escapes, determined to live with dignity. Life and...

Howards End is the story of the liberal Schlegel sisters and their struggle to come to terms with social class and their German heritage in Edwardian England. Their lives are intertwined with those of the wealthy and pragmatic Wilcox family and their country house, Howards End, as well as the lower-middle-class Basts. When Helen Schlegel and Paul Wilcox's brief romance ends badly the Schlegels hope to never see the Wilcoxes again.

"Ma famille incarne ce que la joie a de plus bruyant, de plus spectaculaire, l'écho inlassable des morts, et le retentissement du désastre. Aujourd'hui, je sais aussi qu'elle illustre, comme tant d'autres familles, le pouvoir de destruction du verbe, et celui du silence."

Travel writer Macon Leary hates travel, adventure, surprises, and anything outside of his routine. Immobilized by grief, Macon is becoming increasingly prickly and alone, anchored by his solitude and an unwillingness to compromise his creature comforts. Then he meets Muriel, an eccentric dog trainer too optimistic to let Macon disappear into himself. Despite Macon’s best efforts to remain insulated, Muriel upends his solitary, systemized life, catapulting him into the center of a messy, beautiful love story he never imagined.

Young Pip Tyler doesn't know who she is. She knows that her real name is Purity, that she's saddled with $130,000 in student debt, that she's squatting with anarchists in Oakland, and that her relationship with her mother - her only family - is hazardous. But she doesn't have a clue who her father is, why her mother chose to live as a recluse with an invented name, or how she'll ever have a normal life.

This charming, witty, and life-affirming novel follows Little Alien as she discovers an ancient manuscript that changes her life—lightheartedly representing what it feels like to grow up neurodivergent. Perfect for readers of Matt Haig and Shelby Van Pelt.​ “Climb up here, Little Alien...

Timed to the 100th birthday of Marilyn Monroe, and with the full cooperation of the Monroe estate, comes an investigation into the literary life of the Hollywood icon and actress, from the author of Three-Martini Afternoons at the Ritz and Dorothy Parker in Hollywood. Far from the spotlights of...

When a successful New York lawyer suddenly disappears without a trace, neither his wife nor his daughter Julia has any idea where he might be - until they find a love letter he wrote many years ago to a Burmese woman they have never heard of. Intent on solving the mystery and coming to terms with her father’s past, Julia decides to travel to the village where the woman lived. There she uncovers a tale of unimaginable hardship, resilience, and passion that will reaffirm the listener’s belief in the power of love to move mountains.

1987. There’s only one person who has ever truly understood fourteen-year-old June Elbus, and that’s her uncle, the renowned painter Finn Weiss. Shy at school and distant from her older sister, June can only be herself in Finn’s company; he is her godfather, confidant, and best friend. So when he dies, far too young, of a mysterious illness her mother can barely speak about, June’s world is turned upside down. But Finn’s death brings a surprise acquaintance into June’s life - someone who will help her to heal....

Edinburgh in the 1930s. The Lennox family is having trouble with its youngest daughter. Esme is outspoken, unconventional, and repeatedly embarrasses them in polite society. Even Kitty, Esme's beloved sister, is beginning to lose patience. Something will have to be done.

Meaningful, moving and magical - the classic best-selling love story. Everyone needs a guardian angel.... Some people wait their whole lives to find their soul mates. But not Holly and Gerry. Childhood sweethearts, they could finish each other's sentences and even when they fought, they laughed. No one could imagine Holly and Gerry without each other. Until the unthinkable happens. Gerry's death devastates Holly. But as her 30th birthday looms, Gerry comes back to her.

The Corrections is a grandly entertaining novel for the new century--a comic, tragic masterpiece about a family breaking down in an age of easy fixes. After almost fifty years as a wife and mother, Enid Lambert is ready to have some fun. Unfortunately, her husband, Alfred, is losing his sanity...

It is 1483, and Sir Thomas Lemuel Hawke, a Cornish knight, is about to ride into battle. On the eve of his departure, he composes a letter to his four young children, consisting of 20 virtues that provide instruction on how to live a noble life and on all the lessons, large and small, that he might have imparted to them himself were he not expecting to die on the battlefield.

Franciszka and her daughter, Helena, are simple, ordinary people until 1939, when the Nazis invade their homeland. Providing shelter to Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland is a death sentence, but Franciszka and Helena do exactly that. In their tiny home in Sokal, they hide a Jewish family in a loft above their pigsty, a Jewish doctor with his wife and son in a makeshift cellar under the kitchen, and a defecting German soldier in the attic - each party completely unknown to the others.

Shakespeare’s plays and poems remain as beloved in the twenty-first century as they were in the sixteenth. For all the years between us, the world he inhabited was much like our own—afflicted by political turmoil, divisiveness, war, extreme weather, recurrent plagues, the fouling of natural resources on which everyone relied, and discrimination against people who were different. The bard’s remedy for these troubles was to offer respite and inspiration to his audience through his writing.

Honored with almost every conceivable award for literary merit, Salman Rushdie penned this richly imagined fable for his son—and for book lovers the world over. From Rashid’s fertile intellect spring bedazzling tales his son Luka devours with a child’s earnestness. But when Rashid succumbs to an unending sleep, Luka must enter a magical world ruled by video-game logic.

This is the story of the marriage behind some of the most famous literary works of the 20th century —and a probing consideration of what it means to be a wife and a writer in the modern world "Simply, a masterpiece...Funder not only re-makes the art of biography, she resurrects a woman in...

In 1995 Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, on a rare family vacation, seven-year-old Nainoa Flores falls overboard a cruise ship into the Pacific Ocean. When a shiver of sharks appears in the water, everyone fears for the worst. But instead, Noa is gingerly delivered to his mother in the jaws of a shark, marking his story as the stuff of legends. Nainoa’s family, struggling amidst the collapse of the sugarcane industry, hails his rescue as a sign of favor from ancient Hawaiian gods - a belief that appears validated after he exhibits puzzling new abilities.

A Chinese proverb says, "Falling leaves return to their roots." In Chinese Cinderella, Adeline Yen Mah returns to her roots to tell the story of her painful childhood and her ultimate triumph and courage in the face of despair. Adeline's affluent, powerful family considers her bad luck after her mother dies giving birth to her. Life does not get any easier when her father remarries. She and her siblings are subjected to the disdain of her stepmother, while her stepbrother and stepsister are spoiled.