Lark and Termite Jayne Anne Phillips

Lark and Termite Jayne Anne Phillips 

Overview:

National Bestseller
New York Times Notable Book
Chicago Tribune, Christian Science Monitor, The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year

From Phillip's (Motherkind; Shelter) comes a long-awaited and wonderful coming-of-age tale of grief and survival. The story straddles a parallel six-day period in July, one in 1959—during which 17-year-old Lark; her brother, Termite, who cant talk; and their aunt and caretaker, Nonie, are struggling to balance hope and despair in smalltown West Virginia—and nine years earlier, when Termites father, Robert Leavitt, serves a tour in Korea. Lark, living with her aunt without knowing who her father is or why her mother gave her up, was nine years old when baby Termite landed on their doorstep. Nonie works long hours at a local restaurant to support the hodgepodge family, leaving Lark to take over mothering duties, but as Lark finishes secretarial school and realizes how limited the options are for her and Termite, forces of nature and odd individuals shed light on mysteries of the past and lend a hand in steering the next course of action. Through Robert and Nonie's stories and by exposing the innermost thoughts of each character, Phillips creates a wrenching portrait of devotion while keeping the suspense at a palpitating level.

“Powerful and emotionally piercing. . . . A novel that conjures with poetic ferocity the… unconscious, almost magical bonds shared by people who are connected by blood or love or memory.” —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

“Anyone, male or female, who seriously cares about reading novels will find Lark and Termite to be intricately and beautifully composed.” —The New York Review of Books

“Phillips . . . [knows] how to bypass the reader’s brain and inject her words directly into the bloodstream.” —Los Angeles Times

“There are books you recommend to everybody, and then there are books you share cautiously, even protectively. Jayne Anne Phillips’s Lark and Termite is that second kind, a mysterious, affecting novel you’ll want to talk about only with others who have fallen under its spell.” —The Washington Post Book World

“This novel is cut like a diamond, with such sharp authenticity and bursts of light.” —Alice Munro

“Lark and Termite is a category of story unto itself: mythical without being gooey; wry and terribly moving; as ornately contrived as Dickens, as poetic as Morrison, yet unselfconscious in tone and peopled with vivid, salt-of-the-earth characters who mostly accept the limits on life’s possibilities with a shrug and another cup of coffee.” —Maureen Corrigan, “Fresh Air”

“A stylistic tour de force. . . . Pure, rapt poetry.” —The Wall Street Journal

“Fever-dreamy.” —Entertainment Weekly

“A jewel of a book.” —St. Petersburg Times

“Phillips returns to working-class lives in what may be her most tender, most compassionate book to date. . . . Extraordinary.” —The Plain Dealer

“Jayne Anne Phillips renders what is realistically impossible with such authority that the reader never questions its truth. . . . The fantastic dream that’s created in Lark and Termite is one the reader enters without ever looking back.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Lark and Termite is extraordinary and it is luminous. . . . It is the best novel I've read this year.” —Junot D?az

“Electrifying. . . . Gorgeous, stunning.” —Newsday

“A narrative that is consistently inventive, evocative and uncompromising. . . . Haunting is a word much overused but Lark And Termite is exactly that: a novel whose elegant, lingering images are hard to shake from memory.” —The Independent  (London)

“Remarkable . . . swings from spare to sumptuous. . . . An intricate, affecting portrait of a darker corner of the American ‘50s.”—USA Today

“Extraordinary and brilliant. . . . With its echoes of William Faulkner and its almost mystical exploration of love in all its forms, but particularly between siblings, the novel is a powerful and tender portrayal of a family that in the end proves literally unsinkable.” —The Sunday Times (London)

“Evocative. . . . Lark and Termite offers substantial rewards for readers who value passages of gorgeous, intelligent writing.” —The Boston Globe

“What a beautiful, beautiful novel this is–so rich and intricate in its drama, so elegantly written, so tender, so convincing, so penetrating, so incredibly moving.” —Tim O’Brien

“A richly textured novel with a wondrous story at its heart about the many permutations of love and the complexities it engenders.” —Sunday Herald  (London)

“Acute and elegant.” —Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

“Moving and suspenseful. . . . Phillips weaves the characters’ stories masterfully, touching on betrayal and forgiveness, war’s horror, natural disaster, secrets of the past, the love and dedication of an extended family of friends, mystery and death.” —The Miami Herald

“Luminous and haunting and singular. . . . Because [Lark and Termite] deals with issues over which people have been arguing for centuries—family and war—the novel’s raw immediacy is really quite spectacular. . . . Phillips serves it all up with a prose that sparkles and startles.” —Chicago Tribune

“Phillips reinvigorates and transforms the Faulknerian infrastructure. . . . Exquisitely explored.” —Bookforum

“Sharply lyrical. . . . Once you open [Lark and Termite’s] hypnotic pages you will find yourself pulled like metal to a magnet.” —Dallas Morning News

“Lark And Termite is about Big Themes: love, death, war, time, consciousness, perception, especially sound, and language itself. . . . Its belief in redemption and hope are not the least of Lark And Termite's blessings.” —The Observer (London)

“A tale with a Southern Gothic flair, startlingly alive language and the intensity of four narrators. . . . It’s easy to fall into the world Phillips has created and inside the heartache of the well-rendered characters.” —The Oregonian

“Riveting and moving. . . . Lark’s pragmatism, clear-eyed love and determination to hold on to her brother are strikingly fresh and heroic.” —The Seattle Times

“Strange and beautiful at every turn as Phillips taps into powerful magic with a tale that surprises to its last page.” —St. Petersburg Times

“Exquisite. . . . The story’s rich symbols and parallels are carried along by the sounds, images and rhythms of Phillips’ wordcraft. This is Phillips writing at her best.”—St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“Jayne Anne Phillips . . . is at the height of her powers in Lark and Termite. . . . This is a major novel from one of America’s finest writers.”—Robert Olen Butler

“Sinuous and evocative.” —Salon

“A celebration of language. . . . There’s joy here, and the bold confidence of a mature talent at full stretch.” —New York Observer

“For all its apparent focus on style and technique, Lark and Termite is a book of ideas, a thoughtful contemplation on the nature of human goodness. . . . Remarkable.”  —The Irish Times

“A tour de force of history, imagination and invention. It is resonant and profound, a masterpiece worth waiting for.” —More

 “You finish Lark and Termite wanting to turn back to the first page and start over, making sure not to miss a single note.” —San Francisco Chronicle

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And Blessed Are The Ones Who Care For Their Fellow Men!

Quiet Dell Jayne Anne Phillips

Quiet Dell  Jayne Anne Phillips

Overview:

From one of America’s most accomplished and acclaimed fiction writers, a spectacularly riveting novel based on a real-life multiple murder by a con man who preyed on widows— a story that has haunted Jayne Anne Phillips for more than four decades

In Chicago in 1931, Asta Eicher, mother of three, is lonely and despairing, pressed for money after the sudden death of her husband. She begins to receive seductive letters from a chivalrous, elegant man named Harry Powers, who promises to cherish and protect her, ultimately to marry her and to care for her and her children. Weeks later, all four Eichers are dead.

Emily Thornhill, one of the few women journalists in the Chicago press, becomes deeply invested in understanding what happened to this beautiful family, particularly to the youngest child, Annabel, an enchanting girl with a precocious imagination and sense of magic. Bold and intrepid, Emily allies herself with a banker who is wracked by guilt for not saving Asta. Emily goes to West Virginia to cover the murder trial and to investigate the story herself, accompanied by a charming and unconventional photographer who is equally drawn to the case.

Driven by secrets of their own, the heroic characters in this magnificent tale will stop at nothing to ensure that Powers is convicted. Mesmerizing and deeply moving, Quiet Dell is a tragedy, a love story, and a tour de force of obsession and imagination from one of America’s most celebrated writers.

“[Quiet Dell’s] success is due to a bold decision: Ms. Phillips has written a serial killer novel in which the serial killer hardly appears….Unabashed…There is a glowing beauty to the book’s brave, generous version of history.”
(Sam Sacks The Wall Street Journal)

“Sometimes eerie and dreamlike, others grippingly tense, yet warmly human, always written with beauty and emotional power, Quiet Dell is a virtuoso performance by a highly original writer.”
(Colette Bancroft Tampa Bay Times)

“Phillips’s effort to do justice — aesthetic and moral — to the victims feels bold and honorable...moving, even transporting…Phillips allows her own ample gifts to soar.”
(Leah Hager Cohen Boston Globe)

“An extraordinary achievement, a mesmerizing blend of fact and fiction that borrows from the historical record, including trial transcripts and newspaper accounts, but is cloaked in the shimmering language of a poet.”
(Associated Press)

“Phillips’ extensive reporting—she quotes from newspaper stories, letters between Eicher and her ‘suitor’ and the trial transcript—gives the book its considerable heft. And her creation of a Chicago reporter named Emily Thornhill helps to frame the story of the eight-decade-old event in a fresh way. Quiet Dell is a smart combination of true crime, history and fiction tied together with Phillips’ seamlessly elegant writing….As the book proceeds to its dark conclusion, Emily offers readers a glimpse of light.”
(Amy Driscoll Miami Herald)

“Phillips, an acclaimed writer of largely contemporary fiction, this time draws on history: a criminal case from the early '30s.…But if the factual underpinnings of this latest novel are unusual for Phillips, her ability to transform them into a fictionalized narrative place her at the top of her form. Phillips has carefully inserted imagined private moments and just a few fictional characters to create a story both splendid and irreparably sad… As Phillips has proved throughout her decades of fiction writing, there is evil in the world, but there are some who will stand in its way.”
(Celia McGee Chicago Tribune)

“In Quiet Dell, Phillips mesmerizingly spins together fact and fiction, vividly imagining the circumstances leading to their deaths, and sets a young female reporter on the case to solve it.”
(Elissa Schappell Vanity Fair)

“Hauntingly imagines the victims’ hopes, dreams, and terror…Phillips blends fact and fiction in a darkly poetic way: The result is an absorbing novel that leaves us rooting for the heroine Emily becomes—and mourning the lives the Eichers never got to enjoy.”
(Arianna Davis O, the Oprah Magazine)

“Jayne Anne Phillips’s unsettling latest, Quiet Dell, spins out from a true crime story involving a 1930s-era-seducer—think Robert Mitchum in The Night of the Hunter—who preys on a widow and her children.”
(Vogue)

“Gripping…Chilling…The novel’s heartbeat is Emily, a Chicago Tribune reporter covering Powers’ arrest and trial…Quiet Dell does what Emily can’t, thoughtfully grafting a 21st-century sensibility onto 20th-century ghastliness. Emily resists the fetters placed on her as a journalist and a woman, while Eric, a gay photographer who accompanies her, is a keen observer of closeted life in the South. Phillips exposes the era’s prejudices less to render judgment than to show how cannily people like Emily and Eric worked around them.”
(Mark Athitakis Minneapolis Star Tribune)

“A novel of compelling impressions…Triumphant…[Jayne Anne Phillips is] perceptive enough to hear, and respond to, the smallest of humanity’s sounds.”
(Erin McKnight The Philadelphia Review of Books)

“Jayne Anne Phillips is one of the finest pure stylists in contemporary literature, and she’s found a story that sounds like a perfect match for her talents.”
(Jeff Baker Portland Oregonian)

“Phillips’s prose is as haunting as the questions she raises about the natures of sin, evil and grace.”
(Kirkus Reviews (starred review))

“Phillips’s plot is engaging, romantic, and fecund; her characters are beautiful, accomplished, and good—except for the bad guy, who is very bad indeed.”
(Publishers Weekly)

“A mesmerizing novel drawn from the annals of infamous true crime…Meticulous, engrossing and spellbinding.”
(Philip Turner The Great Gray Bridge)

“The truth of all of Phillips’ characterizations is what lies behind this careful novel’s compelling momentum.”
(Brad Hooper Booklist)

“In a brilliant fusion of fact and fiction, Jayne Anne Phillips has written the novel of the year. It’s the story of a serial killer’s crimes and capture, yes, but it's also a compulsively readable story of how one brave woman faces up to acts of terrible violence in order to create something good and strong in the aftermath. Quiet Dell will be compared to In Cold Blood, but Phillips offers something Capote could not: a heroine who lights up the dark places and gives us hope in our humanity.”
(Stephen King)

“Quiet Dell has all the elements of a murder mystery, but its emotional scope is larger and more complex. It combines a strange, hypnotic and poetic power with the sharp tones of documentary evidence. It offers a portrait of rural America in a time of crisis and dramatizes the lives of a number of characters who are fascinating and memorable.”
(Colm T?ib?n, author of Brooklyn and The Testament of Mary)

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And Blessed Are The Ones Who Care For Their Fellow Men!

Shelter Jayne Anne Phillips

Shelter Jayne Anne Phillips

Overview:

An incarnate evil, youthful innocence, and burgeoning adolescent sexuality meet in a gripping Southern Gothic tale set in a 1963 West Virginia summer camp as two young girls go to a swimming hole at midnight and encounter two ex-cons. BOMC. Tour. From Publishers Weekly Phillips's second novel is a dark rite-of-passage story of children confronting violence in Appalachia.

In a West Virginia forest in 1963, a group of children at summer camp enter a foreboding Eden and experience an unexpected rite of passage. Shelter is an astonishing portrayal of an American loss of innocence as witnessed by a mysterious drifter named Parson, two young sisters, Lenny and Alma, and a feral boy called Buddy. Together they come to understand bravery and the importance of compassion.

Phillips unearths a dangerous beauty in this primeval terrain and in the hearts of her characters. Lies, secrets, erotic initiations, and the bonds of love between friends, families, and generations are transformed in a leafy wilderness undiminished by societal rules and dilemmas. Cast in Phillips’ stunning prose, with an unpredictable cast of characters and a shadowy, suspenseful narrative, Shelter is a an enduring achievement from one of the finest writers of our time.

 “Astonishing. . . . Phillips has gone into the garden and headed straight for the serpent’s throat.” –The Boston Globe

“Mesmerizing. . . . The physical world is so thoroughly and beautifully evoked that within pages we’re completely drawn in.” –The Washington Post

“Written in prose that is often breathtakingly beautiful, Shelter is a rich, vivid novel of moral and psychological complexity destined to stand alongside works by Faulkner and other masters of Southern literature.” –Vanity Fair

“This defiant, frighteningly beautiful novel is as disturbing as its setting. Built to last, Shelter feels like Phillips’ bid for immortality.” –Harper’s Bazaar

"Ms. Phillips has again put her finger on the collective (and racing) pulse... The steamy West Virginia forest has such intensity that the book's pages almost seem limp and dappled. In this ominous garden, she carefully plots a fall, a confrontation with evil and with the desolation of family estrangement."
-- The New York Times Book Review

"In language and rhythms as carefully wrought as poetry, Phillips layers sensual detail on deeply felt emotion."
-- The Washington Post Book World

"Phillips has shown herself capable of mixing the banal and the transcendent, the ugly and the beautiful, until they become one reality, so apparently true one feels one has lived it. Bellington, West Virginia, and its environs are her answer to the Yoknapatawpha County of Faulkner... no one writing fiction in the U.S. today comes near her for linguistic beauty and atavistic, almost reluctant, wisdom."
--New Statesman & Society

“This defiant, frighteningly beautiful novel is as disturbing as its setting. Built to last, Shelter feels like Phillips’ bid for immortality.” –Harper’s Bazaar

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And Blessed Are The Ones Who Care For Their Fellow Men!

Machine Dreams by Jayne Anne Phillips

Machine Dreams by Jayne Anne Phillips

Overview:

In her highly acclaimed debut novel, the bestselling author of Shelter introduces the Hampsons, an ordinary, small-town American family profoundly affected by the extraordinary events of history. Here is a stunning chronicle that begins with the Depression and ends with the Vietnam War, revealed in the thoughts, dreams, and memories of each family member. Mitch struggles to earn a living as Jeans becomes the main breadwinner, working to coplete college and raise the family. While the couple fight to keep their marriage intact, their daughter Danner and son Billy forge a sibling bond of uncommon strength. When Billy goes off to Vietnam, Danner becomes the sole bond linking her family, whose dissolution mirrors the fractured state of America in the 1960s. Deeply felt and vividly imagined, this lyrical novel is "among the wisest of a generation to grapple with a war that maimed us all" (The Village Voice), by a master of contemporary fiction.

"A beautifully patterned novel . . . an enduring literary achievement . . . astonishing."
—The New York Times

"Machine Dreams, in its wisdom and its compassionate, utterly unsentimental rendering of the American condition, will rank as one of the great books of [the] decade. Jayne Anne Phillips is a blessing."
—Robert Stone

"An intensely Ameican, beautifully written first novel. . . . It carries the strength of myth, and yet is utterly of our times."
—The Wall Street Journal

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And Blessed Are The Ones Who Care For Their Fellow Men!

Black Tickets Jayne Anne Phillips

Black Tickets Jayne Anne Phillips

Overview:

Jayne Anne Phillips's reputation-making debut collection paved the way for a new generation of writers. Raved about by reviewers and embraced by the likes of Raymond Carver, Frank Conroy, Annie Dillard, and Nadine Gordimer, Black Tickets now stands as a classic.

With an uncanny ability to depict the lives of men and women who rarely register in our literature, Phillips writes stories that lay bare their suffering and joy. Here are the abused and the abandoned, the violent and the passive, the impoverished and the disenfranchised who populate the small towns and rural byways of the country. A patron of the arts reserves his fondest feeling for the one man who wants it least. A stripper, the daughter of a witch, escapes from poverty into another kind of violence. A young girl during the Depression is caught between the love of her crazy father and the no less powerful love of her sorrowful mother. These are great American stories that have earned a privileged place in our literature.

"Brilliant... Phillips is a virtuoso."
--Chicago Tribune Book World

"Extraordinary... Phillips shines brightly... This is a sweetheart of a book."
--John Irving, The New York Times Book Review

"[Phillips] knows how to write about the way dreams live with us... Genius is the word for her."
--The Boston Globe

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And Blessed Are The Ones Who Care For Their Fellow Men!

Fast Lanes Jayne Anne Phillips

Fast Lanes Jayne Anne Phillips

Overview:

Jayne Anne Phillips has always been a master of portraiture, both in her widely acclaimed novels and in her short fiction.  The stories in Fast Lanes demonstrated the breadth of her talent in a tour de force of voices, offering elegantly rendered views into the lives of characters torn between the liberation of detachment and the desire to connect.

Three stories are collected in this edition for the first time: in "Alma," and adolescent daughter is made the confidante of her lonely mother; "Counting" traces the history of a dommed love affair; and "Callie" evokes memories of the haunting death of a child in 1920's West Virginia.  Along with the original seven stories from Fast Lanes--each told in extraordinary first person narratives that have been hailed by critics as virtuoso performances--these incandescent portraits offer windows into the lives of an entire generation of Americans, demonstrating again and again why Jayne Anne Phillips remains one of our most powerful writers.

"Ms. Phillips's ear is almost unerring.... As ever, whe writes beautifully, capturing elusive moods with startling images and scenes."  -Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

"Jayne Anne Phillips is the best short story writer since Eudora Welty."  -Nadine Gordimer

"A brilliant writer, utterly original and with an astonishing range." --Ian McEwan

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And Blessed Are The Ones Who Care For Their Fellow Men!

A MARKER TO MEASURE DRIFT Alexander Maksik

A MARKER TO MEASURE DRIFT  Alexander Maksik 

Overview:

A hypnotic, spellbinding novel set in Greece and Africa, where a young Liberian woman reckons with a haunted past.

On a remote island in the Aegean, Jacqueline is living alone in a cave accessible only at low tide. With nothing to protect her from the elements, and with the fabric between herself and the world around her increasingly frayed, she is permeated by sensory experiences of remarkable intensity: the need for shade in the relentless heat of the sun-baked island; hunger and the occasional bliss of release from it; the exquisite pleasure of diving into the sea. The pressing physical realities of the moment provide a deeper relief: the euphoric obliteration of memory and, with it, the unspeakable violence she has seen and from which she has miraculously escaped.

Slowly, irrepressibly, images from a life before this violence begin to resurface: the view across lush gardens to a different sea; a gold Rolex glinting on her father’s wrist; a glass of gin in her mother’s best crystal; an adoring younger sister; a family, in the moment before their fortunes were irrevocably changed. Jacqueline must find the strength to contend with what she has survived or tip forward into full-blown madness.

Visceral and gripping, extraordinary in its depiction of physical and spiritual hungers, Alexander Maksik’s A Marker to Measure Drift is a novel about ruin and faith, barbarism and love, and the devastating memories that contain the power both to destroy us and to redeem us.

“Bold . . . Undaunted . . . Maksik writes, credibly, across the boundaries of gender and race . . . A study of scarred consciousness struggling to come to terms with the violence done to it in a moment of cataclysmic horror . . . The sustained representation of Jacqueline’s search for release, for haven, has moments of bleak poetry . . . Maksik has illuminated for us, with force and art, an all too common species of suffering—grievous, ugly, and, unfortunately, a perennial.”
—The New York Times

“Immensely powerful . . . Beautifully written . . . Jacqueline is a mesmerizing heroine . . . She is alive on the page from the outset, and with each paragraph she deepens, grows more complicated. Clearer and yet more mysterious . . . Maksik brings Jacqueline’s tale to a devastating finale . . . giving her quest an awful and moving dignity.”
—The Boston Globe

"It will leave you breathless and speechless; it will send you reeling."
—The San Francisco Chronicle

“A fever dream of a novel . . . One might linger over most of this book, rereading particularly beautiful passages. Yet the ending is so compelling and visceral that one rushes until the fever breaks, dazed and haunted by its power.”
—Chicago Tribune, “Editor’s Choice”

“A masterpiece . . . Maksik manages to accomplish in Marker something next to no one has managed to do, namely, to strip the world down to naked life, life in all its glory and all its agony and terror, and death . . . Maksik’s prose floats weightlessly and then falls like a fist on the table.”
—The Buenos Aires Review

“Assured, intent . . . Through a catalogue of sensations, Maksik charts the cruelty and the hope of Jacqueline’s new life, while slowly approaching the horrors of her past . . . Maksik’s world is reaching out to touch. The task he’s set for himself is to record the impression of that touch, be it caress or jab.”
—Guernica

“The starving body, as it turns to its own fat and tissue for energy, enters a state called ketosis; Maksik’s lean, affecting prose burns this way—stripped of any excess, entirely attuned to the prospect of survival, beautifying the simple things that sustain life.”
—The Atlantic

“Haunting and sensual, Maksik’s prose deftly intertwines the tenderness and torment of memory with the hard reality of searching for sustenance and shelter.”
—Harper’s

“Stark and essential . . . With A Marker to Measure Drift, Alexander Maksik’s deep belief proves warranted: he has succeeded.”
—The Millions

“A deeply invested character exploration of a young woman who is undergoing a transition to a life of alienation, whose memories are just beginning to operate with a newly installed consciousness of past events Glimmers with reflection and lyricism.”
—The Coffin Factory

“Beautifully written . . . Through an impressionistic stream of consciousness, Maksik slowly reveals Jacqueline’s ordeal . . . A novel that measures the ripple effect of trauma and violence.”
—The Daily Beast, “Hot Reads”

“Small events—a coffee, a gyro—take on monumental significance, and Maksik is deft and patient as he teases out Jacqueline’s recovery . . . In creating a well-drawn character so far removed from his own life, Maksik has written a novel that stands solidly on its own merits.”
—Portland Mercury

“Remarkable . . . Conjures the horror of war almost entirely without describing its events . . . As the novel unspools it becomes clear that the truth is far more complicated and heartbreaking than it first appears . . . Deeply compelling.”
—Kirkus

“Maksik has wonderful instincts for delivering just enough insight into Jacqueline’s character to keep us turning the pages. He manages to raise the stakes to the highest possible level without blinking . . . Marker is a book where the ‘big questions’ are stripped to their essential core: What is necessary to sustain life? The answers Maksik leads us to are touching, and the book ends on a hopeful note. Rating: 9/10”
—Chicago Center for Literature and Photography

“A story about a woman coping—a woman reconciling her newly manufactured life with her reality . . . Resonates on many levels: the impermanence of life, the perils of solitude, the futility of running from the past Explores where memory and madness collide.”
—Idaho Mountain Express

“Luminous . . . Maksik is both deft and lyrical, a master of tense—his shifts from past to present and back again are nearly invisible, so appropriate do they feel—and a sensualist, and it is impossible to read Marker with less than total attention . . . Maksik’s brilliance is evident in his ability to keep the novel’s stripped-down cast and plot so riveting.”
—Winnipeg Free Press

“Palpable and affecting . . . Maksik has infused his tale of suffering with the loveliness of his prose . . . The desperate rhythms of thought intended to hold deeper desperation at bay are on display throughout this beautiful book that plumbs the depths of misery both mental and physical.”
—The Gazette

“Thoughtful, often dreamy . . . A Marker to Measure Drift draws portraits of simple but honest kindness, offered in the form of conversation, a free meal, a ride across the island or a hand on a shoulder. In this way Maksik displays both realism and hopefulness about human nature without being unrealistic about either.”
—Washington Independent Review of Books

“Gorgeously written, tightly wound, with language as precise as cut glass, Alexander Maksik’s A Marker to Measure Drift is a tour de force. Maksik renders the soul of his heroine, a Liberian refugee, with stark honesty so that we understand both the brutality of what she has run from and the terror she experiences as she tries to build her life back. I was undone by this novel. I challenge anyone to read it and not come away profoundly changed.”
—Marisa Silver, author of Mary Coin and The God of War

“This novel is spellbinding. In its tenderness, grandeur and austerity, it reminds us that there is no country on earth as foreign, as unreachable, as the frantic soul of another human being.”
—Susanna Sonnenberg

“A Marker to Measure Drift is a haunting, haunted novel. Things get stripped down to essentials—food, water, where to sleep for the night, a state of solitary desperation brought on by the most profound kind of loss. Every line of this excellent novel rings true as Maksik leads us toward the catastrophe at the story’s core. This is one of those books that leaves you staring into space when you finish, dazed from the sheer power of what’s been said.” 
—Ben Fountain

“Arresting . . . Here is a human, detached from humanity, in pain and need. The world swirls around, the past lingers, but this human is at the center, small and yet deep. Maksik’s prose brilliantly delivers—I think he has fully realized what this story could be, and has told it in the best way possible. An amazing accomplishment.”
—Lydia Netzer, author of Shine Shine Shine

“A moving, deeply felt and lyrical novel about past and present.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“A vivid depiction of disillusionment, shock, and resilience . . . Sheds light on a setting great in both its beauty and violence . . . An exploration of terrible brutality and the effort it takes to survive.”
—Library Journal

“Readers will be rewarded by Maksik’s gorgeous and evocative prose.”
—Publishers Weekly

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And Blessed Are The Ones Who Care For Their Fellow Men!

THE LOVE SONG OF JONNY VALENTINE Teddy Wayne

THE LOVE SONG OF JONNY VALENTINE  Teddy Wayne 

Overview:

When Whiting Writers’ Award winner Teddy Wayne published his critically acclaimed debut, Kapitoil, it was hailed as “one of the best novels of [this] generation” by the Boston Globe and was shortlisted for a spate of national prizes.

Jonathan Franzen wrote in The Daily Beast that “no other writer, as far as I know, has invented such a funny and compelling voice and story for [this type of character.]” Now, in The Love Song of Jonny Valentine, Wayne turns his sharp wit, flawless narrative ventriloquism, and humane sensibility to our monstrous obsession with fame.

Megastar Jonny Valentine, eleven-year-old icon of bubblegum pop, knows that the fans don’t love him for who he is. The talented singer’s image, voice, and even hairdo have been relentlessly packaged—by his L.A. label and his hard-partying manager-mother, Jane—into bite-size pabulum. But within the marketing machine, somewhere, Jonny is still a vulnerable little boy, perplexed by his budding sexuality and his heartthrob status, dependent on Jane, and endlessly searching for his absent father in Internet fan sites, lonely emails, and the crowds of faceless fans.

Poignant, brilliant, and viciously funny, told through the eyes of one of the most unforgettable child narrators, this literary masterpiece explores with devastating insight and empathy the underbelly of success in 21st-century America. The Love Song of Jonny Valentine is a tour de force by a standout voice of his generation.

"It speaks well of both Jonny and his creator that the result is this good, a moving, entertaining novel that is both poignant and pointed — a sweet, sad skewering of the celebrity industry...his satirist's eye is impeccable...so limpidly does Wayne imitate the voice of a preteen celebrity, he risks making it look easy...to create out of that entitled adolescent voice a being of true longing and depth, and then to make him such a devastating weapon of cultural criticism — these are feats of unlikely virtuosity, like covering Jimi Hendrix on a ukulele...Embodying a character who might otherwise be easy to dismiss, Wayne has crafted a funny, affecting tour of our cultural wasteland...you’d have to be made of triple platinum not to ache for Jonny Valentine."
(Jess Walter New York Times Book Review (cover review and Editors' Choice))

"Sad-funny, sometimes cutting...more than a scabrous sendup of American celebrity culture; it’s also a poignant portrait of one young artist’s coming of age."
(Michiko Kakutani The New York Times)

"A fiery, sometimes funny...critique of the exploitation of children at the hands of the rapacious music industry." (London Review of Books)

"Switchblade-keen satirist Teddy Wayne. . .delves into the twisted world of celebrity culture with delicious, detailed insight. It's as if People magazine were written by Kurt Vonnegut, smart and fun and fanged... there are also great swaths of heart and pain and genuine compassion."
(Tampa Bay Times)

"Surprisingly moving...heartbreaking...A mix of pre-adolescent angst and industry cynicism that makes him sound like Holden Caulfield Jr. adrift in Access Hollywood hell." (Rolling Stone)

"Heartbreakingly convincing...Hate Bieber? Wayne's touching portrait might change your mind."
(People)

“Deft and delightful . . . touching (and unexpectedly suspenseful) . . . so frank and engaging . . . A sweeter, softer-edged satire of the pop-culture carnival.” (Wall Street Journal)

"'The Love Song of Jonny Valentine' is a fun, highly diverting read.…Wayne generates considerable sympathy for the 11-year-old kid trapped at the center of the churning entertainment machine….This is a portrait of the artist as a young brand.” (San Francisco Chronicle)

"It would be easy to simply satirize the life and times of an 11-year-old pop star. But while Wayne does riff on America's obsessions with youth, celebrity and weight, among other things, he chooses to take his hero seriously….If Justin Bieber provides the book's cultural context, "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" gives it its soul…. [An] entertaining novel about the pop-celebrity-Internet air we all breathe, even if we don't want to inhale."
(Cleveland Plain Dealer)

"The Love Song of Jonny Valentine” is a showstopper….The book’s greatest triumph — and there are many — is Jonny’s voice, which falls somewhere between bright-eyed kid and jaded industry veteran (of course, he is both)….In addition to an exquisite rendering of Jonny’s growing awareness, the novel provides other delights [and] plenty of genuinely affecting moments. As Jonny realizes he has the money and power of an island nation, he feels the disappointments of his life more keenly and asserts himself in ways that aren’t anywhere near family friendly; we discover he is a flawed child in addition to an exploited one and empathize with him because of it. In the end, “The Love Song of Jonny Valentine” is a serious book that is way more fun than the life of a child star." (Boston Globe)

"Heartbreaking and amusing...more than anything, Jonny reminded me of Jack, the 5-year-old captive narrator of Emma Donoghue's Room. Like Room, this novel takes a sordid tabloid situation and illuminates it with a child's voice so real you want to climb inside the book and rescue him."
(Newsday)

"Through Wayne’s assured prose and captivating storytelling, we see Jonny as one large cog in the entertainment machine—who, despite how talented he may be, knows he may soon be replaced by a younger model." (Oprah.com, Book of the Week)

"A buoyant, smart, searing portrait of our culture's obsession with young pop stars." (Entertainment Weekly)

"Depicting the inner life of a protagonist who is not yet a full-fledged adult is no small feat, but author Teddy Wayne pulls it off masterfully." (The Daily Beast)

"Masterfully executed...the real accomplishment is the unforgettable voice of Jonny. If this impressive novel, both entertaining and tragically insightful, were a song, it would have a Michael Jackson beat with Morrissey lyrics."
(Publishers Weekly (starred review))

“At once brilliantly funny and beautifully written…The Love Song of Jonny Valentine is a novel of many distinctions…Consistently engaging and lively.…Wayne never sacrifices the reader’s sympathies. Jonny is a victim of popular culture, and we wince for him throughout brilliantly awkward set-pieces: a choreographed “homecoming” where he completely fails to communicate with a former best friend, an ill-fated trip to a nightclub with his mischievous support act and an appearance on a Letterman-esque show that channels David Foster Wallace.…If there is any justice in the world, with The Love Song of Jonny Valentine, Wayne will have penned a chart-busting hit.” (New York Daily News)

“Harrowing, hilarious…It's less a coming-of-age story than a price-of-this-age story, where self-promotion is the equivalent of self-preservation. In The Love Song of Jonny Valentine Wayne manages to negotiate a character so original, so multitextured, and teetering so precariously between innocence and emptiness, the result is a stunning achievement in literary zeitgeist."
(Interview)

"The best—and only—tween-pop novel you'll ever read. The Love Song of Jonny Valentine, the second novel from rising star Teddy Wayne, depicts the world of prepackaged pop through the eyes of a precocious 11-year-old tween idol (think Justin Bieber by way of Holden Caulfield)." (Details)

"Wayne brilliantly narrates from the perspective of Jonny's tweenage prison...Reading about Jonny means rooting for him, even though there is a sense that he, like so many real stars who we will never know so well, is already long gone." (Boston Phoenix)

"Few novels with child narrators can truly appeal to adults in a complex way. Flannery O’Connor’s The Violent Bear It Away and, of course, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird are obvious exceptions, and we can add this novel to the list."
(BookReporter.com)

"Think an imagined life of a star like Bieber...but so much better; moving and hilarious and typical of Wayne.” (The Atlantic Wire)

"Provocative and bittersweet…Jonny is such an engaging, sympathetic character that his voice carries the novel...A very funny novel when it isn't so sad, and vice versa."
— Kirkus (starred review)

"Hilarious and heartbreaking...An original, poignant and captivating coming-of-age story...a breathtakingly fresh novel about the dark side of show business."
(BookPage Fiction Top Pick)

“The Love Song of Jonny Valentine takes us deep into the dark arts and even darker heart of mass-market celebrity, twenty-first-century version. In the near-pubescent hitmaker of the title, Teddy Wayne delivers a wild ride through the upper echelons of the entertainment machine as it ingests human beings at one end and spews out dollars at the other. Jonny’s like all the rest of us, he wants to love and be loved, and as this brilliant novel shows, that’s a dangerous way to be when you’re inside the machine.” (Ben Fountain, New York Times bestselling author of  Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk)

“I’d wanted to go slowly and read The Love Song of Jonny Valentine over the course of a week or two, but once Jonny’s voice got into my head, I was hooked, and kept picking it back up, and so I ended up on the last page, reading that final, amazing sentence, at like three in the morning. This novel is a serious accomplishment....America as we know it, with laughs on every page, but also a book that doesn’t take one cheap shot....And at the swirling core, you have an eleven-year-old boy trapped by his fame and trying to figure out how to move through the world, and who wants nothing more than to find his father. This is a book with a runaway narrative engine, tremendous ambitions, and an even bigger heart. I do not lie when I tell you: Teddy Wayne is as good a young writer as we have.” (Charles Bock, New York Times bestselling author of Beautiful Children)

“What is most searing about Teddy Wayne’s splendid new novel is not his trenchant social criticism, nor the itchy, unsettling way that he makes tragedy entertaining, but that in the bubble of celebrity which comprises little Jonny Valentine’s whole world, at times the only differences between the savvy, drug-taking, lonely adults and the savvy, drug-taking, lonely kid himself are his outsized talent, and their avarice plus wrinkles.”
(Helen Schulman, New York Times bestselling author of This Beautiful Life)

“The Love Song of Jonny Valentine is a novel of ferocious wit and surprising poignancy. Teddy Wayne has written a pitch-perfect anthem for our surreal American Dream, a power ballad for the twenty-first-century unhappy family, an epic ode to the fleeting glory of fame....Adored by his fans, enslaved by the music industry, Jonny Valentine navigates the high-stakes game of celebrity while secretly longing for the love of his missing dad. And we, in turn, long for him to hold on to his soulful spirit, his baby chub, his cri de coeur, his "major vulnerabilities." A deeply entertaining novel with humor and heart to spare.” (Amber Dermont, New York Times bestselling author of The Starboard Sea)

“In Jonny Valentine, Teddy Wayne has created a vivid and achingly authentic portrait of an adolescent prodigy trying to make sense of a world from which he’s been kept mostly separate. Wry, witty, and genuinely moving, this is a novel that delves into the private longings of a public figure, exposing the sometimes dark and often ridiculous inner workings of a life in show business. The Love Song of Jonny Valentine is absorbing and beautifully written—and also a ton of fun to read.”
(Aryn Kyle, New York Times bestselling author of The God of Animals and Boys and Girls Like You and Me)

"Laid out in a surprisingly poignant mix of cynicism and innocence, Wayne intertwines both Jonny and Jonathan's voices into a sublime plot, making it an unconventional coming-of-age story that digs beneath the glossy veneer of mainstream pop."
(The National (UAE))

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And Blessed Are The Ones Who Care For Their Fellow Men!

You Deserve Nothing Alexander Maksik

You Deserve Nothing  Alexander Maksik

Overview:

Set in Paris, at an international high school catering to the sons and daughters of wealthy families, You Deserve Nothing is a gripping story of power, idealism, and morality.

William Silver is a talented and charismatic young teacher whose unconventional methods raise eyebrows among his colleagues and superiors. His students, however, are devoted to him. His teaching of Camus, Faulkner, Sartre, Keats and other kindred souls breathe life into their sense of social justice and their capacities for philosophical and ethical thought. But unbeknownst to his adoring pupils, Silver proves incapable of living up to the ideals he encourages in others. Emotionally scarred by failures in his personal life and driven to distraction by the City of Light's overpowering carnality and beauty, Silver succumbs to a temptation that will change the course of his life. His fall will render him a criminal in the eyes of some, and all too human in the eyes of others.

In Maksik's stylish prose, Paris is sensual, dazzling and dangerously seductive. It serves as a fitting backdrop for a dramatic tale about the tension between desire and action, and about the complex relationship that exists between our public and private selves.

"A superb debut novel."
-The Sunday Times

"With writing that is reminiscent of James Salter's in its sensuality, Francine Prose's capacious inquiry into difficult moral questions and Martin Amis's loose-limbed evocation of the perils of youth."
-The Christian Science Monitor


"Maksik depicts [his story] fearlessly--and brilliantly, with graceful exactitude.
-The Daily Beast (One of the Best Debuts of the Fall)

"The book is just too damned good to put down."
-The Stranger


"Maksik, in his account of adolescent yearning and grown-up fallibility, does something like what Hemingway did in his non-debut memoir, "A Moveable Feast" - he vividly evokes a destination for generations of foreign seekers."
-San Francisco Chronicle


"A novel rivetingly plotted and beautifully written. . . [Maksik] writes about the moral ambiguity of Will's circumstances with dazzling clarity and impressive philosophical rigor."
-The New York Times


"One of the most engaged reads I've had in years."
(-Alice Sebold)

"Alexander Maksik deftly evokes the beauty and pathos of Paris, and the story of Will, Gilad and Marie-each compelled towards moral and sexual awakening- is at once dark and luminous. This is a book to be read all at once with a glass of wine in a café or a cup of tea while tucked safely in bed."
(-A.M. Homes)

"You Deserve Nothing is a powerful, absorbing novel about a charismatic expatriate teacher and the students whose lives he transforms, for better and worse. Alexander Maksik is an unusually gifted writer."
(-Tom Perrotta)

"You Deserve Nothing rings true from first page to last. Here is a writer who understands why the artful telling of a difficult story is a brave and important thing to do. Read this book."
(-John Burnham Schwartz)

"A provocative, constantly surprising, and original novel. This is a thrilling debut."
(-Susanna Moore)

"Maksik's superb novel takes on the most fundamental question-how are we supposed to live?-with a freshness and urgency that are nothing short of masterful. This is a gorgeous book, as honest and rich a depiction of life's contradictions as I've encountered in many years."
(-Ben Fountain)

"Alexander Maksik's first novel, You Deserve Nothing, is a thoroughly engaging, passionate, and challenging read that finely walks the line between morality and amorality. In a society, and at a time, when individual identity is so closely tied to collective narcissism, Maksik's novel asks what are the true sources of selfworth? And how shall we live?"
(-Tom Jenks, editor, Narrative magazine)

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And Blessed Are The Ones Who Care For Their Fellow Men!

RED SKY IN MORNING Paul Lynch

RED SKY IN MORNING  Paul Lynch

Overview:

A tense, thrilling debut novel that spans two continents, from "a writer to watch out for" (Colum McCann).

It's 1832 and Coll Coyle has killed the wrong man. The dead man's father is an expert tracker and ruthless killer with a single-minded focus on vengeance. The hunt leads from the windswept bogs of County Donegal, across the Atlantic to the choleric work camps of the Pennsylvania railroad, where both men will find their fates in the hardship and rough country of the fledgling United States.

Language and landscape combine powerfully in this tense exploration of life and death, parts of which are based on historical events. With lyrical prose balancing the stark realities of the hunter and the hunted, RED SKY IN MORNING is a visceral and meditative novel that marks the debut of a stunning new talent.

"A novel of great beauty and violence from Irish writer Lynch....Lynch's poetic prose is gorgeous. He lovingly crafts every sentence."
---Kirkus Reviews

"Rendered in startlingly beautiful prose, not unlike the themes and style of Cormac McCarthy....This is strong stuff by a promising young author."
---Mark Levine, Booklist

"If Dublin-based Lynch's taut, absorbing, acerbically lyrical prose weren't enough, there's the intense and revelatory plot....Get it for all smart readers."
---Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal

"Paul Lynch has a sensational gift for a sentence, inherited from the likes of Cormac McCarthy, Sebastian Barry, and Daniel Woodrell. He is a writer to watch out for, staking a bid for a territory all his own."
---Colum McCann, author of Let the Great World Spin

"This book makes the literary synapses spark and burn -- forged in his own new and wonderful language, Paul Lynch reaches to the root, branch and bole of things, and unfurls a signal masterpiece."
---Sebastian Barry, author of The Secret Scripture

"Paul Lynch takes a giant first step with his debut, Red Sky in Morning. It is classic storytelling, rough and haunted people and the times that made them, powerfully conjured, written in language that demands attention. Lynch is bardic, given to sly and inspired word selections, with his own sprung rhythms and angled, stark musicality."
---Daniel Woodrell, author of Winter's Bone and The Outlaw Album

"Paul Lynch's writing is full of dark invention and brutal beauty. A raw and audacious talent which grips Irish writing by the neck."
---Hugo Hamilton, author of The Speckled People

"A textured thriller straight from the torment of Ireland's 19th century. Paul Lynch delivers a raw ancient world that Dickens would have recognized, and Roberto Bolaño too."
---Peter Behrens, author of The Law of Dreams and The O'Briens

"A cracking debut novel. Paul Lynch's startling, evocative prose veers closer to poetry.... This novel is a wonderful achievement."
---Kristoffer Mullin, The Sunday Times

"A compulsive read.... A combination of the poetic and the vicious. It unabashedly uses a 21st-century sensibility to subvert the conventions of the 'historical' novel."
---Arminta Wallace, Irish Times

"Muscular and opulent... the novel is ripe with spookily vivid writing. A very stylishly written book that takes the Irish novel into quite a different genre."
---The Examiner

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And Blessed Are The Ones Who Care For Their Fellow Men!

THE MAID'S VERSION Daniel Woodrell

THE MAID'S VERSION  Daniel Woodrell 

Overview:

The American master's first novel since Winter's Bone (2006) tells of a deadly dance hall fire and its impact over several generations.

Alma DeGeer Dunahew, the mother of three young boys, works as the maid for a prominent citizen and his family in West Table, Missouri. Her husband is mostly absent, and, in 1929, her scandalous, beloved younger sister is one of the 42 killed in an explosion at the local dance hall. Who is to blame? Mobsters from St. Louis? The embittered local gypsies? The preacher who railed against the loose morals of the waltzing couples? Or could it have been a colossal accident?

Alma thinks she knows the answer-and that its roots lie in a dangerous love affair. Her dogged pursuit of justice makes her an outcast and causes a long-standing rift with her own son. By telling her story to her grandson, she finally gains some solace-and peace for her sister. He is advised to "Tell it. Go on and tell it"-tell the story of his family's struggles, suspicions, secrets, and triumphs.

"Daniel Woodrell is the American writer we increasingly look to for the latest urgent news on the American soul. The Maid's Version is a beautiful engine of a novel, whose cogs were not entirely made by human agency, one might hazard to say. As regards the level of reading pleasure, the highest. As regards the level of literary achievement, the highest."--Sebastian Barry

"The Maid's Version is stunning. Daniel Woodrell writes flowing, cataclysmic prose with the irresistible aura of fate about it."--Sam Shepard

"I'd gladly sign a petition to see Mr. Woodrell included on any roll call of America's finest living writers. He conveys a sense of the past with the stringent affection of Katherine Anne Porter; his turns at bedlam humor are worthy of Charles Portis; and his gorgeously tangled prose is all his own."--Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal

"Woodrell is, like every truly great novelist, a mythmaker with both eyes on the absolute....The Maid's Version is one more resplendent trophy on the shelf of an American master."--William Giraldi, The Daily Beast

"Compact and soulful....The Maid's Version's worth is also in its luminous prose. Woodrell's sentences bristle with finely tuned language and almost biblical rhythms of his characters' speech....Further proof, as if we needed it, that Woodrell is a writer to cherish."--Adam Woog, Seattle Times

"The Maid's Version shows one of America's best writers at the top of his game."--Kevin Nguyen, Grantland

"For readers new to Daniel Woodrell's work, The Maid's Version is a perfect introduction and an invitation to read more. It's a short book...but there are lifetimes captured here....Throughout this remarkable book, Woodrell is an unsentimental narrator of an era that is rendered both kinder and infinitely less forgiving than our own."--Ellah Allfrey, NPR Books

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And Blessed Are The Ones Who Care For Their Fellow Men!

Bridge of Scarlet Leaves Kristina McMorris

Bridge of Scarlet Leaves Kristina McMorris

Overview:

Los Angeles. 1941. Violinist Maddie Kern's life seemed destined to unfold with the predictable elegance of a Bach concerto. Then she fell in love with Lane Moritomo. Her brother's best friend, Lane is the handsome, ambitious son of Japanese immigrants. Maddie was prepared for disapproval from their families, but when Pearl Harbor is bombed the day after she and Lane elope, the full force of their decision becomes apparent. In the eyes of a fearful nation, Lane is no longer just an outsider, but an enemy.

When her husband is interned at a war relocation camp, Maddie follows, sacrificing her Juilliard ambitions. Behind barbed wire, tension simmers and the line between patriot and traitor blurs. As Maddie strives for the hard-won acceptance of her new family, Lane risks everything to prove his allegiance to America, at tremendous cost.

Skillfully capturing one of the most controversial episodes in recent American history, Kristina McMorris draws readers into a novel filled with triumphs and heartbreaking loss--an authentic, moving testament to love, forgiveness, and the enduring music of the human spirit.

"McMorris's second novel (after Letters from Home)... gracefully blossoms through swift prose and rich characters. This gripping story about two 'brothers' in arms and a young woman caught in between them hits all the right chords."
-- Publishers Weekly

"A sweeping yet intimate novel that will please both romantics and lovers of American history."
-- Kirkus Reviews

"A wonderfully poignant tale... this WWII novel has a refreshingly different point of view."
-- RT Book Reviews

"Rich in historical detail, peopled with well-developed characters, and spiced with tension and drama, Bridge of Scarlet Leaves is a novel to savor, and then to share with a friend."
-- The Historical Novels Review

"If you're looking for a great love story that will tug at your heartstrings, then look no further. REVIEWER'S TOP PICK."
-- Night Owl Reviews

"Highly recommended to all history buffs who enjoy epic stories and beautiful prose."
-- Historical Tapestry

"Readers of World War II fiction will devour [this] poignant, authentic story..."
-- Jenna Blum, international bestselling author of Those Who Save Us

"Impeccably researched and beautifully written...I highly recommend this book!"
-- Karen White, New York Times bestselling author of The Beach Trees

"An unputdownable love story...[McMorris'] attention to detail is meticulous, the East meets West clash between cultures--revelatory."
-- Lesley Kagen, New York Times bestselling author of Good Graces

"A beautiful, timeless love story...McMorris' words reach right of the page and grab at your heart."
-- Sarah Jio, New York Times bestselling author of Blackberry Winter

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And Blessed Are The Ones Who Care For Their Fellow Men!

CITY OF LOST DREAMS Magnus Flyte

CITY OF LOST DREAMS Magnus Flyte

Overview:

The exhilarating, genre-bending sequel to the sensational New York Times bestseller City of Dark Magic

“Set in a world where alchemy, magic, and science all work, [City of Lost Dreams is] another lively, amusing romantic mystery from the pseudonymous Flyte. . . . Sensual, witty, and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, set forth in sparkling prose, and inhabited by characters well-worth getting to know. Wunderbar!”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

In this action-packed sequel to City of Dark Magic, we find musicologist Sarah Weston in Vienna in search of a cure for her friend Pollina, who is now gravely ill and who may not have much time left. Meanwhile, Nicolas Pertusato, in London in search of an ancient alchemical cure for the girl, discovers an old enemy is one step ahead of him. In Prague, Prince Max tries to unravel the strange reappearance of a long dead saint while being pursued by a seductive red-headed historian with dark motives of her own.

In the city of Beethoven, Mozart, and Freud, Sarah becomes the target in a deadly web of intrigue that involves a scientist on the run, stolen art, seductive pastries, a few surprises from long-dead alchemists, a distractingly attractive horseman who’s more than a little bloodthirsty, and a trail of secrets and lies. But nothing will be more dangerous than the brilliant and vindictive villain who seeks to bend time itself. Sarah must travel deep into an ancient mystery to save the people she loves.

"Enchanting, strange, and fantastical! City of Lost Dreams is a magical mystery tour that picks you up and takes you where you’ve never been before but is exactly where you want to be. Sexy, suspenseful, historical—a mélange of originality and an absolute page-turner."
—M.J. Rose, international bestselling author of Seduction

“Set in a world where alchemy, magic, and science all work, [City of Lost Dreams is] another lively, amusing romantic mystery from the pseudonymous Flyte. . . . Sensual, witty, and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, set forth in sparkling prose, and inhabited by characters well-worth getting to know. Wunderbar!"
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Praise for City of Dark Magic by Magnus Flyte:

"This deliciously madcap novel has it all: murder in Prague, time travel, a misanthropic Beethoven, tantric sex, and a dwarf with attitude. I salute you, Magnus Flyte!”
—Conan O’Brian

“A comical, rollicking and sexy thriller.”
—Huffington Post

“An entertaining mix of magic, mystery and romance, it’s one of the most original novels released this year.”
—CNN.com

“Never fails to shimmer exotically, erotically, on the page.”
—Slate

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And Blessed Are The Ones Who Care For Their Fellow Men!

FIREWORKS OVER TOCCOA Jeffrey Stepakoff

FIREWORKS OVER TOCCOA Jeffrey Stepakoff

Overview:

As World War II comes to a close, a young woman finds her soul mate, while waiting for the return of her husband from the front lines.

Stepakoff, a screenwriter and producer (The Wonder Years, Dawson’s Creek) brings his considerable polish to this debut novel of star-crossed lovers. It is 1945, the boys are coming home and Toccoa, Ga., is throwing a celebration party. Lily Davis Woodward is expecting her husband back, a husband she married at 17, lived with for two weeks, and has only honey-colored memories of. A Coca-Cola executive that worked under her father, Paul Woodward is just the kind of man Lily was expected to marry: handsome, traditional, dependable. But Lily has an interior life no one suspects—beneath the Southern manners and frozen smile Lily is an artist and free spirit, unsuited to the straight-laced company life she’ll soon lead with Paul. Into the picture comes Jake Russo, an Italian-American, just back from the war, and in Toccoa to set up the fireworks display for the town’s celebration. Lily and Jake meet by chance, share a meal in the field Jake is placing his fireworks in and experience the kind of connection neither expected. For Jake, the attraction is simple; for Lily it is life-shattering: reject a house, husband and respectable future for true love with Jake. After a torrid night of sex in a kudzu-covered cabin (the lengthy, puffed-up description of which will set many a teenage girls aflutter), Lily returns to the home she is preparing for Paul, unsure of who she is. The entire story of Jake and Lily is framed as a flashback—octogenarian Lily is subtly warning her granddaughter Colleen against the path of least resistance: Colleen’s rigid fiancé. Who did Lily choose? Did fate intervene in unexpected ways? Although there are surprises, too much relies on a predictable sentimentality and the ho-hum adage that hovers above the novel: Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.

A formulaic romance, yet undoubtedly destined for big things.

“A luminous love story that readers won’t soon forget, Fireworks Over Toccoa transports you to another time and place. It is at once heartbreaking and triumphant—an affirmation of love in all its forms.”--NYTimes bestselling author, Emily Giffin

“Fireworks Over Toccoa pinches the heart, telling a poignant tale of love and loss, of making choices and letting go.  Lily and Jake's passion shimmers from the pages, enveloping the reader in their private kudzu-covered world.  With carefully-crafted characters, a lush and very real setting, this is a not-to-be missed book. Move over Nicholas Sparks!”--Karen White, award-winning author of The House on Tradd Street

“Fireworks Over Toccoa literally explodes with life.  Its insights about place and love versus duty are as sharp as an eagle’s eye.  I absolutely loved every character and hated for their story to end.  Kaboom!  A brilliant first effort from Jeffrey Stepakoff!  Congratulations!”--Dorothea Benton Frank, NY Times bestselling author of Return to Sullivans Island

"Fireworks Over Toccoa is the poignant recollection of a young woman's coming of age and finding love, set against the vivid tableau of small town America during the Second World War, Stepakoff skillfully crafts a remarkable tale of fate and chance, choice and consequences, rewarding readers with a mesmerizing experience."--Pam Jenoff, International bestselling author of The Kommandant's Girl and Almost Home

“Fireworks Over Toccoa is a terrific story--moving, whimsical and original, a real page-turner destined for the big screen.”—Joanne Harris, International Bestselling author of Chocolat

“An unexpected love affair of Lily Davis, a WW II bride, is brilliantly portrayed by Jeffrey Stepakoff. Filled with suspense and surprise, I couldn't put it down. As dazzling as the fireworks which brought this war-time couple together, their passionate love affair is spellbinding. I was mesmerized to the last page!”--Marjorie Hart, National Bestselling author of Summer at Tiffany

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And Blessed Are The Ones Who Care For Their Fellow Men!

Stella Bain Anita Shreve

Stella Bain Anita Shreve

Overview:

An epic story, set against the backdrop of World War I, from bestselling author Anita Shreve.

From bestselling author Anita Shreve: an epic story, set against the backdrop of World War I, of a woman searching for the secret of her identity.

When an American woman, Stella Bain, is found suffering from severe shell shock in an exclusive garden in London, surgeon August Bridge and his wife selflessly agree to take her in.

A gesture of goodwill turns into something more as Bridge quickly develops a clinical interest in his houseguest. Stella had been working as a nurse's aide near the front, but she can't remember anything prior to four months earlier when she was found wounded on a French battlefield.

In a narrative that takes us from England to America and back again, Shreve has created an engrossing and wrenching tale about love and the meaning of memory, and about loss and redemption in the wake of a war that devastated an entire generation.

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And Blessed Are The Ones Who Care For Their Fellow Men!

BLOOD & BEAUTY Sarah Dunant

BLOOD & BEAUTY Sarah Dunant

Overview:

The New York Times bestselling author of the acclaimed Italian Renaissance novels—The Birth of Venus, In the Company of the Courtesan, and Sacred Hearts—has an exceptional talent for breathing life into history. Now Sarah Dunant turns her discerning eye to one of the world’s most intriguing and infamous families—the Borgias—in an engrossing work of literary fiction.

By the end of the fifteenth century, the beauty and creativity of Italy is matched by its brutality and corruption, nowhere more than in Rome and inside the Church. When Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia buys his way into the papacy as Alexander VI, he is defined not just by his wealth or his passionate love for his illegitimate children, but by his blood: He is a Spanish Pope in a city run by Italians. If the Borgias are to triumph, this charismatic, consummate politician with a huge appetite for life, women, and power must use papacy and family—in particular, his eldest son, Cesare, and his daughter Lucrezia—in order to succeed.

Cesare, with a dazzlingly cold intelligence and an even colder soul, is his greatest—though increasingly unstable—weapon. Later immortalized in Machiavelli’s The Prince, he provides the energy and the muscle. Lucrezia, beloved by both men, is the prime dynastic tool. Twelve years old when the novel opens, hers is a journey through three marriages, and from childish innocence to painful experience, from pawn to political player.

Stripping away the myths around the Borgias, Blood & Beauty is a majestic novel that breathes life into this astonishing family and celebrates the raw power of history itself: compelling, complex and relentless.

“In Blood and Beauty, Dunant follows the path set by Hilary Mantel with Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies. Just as Mantel humanized and, to an extent, rehabilitated the brilliant, villainous Thomas Cromwell and the court of Henry VIII, Dunant transforms the blackhearted Borgias and the conniving courtiers and cardinals of Renaissance Europe into fully rounded characters, brimming with life and lust. . . . Dunant illuminates the darkened narrative of the Borgia record, reviving stained glass with fresh light, refreshing the brilliance of the gold and blue panes history has marred without dulling the blood-red that glows everywhere around them.”
—The New York Times Book Review

“[Dunant’s] depiction of passionate people obsessed by the idea of a dynasty that will outlive them is not only intelligent and restrained but also lit by an affecting streak of lyricism. . . . Like Hilary Mantel with her Cromwell trilogy, Dunant has scaled new heights by refashioning mythic figures according to contemporary literary taste. This intellectually satisfying historical saga, which offers blood and beauty certainly, but brains too, is surely the best thing she has done to date.”
—The Miami Herald

“Another achievement for Dunant is her ability to re-imagine history. Although the Borgias are often called the most notorious family in Italian Renaissance . . . Dunant manages to show different facets of their personalities. If history has left some blanks in this regard, Dunant fills them. The members of this close-knit family emerge as dynamic characters, flawed but sympathetic, filled with fear and longing, and believable.”
—The Seattle Times

“Dazzling . . . a triumph on an epic scale . . . filled with rich detail and page-turning drama.”
—BookPage

“A brilliant portrait of a family whose blood runs ‘thick with ambition and determination’ . . . The Machiavellian atmosphere—hedonism, lust, political intrigue—is magnetic. With so much drama, readers won’t want the era of Borgia rule to end.”
—People (four stars)

“British author Sarah Dunant is the reigning queen of the historical novel set in Renaissance Italy. . . . This novel will be most rewarding for those with a keen taste for history and a willingness to stick with a lengthy story with no real heroes but plenty of fascinating and really bad behavior.”
—Richmond Times-Dispatch

“Blood & Beauty breaks new ground, showcasing the redoubtable Borgias, a family that exerted outsized influence briefly but devastatingly over the handful of fifteenth and sixteenth century city-states that make up current-day Italy.”
—Lizzie Skurnick, All Things Considered, NPR

“Hugely enjoyable . . . an old-fashioned rollercoaster of a story . . . [Dunant] triumphs, like all good novelists . . . in a deft, shrewd, precise use of killer detail.”
—The Guardian (U.K.)

“[Dunant] is in her element. . . . She brings fifteenth-century Italian cities vividly alive. . . . [Blood & Beauty] is an intelligent and passionate book that will no doubt thrill Borgia-lovers.”
—The Sunday Times (U.K.)

“The big, bad Borgia dynasty undergoes modern reconsideration in [Sarah Dunant’s] epic new biofiction. . . . Dunant’s biggest and best work to date, this intelligently readable account of formative events and monster players has Hilary Mantel–era quality best-seller stamped all over it.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Hilary Mantel fans and historical fiction readers in general looking for another meaty novel won’t want to miss Dunant’s latest.”
—Library Journal

“For anyone obsessed with the Borgias, this tome is right up your alley—it follows the scandal-plagued family, as the patriarch Cardinal Rodrigo attempts to buy his way into the papacy. Not only does this story have family drama, illegitimate children, and a religious figure with an enormous taste for women, but it’s based on true events. . . . Everything was more fascinating in the olden days.”
—Refinery29

“What a marvelous feast of vices and desires Sarah Dunant gives us—lust and ambition, passion and power, destiny born and bought. The Borgias are arguably the most intriguing and ruthless family in all of history, and Dunant brings them ravishingly, bristlingly to life.”
—Paula McLain, author of The Paris Wife

“An astounding achievement, extensively researched and exquisitely written . . . The Borgias have never been so human, and so humanely portrayed.”
—Melanie Benjamin, author of The Aviator’s Wife

“A fascinating read full of vivid detail and human pathos . . . Dunant opens a window into the extraordinary machinations and skullduggery of the Borgias and provides us with a richness of description that beautifully locates them in their own time.”
—Amanda Foreman, author of A World on Fire

“An engrossing tale of beauty and corruption, Blood & Beauty is meticulously crafted, and utterly convincing: a work of a skilled historian and a masterful storyteller who makes the Borgias live and breathe.”
—Eva Stachniak, author of The Winter Palace: A Novel of Catherine the Great

“Brilliant and utterly bone-chilling, Blood & Beauty held me spellbound from beginning to end. This exquisite, seductive portrait is destined to become a classic.”
—Anne Fortier, author of Juliet

“A masterpiece of biographical fiction, and likely her best novel yet . . . With brilliant detail and flawless prose, she opens the doors to the Vatican of Pope Alexander VI (Rodrigo Borgia), his vibrant feuding children, and his sultry mistress. It’s a work I’m not likely to ever forget.”
—Sandra Gulland, author of The Josephine Bonaparte Trilogy

“Blood & Beauty is a wonderful novel, taking you deep into the world of Renaissance passion and the Renaissance papacy. Part of me was happily lost in the time travel, and part of me was repeatedly struck by how vividly ancient Rome met modern Rome, and how the city of history came to life.”
—Mary Beard, historian and author of The Fires of Vesuvius: Pompeii Lost and Found

ENJOYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!

And Blessed Are The Ones Who Care For Their Fellow Men!