His fleeting fame as the drummer for a one-hit wonder rock band is nearly a decade behind him. His ex-wife is about to marry a terrific guy. And his Princeton-bound teenage daughter Casey has just confided in him that she’s pregnant—because Silver is the one she cares least about letting down.So when Silver learns that he requires emergency life-saving heart surgery, he makes the radical decision to refuse the operation, choosing instead to spend what time he has left to repair his relationship with Casey, become a better man, and live in the moment—even if that moment isn’t going to last very long. As his exasperated family looks on, Silver grapples with the ultimate question of whether or not his own life is worth saving.

    But when Sylvie dies, the ground shifts dangerously for the remaining three.They are Jude, a once-famous restaurateur; Wendy, an acclaimed public intellectual; and Adele, a renowned actress now mostly out of work. Struggling to recall exactly why they've remained close all these years, the grieving women gather at Sylvie's old beach house--not for festivities this time, but to clean it out before it is sold. Can they survive together without her?Without Sylvie to maintain the group's delicate equilibrium, frustrations build and painful memories press in. Fraying tempers, an elderly dog, unwelcome guests and too much wine collide in a storm that brings long-buried hurts to the surface--and threatens to sweep away their friendship for good.The Weekend explores growing old and growing up, and what happens when we're forced to uncover the lies we tell ourselves. Sharply observed and excruciatingly funny, this is a jewel of a book: a celebration of tenderness and friendship from an award-winning writer.

    This is the most complete and generous sampling of the first half of an indispensable American writer's career.

    Desperate to escape, the two teenagers embark on a perilous journey back to England to the safety of their grandparents.But there are eyes everywhere.Luke and Christine band together with fugitive Allied airmen, thinking they will keep them safe and help them on their treacherous journey.But their new partnership could be putting them in more danger than they realize. Especially when there are hostile forces at work determined to scupper any plans to get the teenagers and airmen safely back to England.With secret operations mounting against the enemy, there is one path which remains unguarded: a risky escape route via the canals.Luke and Christine take refuge on a canal barge and find themselves immersed in the complex Operation Kingfisher.Can two teenagers make it across occupied France in one piece? Or will betrayal put them and the lives of others at great risk?

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    In a deadpan, pseudo-scientific tone, the nameless narrator takes us on a tour of a bizarre village whose inhabitants lead such habitual, regulated lives that they resemble elements in a mathematical equation.

    Should D'Artagnan keep his promise and protect the headstrong and selfish King Louis or should he do what was right for France and put Philippe on the throne? But will Philippe really be a better King than Louis? Alexander Dumas' thrilling tale of one man's struggle with the conscience take us into 17th century France and examines the lives of people in power and those at their mercy

    Change is in the air and hope is running high. And for twenty-five-year-old, self-proclaimed cool man Michael Bishop, so is the alcohol and the bluster. Working a dead-end job proofing subtitles on third-rate videos, Michael has kept his future at bay through a stream of boozy nights or by blowing time in front of his Nintendo. That is, until he meets Ivy Chase, the smart, pretty pastor’s daughter whose innocent charm takes his breath away. But Ivy turns out to be much more than Michael bargained for, and in a moment that surprises even him, he makes the decision of his life.Smart, funny, poignant, and very, very timely, Last Call in the City of Bridges is a Bright Lights, Big City for the new millennium. With its memorable characters and unforgettable scenes, this insightful look into twenty-first-century America is a book you won’t want to put down.“Like the comic book heroes he obsesses over, Michael Bishop has an origin story, the story of the first wound that makes his powers necessary. In Last Call in the City of Bridges, Michael at last faces into that tragedy, resurfacing suddenly at the mid-point of his twenties, those years of snark and expectation spent proofreading DVD subtitles, drinking literature-themed cocktails, and pining over preacher’s daughters and college crushes. In this witty and charming debut, Salvatore Pane reminds us that while you can’t retcon your past, you can perhaps learn to live up to its responsibilities, by using your powers not necessarily to save the ones you love from loss, but to care for those left behind in its wake.”–Matt Bell, author of Cataclysm Baby“Quite obviously, Salvatore Pane’s mind has been dunked in video games, social media, comic books, the WebNet, and everything else our august literary authorities believe promote illiteracy. I’d like to hand the authorities Pane’s novel–a funny, moving, melancholy, sad, and immensely literate book about what being young and confused feels like these days–and tell them, ‘See? Things are going to be fine!’”-Tom Bissell, author of Extra Lives and Magic Hours“Last Call in the City of Bridges is Goodbye, Columbus 2.0, a poignant novel about looking for something real in a plastic world where Irony is Everything. This generational anthem is ultimately, despite all the 21st century detritus, an old-fashioned page turner, full of old verities and truths of the heart. Salvatore Pane’s voice is both new and necessary, one I know I’ll be reading for years to come.”–Cathy Day, author of The Circus in Winter and Comeback Season“Salvatore Pane is the acknowledged Hipster Prince of Pittsburgh, PA, which is the acknowledged Paris of Middle America. If his publishers had taken my advice they would have titled his groundbreaking first novel: A Hipster’s Guide to the Galaxy, the Book of Laughter and Longing. His very humorous novel is voice and character driven, a virtual page turner. Yet for all its humor, the novel has an underpinning of real humanity. I was laughing out loud while at the same time gritting my teeth in shared, profoundly recalled embarrassment.”-Chuck Kinder, author of Honeymooners and Last Mountain Dancer“Like his post po-mo Facebook generation, Michael Bishop, the manic narrator of Last Call in the City of Bridges, has reached the end of his irresponsible youth. Stuck and unsure, he looks back at those eight-bit Nintendo years with tender nostalgia while trying to feel his way forward. Like The Moviegoer, Salvatore Pane’s debut novel is a romantic ironist’s plea for authenticity in a fantastic age. It’s telling–and hilarious–that his hero’s model for male adulthood isn’t William Holden but Super Mario.”–Stewart O’Nan, author of The Odds: A Love Story and Snow Angels

    It is not a completed novel, however. According to Margerie Lowry, the author's widow, this published version is her "sorting out" of numerous drafts of chapters, paragraphs and even sentences that Lowry began to write in 1946.

    

    Their first encounter is in 1944 at theirworkplace, an office in Senate House, Bloomsbury, London, where Juneworks as a linguist doing “… translation work for a project involving theadaptation of treadle sewing machines to power generation” (p. 135)and Bernard, originally a Cambridge science graduate, has “… a deskjob peripherally connected with the intelligence services.” (p. 135).Two years later, the newly-weds sign up as members of the CommunistParty, leave their jobs and travel to the former battlefields of Europewith the intention of building a new Europe. During their honeymoonthey also spend some time in the south of France where June is(almost) attacked by two huge black dogs. She manages to drive themaway but is deeply frightened. She sees them as an encounter with evil.Nevertheless June really enjoys the countryside of this area and buys ahouse there. Unfortunately, hers andBernard's worldviews are too different to combine and they live moreand more often apart from each other. Their children grow up partly inEngland and partly in France. Whereas June leaves the CommunistParty after a few months, due to the difference between Communistideas and the way these ideas were put into practice, Bernard stays forapproximately 10 years. [...]

    Goodbye, Vitamin is the wry, beautifully observed story of a woman at a crossroads, as Ruth and her friends attempt to shore up her father's career; she and her mother obsess over the ambiguous health benefits - in the absence of a cure - of dried jellyfish supplements and vitamin pills; and they all try to forge a new relationship with the brilliant, childlike, irascible man her father has become.

    First US publication for the Scottish Spence.Neil McGraw is a lad in Glasgow, an only child, the son of a dour undertaker permanently embittered by his wife's death during childbirth. Whenever the boy misbehaves, he's locked in the basement among the coffins, so it's not surprising he asks every body: What happens when you die? Against his will, he finds himself learning the trade. This is less gloomy than it sounds. The story moves at a good clip as the resilient Neil experiments with drinking and dating.The crisis comes when his dad finds him and his girl making out in a coffin. Soon, it's Neil's turn to lock his old man, dead drunk, into the basement, before hightailing it to the London of the Swinging '60s. A friendly queer, Abe Morris, offers him a crash pad, no strings attached, where Neil finds drugs, straight sex, and Zen. The party ends when Abe, stoned, is killed in traffic and Spence abandons conventional narrative to send Neil hopscotching around the world before depositing him, 15 years later, beside the funeral pyres of the Ganges. Here, he gets very sick but is rescued by a vision in a sari: Lila, a Londoner, back home for her father's funeral. The two fall in love and marry, lickety-split, before Neil is summoned back to Glasgow. His father has died, leaving him the business, which Neil gives a hippie twist, producing brightly painted coffins in unusual shapes, with Lila a business partner.The mood is light and buoyant, but novelistic concerns (what makes Lila tick? why do the couple decide not to have kids?) are shelved in favor of a scrapbook of original last rites, seasoned with Eastern mysticism. There's an appealing freshness to Spence's writing; too bad he gives up on credible plotting and characterization.

    E. Rölvaag lyrically chronicles the experiences of Nils Vaag, a young Norwegian immigrant. Abandoning the life of a fisherman in Nordland, a region poor but full of mystical beauty, Nils emigrates to the New World in 1912. There he sweeps saloons, lives in a boardinghouse called "Babel" for the many languages used by its residents, and begins to find his way among the people of the city.The Boat of Longing was Rölvaag's favorite of all his books and the only one set in urban America. When it was first published in English in 1933, it received wide praise from American critics. This edition includes an introduction by Einar Haugen, professor emeritus of Scandinavian and Linguistics at Harvard University and author of a critical study of Rölvaag.

    . . remains a consummate artist, true to her vision of a work that is bleak, truthful, and lacking any overt sentimental overtures. Her eye, a poet's eye, misses nothing."---three candles". . . a touching odyssey of a girl poised between the emotional abyss and the reader's heart."---Minneapolis Star-Tribune"A sensitive, often disquieting book that rings true throughout. . . . It's the skill of an accomplished writer that we see Faina's extraordinary spirit, while simultaneously experiencing her pain and despair. The end result is an uplifting, even inspiring book without any of the sugarcoating often found in stories like this."---California Literary ReviewWhere No Gods Came is author Sheila O'Connor's compelling story of Faina McCoy, a young girl caught in a perilous scheme of elaborate lies created for her own harrowing system of survival. Enmeshed in a tangled family web, Faina is abruptly uprooted against her will from her father and finds herself half a continent away on the doorstep of a mother who abandoned her years before-but who can't live without Faina now. Alone, persecuted, and exploited, Faina must fend for herself as she searches for love and answers, navigating the streets of a strange city and forging bonds of feeling with liars and outlaws.