In Light Boxes the inhabitants of one closely-knit town are experiencing perpetual February. It turns out that a god-like spirit who lives in the sky, named February, is punishing the town for flying, and bans flight of all kind, including hot air balloons and even children's kites. It's February who makes the sun nothing but a faint memory, who blankets the ground with snow, who freezes the rivers and the lakes. As endless February continues, children go missing and more and more adults become nearly catatonic with depression. But others find the strength to fight back, waging war on February.

    Since the First Crusade, there has always been a George Mills, who--despite his best efforts--is unable to improve his position in life or that of his descendants. Instead, all the George Millses are forced to accept their lot as true blue-collar workers, serving important personages in a series of odd jobs ranging from horse talker in a salt mine to working as a furniture mover in contemporary St. Louis. But the latest in the long line of George Millses may also be the last, as he obsesses about his family's history and determines that he will be the one to break this doomed cycle of servitude.

    Sera, a prostitute, and Ben, an alcoholic, stumble together and discover in each other a respite from their unforgiving lives. A testimony to the raw talent of its young author, Leaving Las Vegas is a compelling story of unconditional love between two disenfranchised and lost souls—an overlooked American classic.

    But, as she comes to learn, liberation and happiness are not necessarily the same thing. A literary sensation when first published in 1973, Fear of Flying established Erica Jong as one of her generation’s foremost voices on sex and feminism. Nearly four decades later, the novel has lost none of its insight, verve, or jaw-dropping wit.

    Then, on a day like any other, Kino emerges from the sea with a pearl as large as a sea gull’s egg, as “perfect as the moon.” With the pearl comes hope, the promise of comfort and of security…A story of classic simplicity, based on a Mexican folk tale, The Pearl explores the secrets of man’s nature, greed, the darkest depths of evil, and the luminous possibilities of love.

    From the author of the bestselling Snow Falling on Cedars comes a compelling new novel about youth and idealism, adulthood and its compromises, and two powerfully different visions of what it means to live a good life.

    Ishmael Reed's sixth novel depicts a zany, bizarre, and all-too believable future where mankind's fate depends upon St. Nicholas and a Risto rasta dwarf named Black Peter, who together wreak mischievous havoc on Wall Street and in the Oval Office. This offbeat, on-target social critique makes marvelous fun of everything that is American, from commercialism to Congress, Santa Claus to religions cults.

    Maryna, who has renounced her career, is accompanied by her small son and husband; in her entourage is a rising young writer who is in love with her. The novel portrays a West that is still largely empty, where white settlers confront native Californians and Asian coolies. The image of America, and of California-as fantasy, as escape, as radical simplification-constantly meets a more complex reality. The commune fails and most of the migrants go home, but Maryna stays and triumphs on the American stage.In America is a big, juicy, surprising book-about a woman's search for self-transformation, about the fate of idealism, about the world of the theater-that will captivate its readers from the first page. It is Sontag's most delicious, most brilliant achievement.

    Sylvia Plath masterfully draws the reader into Esther's breakdown with such intensity that Esther's insanity becomes completely real and even rational, as probable and accessible an experience as going to the movies. Such deep penetration into the dark and harrowing corners of the psyche is an extraordinary accomplishment and has made The Bell Jar a haunting American classic.

     In 1950, Constantine Stassos, a Greek immigrant laborer, marries Mary Cuccio, an Italian-American girl, and together they produce three children: Susan, an ambitious beauty, Billy, a brilliant homosexual, and Zoe, a wild child. Over the years, a web of tangled longings, love, inadequacies and unfulfilled dreams unfolds as Mary and Constantine's marriage fails and Susan, Billy, and Zoe leave to make families of their own. Zoe raises a child with the help of a transvestite, Billy makes a life with another man, and Susan raises a son conceived in secret, each extending the meaning of family and love. With the power of a Greek tragedy, the story builds to a heartbreaking crescendo, allowing a glimpse into contemporary life which will echo in one's heart for years to come.

    Glaciers follows Isabel through a day in her life in which work with damaged books in the basement of a library, unrequited love for the former soldier who fixes her computer, and dreams of the perfect vintage dress move over a backdrop of deteriorating urban architecture and the imminent loss of the glaciers she knew as a young girl in Alaska.Glaciers unfolds internally, the action shaped by Isabel’s sense of history, memory, and place, recalling the work of writers such as Jean Rhys, Marguerite Duras, and Virginia Woolf. For Isabel, the fleeting moments of one day can reveal an entire life. While she contemplates loss and the intricate fissures it creates in our lives, she accumulates the stories—the remnants—of those around her and she begins to tell her own story.

    Considered at the time to be immature, it was a failure. Since that time it has come to be considered one of the earliest American realistic novels. Maggie is the story of a pretty child of the Bowery which is written with the same intensity and vivid scenes of his masterpiece -- The Red Badge of Courage. In her short life, Maggie "blossomed in a mud puddle", was driven to prostitution, and died by her own hand while still a teenager.Crane, who worked as a free lance reporter, was in many ways addicted to the low life of the cities. He died at the age of 29.

    The novel's protagonist, living at a time that might be the present in a city that might be anywhere, has decided for reasons of mental hygiene to keep a detailed record of his thoughts, words, and deeds. Very quickly, however, the project begins to absorb his entire life, as the increasingly meticulous recording of experience threatens to supplant experience itself. To make matters worse, what he records offers its own grist for worry: his devoted wife suddenly grows secretive, his equally devoted mistress turns evasive, his frustratingly independent son might or might not be visiting that same mistress behind his back, and his closest friend begins acting in mysterious ways (and is it just his imagination, or is this friend having clandestine meetings with his wife?). His ever more convoluted perceptions breed a dark muddle of suspicion, leading to a climax that is at once intensely funny and excruciatingly poignant.

    Until one day a letter appears, summoning him to the frozen woods of Vermont. There, Ricky is inducted into a band of paranormal investigators comprised of former addicts and petty criminals, all of whom had at some point in their wasted lives heard The Voice: a mysterious murmur on the wind, a disembodied shout, or a whisper in an empty room that may or may not be from God.Evoking the disorienting wonder of writers like Haruki Murakami and Kevin Brockmeier, but driven by Victor LaValle’s perfectly pitched comic sensibility, Big Machine is a mind-rattling literary adventure about sex, race, and the eternal struggle between faith and doubt.

    But there is a dark and vacuous hole in her heart, and it isn’t just the loss of her parents, or the way her Wall Street boyfriend treats her, or her sadomasochistic relationship with her best friend, Reva. It’s the year 2000 in a city aglitter with wealth and possibility; what could be so terribly wrong?My Year of Rest and Relaxation is a powerful answer to that question. Through the story of a year spent under the influence of a truly mad combination of drugs designed to heal our heroine from her alienation from this world, Moshfegh shows us how reasonable, even necessary, alienation can be. Both tender and blackly funny, merciless and compassionate, it is a showcase for the gifts of one of our major writers working at the height of her powers.