Estranged from his wife and child for 30 years following an affair with one of his patients, a Jewish psychoanalyst begins a journey toward redemption which leads him to Los Angeles in search of a reconciliation with his son.

    Life for these women is trying: some of them are married to alcoholics, some are victims of abuse; one is old and near death, another is still a child but has the experience of an adult; all are struggling to survive. First published in 1982, it was made into the film Stanley & Iris by MGM in 1989, starring Robert DeNiro and Jane FondaBlow Your House Down, Barker's second novel, also portrays the lives of women in industrial England--but these women are prostitutes, living in a northern England city that is stalked by a vicious, Jack the Ripper-style serial killer who is singling out women with nowhere else to go.

    That's the prologue. MVP is Marcus's life story from conception to his act of incredible violence. Raised an only child -- the son of a difficult and demanding father -- Gilbert Marcus, a basketball player with extraordinary skill, is expected to be the greatest. His life is one of both excessive privilege and immutable obligation. He becomes a monster. James Boice is a startling and exciting new voice in fiction, and MVP is his ambitious and fascinating debut.

    She strikes up an affair with an older Russian �migr� novelist met on the subway and moves into his apartment. But her allusions to a frighteningly eccentric mother and tyrannical father suggest a somberness at the center of her otherwise flippant and sardonic demeanor. Restless, she journeys from literary New York to rural Maine then across the US and into Mexico, trailed everywhere she goes by a string of murders. As the ritualistic killings begin to pile up, Katherine comforts and inspires herself by meditating on cannibalism in literature, art and history in subjects as diverse as Donner, Dante's Count Ugolino, and Gericault's The Raft of the Medusa. Slowly Katherine realizes that at the center of the mysterious deaths lies a bloody truth-something is making itself known. As the story races towards its frightening conclusion, Katherine, and the reader, close in on the true reason for her fascination with aberrant, violent behavior.This is a novel of ideas, a shocking and enlightening modern Gothic and a brilliantly subtle commentary on 21st century consumerism and western culture's obsession with new frontiers. Told in highly intelligent prose, A Carnivore's Inquiry is a sly, unsettling exploration of the questionable appetites that lurk beneath the veneer of civilization.

    Her husband Ruben is a handsome philanderer who has a knack for creating phony lawsuits. Their precocious daughter Devorah, tells–and often imagines–the richly involving story of their lives. No one expects the devoted Chenia to fall under the spell of a lover of her own, but the Arnows' lives unfold in many surprises. In tart and seductive storytelling, Swimming Toward the Ocean follows husbands and wives and children through often shifting and misguided connections, illuminating the timeless patterns of immigrant life, and the search for love and a place in a new world.

    Bethesda Barnet is an artist and a teacher. Her village life with an invalid mother is ordered and calm until the sudden vision of a man's face imprints itself on her mind's eye -- and she becomes a woman obsessed. She paints fragmented images of Mathew Pearson, secretly and relentlessly. And then, on the stillest day, in an extreme moment, she performs an act so bold that it shatters lives. Daring to play God, she falls from grace and is sacrificed on the twin altars of convention and vengeance. "The Stillest Day" draws the reader into the darkest corner of a passionate psyche.

    He silently shares the family home with his sister Daze, who is nearly blinded by bitterness, obsessed with her mother's reputation as a loose, lustful woman. Since his angry teenage years as a scholarship student at a posh, segregated school, Ned's life has been marred by a violence that erupts loudly and quickly disappears, leaving him filled with secrets and regret. When one last hope for deliverance emerges, however, both brother and sister are forced to come to terms with their heritage.

    Henry Porter's summer begins when his daughter Nicole-whom he hasn't seen in five years-shows up on his doorstep. Days later his girlfriend, Elizabeth, announces that she is pregnant. That Henry is speechless at these two events throws into sharp relief his emotional landscape, and this novel charts that landscape's exact contours. Anyone who has ever wondered what a man is saying when he isn't talking will find at least a large part of the answer here. Robert Bausch deciphers with perfect economy and unstinting honesty the code embodied in this man's (and a great many men's) words and actions, and discovers there the world of family legacies, love, and abuse. A Hole in the Earth brilliantly draws the webs that attract us to and repel us from our families, as well as the enduring strength that they can provide.

    Frances Ramos is a voluptuous prostitute who flaunts her wealth and is held in high esteem by the local street gangs. Gloria Hernandez is a dutiful young wife and mother--until her husband's act of betrayal sparks her growing estrangement and fury. Marta Ortega, a prophetic old woman connected viscerally with the forces/elements of nature, nods as past and present mingle and quietly charts the cross-pollenization of her turbulent neighborhood, and of human destiny.

    Ripley, Strangers on a Train, A Suspension of Mercy, and others) Highsmith is an all-too-frequently forgotten master of the short story. These stories in this volume examine the dark soul of humanity in a deceptively simple voice that draws you in and won't let go. The sheer beauty of the streamlined prose disguises a complexity of character and situation that is the mark of a true master.Highsmith's ability to create believable characters with very little exposition, but rather through their behavior and dialog, is incredible. None of the stories in this volume is particularly long, but you're drawn in and seduced by the power of the prose. Whether it's a cat driven to commit murder to protect his mistress ("Ming's Biggest Prey"), a rat exacting a horrible revenge on a family that maimed him ("The Bravest Rat in Venice"), or a house party interrupted by something grisly ("Something the Cat Dragged In"), these stories are impossible to put down.A great example of Highsmith's artistry is "Mermaids on the Golf Course," about a presidential adviser who took an assassin's bullet to protect the president. This seemingly heroic man is slowly exposed throughout the story as something completely different, mainly through his dialogue and the reactions of his family to him. Highsmith deftly exposes the many layers in his character, shows that the surface we see often disguises the truth below, and asks the question, "How well do we know anyone?"Likewise, "The Female Novelist" is so consumed with herself and her craft that she destroys herself. "The Hand" is a chilling twist on the age-old custom of asking for someone's hand in marriage. Highsmith's stories linger on after they are read, and show that for true horror, you don't need the supernatural; you merely need to write about people.

    Here we meet Roxanne, the tomboy who consistently chooses men who are not her equal; the loving Marta, whose husband keeps a separate house where he retreats when married life overwhelms him; and Bebe, a married mother of two teenagers who leaves it all behind when her lover comes on a motorcycle to claim her. With painfully keen perception, Nelson creates stories that linger in the mind long after they are read, and which create a unique view of relations between the sexes in the small towns and big cities of America.

    Lew McCreary's brilliant, chilling novel enters the mind of a harmless drifter whose idea of intimacy is murder. Vann Siegert is by all appearances an ordinary man. With only his truck and a few possessions, he has moved cross-country to start a new life, taking a temporary holiday job at the post office in a small Massachusetts town. But when the urge calls him, Vann takes to the road-armed with a poisoned flask of liquor and a smile that strangers trust. Woe to those who accept his comfort-junkies, hitchhikers, a high school football star, Vann gathers his victims like moths to a flame. A harrowing journey inside the mind of a disquietingly compassionate psychopath, The Minus Man is an unforgettable literary experience and is sure to be one of the year's most talked-about movies.

    From their origin in the short story "Ralph the Duck," Busch's characters Jack and Fanny evolve, embraced by the sorrow that divides their marriage and reverberates through the tale of Girls. The suffering they've endured since the death of their daughter haunts Jack's vision. His world is pockmarked by missing children, his daily responsibilities as a college campus security guard laced with anguish. Jack is haunted by the vulnerability of young girls - "I wondered if girls had been kidnapped, murdered, preyed upon for years. Maybe it was the times, and therefore everything human and otherwise from when we began might not be at fault." When 14-year-old Janice Tanner disappears, his obsession is channeled into a passionate search for her abductor. His empathy for Janice's bereaved parents is profound, but the investigation is undertaken not simply that he might recover the missing girl, but in hope of obtaining salvation for his own family's pain.In the dank cold of upstate New York, masterful moments of confrontation rise from a silent din of impending danger. There's no doubt Busch's place among the masters of narrative is secured with his memorable characterization of Jack and this vivid tale of human fragility.

    Annie seeks refuge from an upended love affair with her producer, Owen Pettybone, by sequestering herself at home with her old dog Detour, surrounded by a lush Florida tangelo grove. There, she spends her days furiously sanding down the house’s every veneer in a vain attempt at erasing the painful memory of the love she lost. Soon, however, this quiet, small town existence—far from recording studios, ardent fans, and affairs of the heart—comes crashing down around her. A violent murder connected to her brother Calder threatens to tear her family apart and forces Annie to shore up her loyalties and uproot profound disappointments from her distant past. The evidence stacks against Calder, compounded by his lifelong affliction with Tourette syndrome that causes some in the community to cast aspersions on the soundness of his mind.As the circumstances converge to challenge lifetime ties and forge unexpected new bonds, this soulful, stirring novel shifts its narrative from an imperiled and ever-changing present, where each hour brings an unforeseen and unwelcome piece of news, to the poignant childhood days of first allegiances and life-altering loss. Like a fine and forlorn love ballad, the gifted, conflicted Annie lulls the reader into a journey through love and loss that mines the mysterious, and, at times, paradoxical rhythms of the human heart. As vibrant as Annie’s treasured tangelo grove, Carry Yourself Back to Me cultivates an always tender, sometimes tart, portrait of one family’s regret and redemption. Inflected with melancholy and redeemed by melody, this deeply affecting novel is certain to strike a resonant chord with music fans and lovers of fine fiction everywhere.

    Even though mismatched, they fell in love. And after some hesitations they decided, finally, to marry-only to look up and find their world caving in around them. Sexy, vivacious Elisa, of the miniskirts and tiny T-shirts, still in art school and just coming off an affair with a temper-driven fellow artist, initiated things. She came on to cool, quiet Gabe who wore his hair in a graying ponytail and kept a low profile. A good bit older than Elisa-more than twenty years older, in fact-he found himself buoyed by her youth and her brashness. To her great surprise, Elisa craved Gabe's watchfulness and solicitude.That Gabe's past included a successful drug dealing business bothered her not at all. And certainly he was unconcerned that Elisa's more current past included a lot of casual sex. Neither of them ever expected to have to answer for what had been so easy for Gabe and so enjoyable for Elisa. But truth be known, the one obvious thing they had in common was the burden their pasts suddenly put onto their future.Joan Silber has written a love story for the turn of the twenty-first century, one that takes into rich account the styles and pressures of contemporary urban life. But more than that, she has created two characters who throb with real-life personality, passion, and courage.