His is a first-rate talent and we are lucky that he has started so young to write so well. Here is a fine novel."From its dazzling opening page, which announced the appearance of a stylist of the first rank, to its moving close, this brief novel has charmed and captivated millions of readers since its publication twenty-five years ago and its subsequent translation into fifteen languages. On the triumphant publication of Kate Vaiden, his most recent novel, in 1986, there was almost no review that -- praising the new book to the skies -- didn't also mention in glowing terms the reviewer's fond recollection of the marvelous first novel, the troubled love story of Rosacoke Mustian and Wesley Beavers and its beautifully evoked vision of rural North Carolina. It is a pleasure now to restore to print the clothbound edition of this truly enduring work as a companion volume to his brilliant book of essays, A Common Room, published simultaneously.

    Not being happy all the time makes them stressed out of their tights. Carol practises uninhibited sex which ends with her panty liner stuck to the bottom of someone's shoe. Donnie, after a mystery bite in a third world country, thinks he's incubating a nest of spiders up his bum. Daphne gets fat. She makes soup all the time and wonders if Woolworth's sell a hose pipe to fit a Vauxhall Vectra. Pierce is a poet; a fat balding womaniser who's only steady relationship is with a cup at the sperm bank. He's the only one not on anti-depressants, and he's the hero.

    Was it an accident, a murder, a suicide? The circumstances of her death were never resolved, but O’Hara seized upon the tragedy to imagine the woman’s down-and-out life in New York City in the early 1930s. “O’Hara understood better than any other American writer how class can both reveal and shape character,” Fran Lebowitz writes in her Introduction. With brash honesty and a flair for the unconventional, BUtterfield 8 lays bare the unspoken and often shocking truths that lurked beneath the surface of a society still reeling from the effects of the Great Depression. The result is a masterpiece of American fiction.

    published by Knopf, New York.

    "Roth is better than he's ever been before.... The prose is electric." (The Atlantic)Gil Gamesh is the only pitcher who ever tried to kill the umpire, and John Baal, The Babe Ruth of the Big House, never hit a home run sober. But you've never heard of them -- or of the Ruppert Mundys, the only homeless big-league ball team in American history -- because of the communist plot and the capitalist scandal that expunged the entire Patriot League from baseball memory.

    Almost immediately he sets about beguiling the three women and five teenage girls stranded in this outpost of Southern gentility, eliciting their love and fear, pity and infatuation, and pitting them against one another in a bid for his freedom. But as the women are revealed for what they really are, a sense of ominous foreboding closes in on the soldier, and the question becomes: Just who is the beguiled?

    In the aftermath of a devastating loss, Cal and Jenny Horigan's marriage is unraveling. Both are plagued by guilt, unable to seek comfort from one another. Burdened by remorse, they begin to lose sight of the love that once anchored them-together with their sense of right and wrong.As the Horigans try different ways to deal with their pain, a new acquaintance seems to offer the support they desperately need-though at times they are unsure whether his guidance is leading them back to each other or further apart...

    The unusual bond between a world-famous children's author and his assistant sets the stage for a richly plotted novel of friendship and love, artistic ambition, and the power of an unexpected legacy.When the revered children's author Mort Lear dies accidentally at the Connecticut home he shares with Tomasina Daulair, his trusted assistant, she is stunned to be left the house and all its contents, as well as being named his literary executor. Though not quite his daughter or his wife, Tommy was nearly everything to the increasingly reclusive Lear, whom she knew for over forty years since meeting him as a child in a city playground where Lear was making sketches for Colorquake, a book that would become an instant classic. Overwhelmed by the responsibility for Lear's bequest, she must face the demands of all those affected by the sudden loss, including the lonely, outraged museum curator to whom Lear once promised his artistic estate; the beguiling British actor recently cast to play Lear in a movie; and her own estranged brother. She must also face the demons of Morty's painful past the subject of that movie and a future that will no longer include him. A visit from the actor leads to revelations and confrontations that challenge much of what Tommy believed she knew about her boss's life and work and, ultimately, about her own."

    There is no cover charge, the drinks are free, and rules do not exist within the walls of The Skin Show. However, once you’ve entered, you’ll never leave, for what exists underneath each club is something of fairytales. Danny Raab was drawn into The Skin Show's inescapable clutch, and he never returned. Now, Andy Raab is in the midst of a desperate search for his brother. Accompanied by Karen, Danny’s probation officer, they will infiltrate The Skin Show’s living nightmares of debauchery, only to learn they have been on the guest list all along.

    In the aftermath of one tragic afternoon, they are all forced to look at themselves and face up to the observation that the truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.Crippled by lupus at twenty-five, celebrated author Flannery O'Connor was forced to leave New York City and return home to Andalusia, her family farm in Milledgeville, Georgia. Years later, as Flannery is finishing a novel and tending to her menagerie of peacocks, her mother drags her to the wedding of a family friend. Cookie Himmel embodies every facet of Southern womanhood that Flannery lacks: she is revered for her beauty and grace; she is at the helm of every ladies' organization in town; and she has returned from her time in Manhattan with a rich fiancé, Melvin Whiteson. Melvin has come to Milledgeville to begin a new chapter in his life, but it is not until he meets Flannery that he starts to take a good hard look at the choices he has made. Despite the limitations of her disease, Flannery seems to be more alive than other people, and Melvin is drawn to her like a moth to a candle flame. Melvin is not the only person in Milledgeville who starts to feel that life is passing him by. Lona Waters, the dutiful wife of a local policeman, is hired by Cookie to help create a perfect home. As Lona spends her days sewing curtains, she is given an opportunity to remember what it feels like to be truly alive, and she seizes it with both hands. Heartbreakingly beautiful and inescapably human, these ordinary and extraordinary people chart their own courses through life. In the aftermath of one tragic afternoon, they are all forced to look at themselves and face up to Flannery's observation that "the truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it."

    Ghias Beg isn’t traveling light; he has with him a pregnant wife and three small children. When his family stops at Qandahar—which is today in modern-day Afghanistan, at that time was on the outer fringe of the Mughal Empire—his wife gives birth to a baby girl named Mehrunnisa. Thirty-four years later, this winter child will become an Emperor’s wife and the most powerful woman in that Mughal dynasty. Mehrunnisa is The Twentieth Wife of Emperor Jahangir, Akbar’s son, a woman so beloved of her husband that he grants her most of the powers of sovereignty. She signs on imperial documents called farmans and mints coins in her name and truly comes into power during the sixteen years of her marriage to Jahangir in The Feast of Roses . Mehrunnisa’s niece (her brother’s daughter and Ghias’ granddaughter) marries one of Jahangir’s sons, Prince Khurram who becomes Emperor Shah Jahan after his father’s death. When this niece dies in childbirth in June of 1631, Shah Jahan builds the Taj Mahal in her memory. But it is Mehrunnisa’s grand-niece (and Ghias’ great-granddaughter) Princess Jahanara who takes center stage in the third novel of the trilogy, Shadow Princess . She’s seventeen years old when her mother dies and her father, in his grief, leans upon her to the extent that she’s never allowed to marry. Throughout her life, Jahanara has to pacify warring brothers who each want the throne after their father, and engages in a rivalry with a sister, Roshanara—in supporting differing brothers politically, and in falling in love with the same noble at court, Najabat Khan. Powerful in her father’s harem, immensely rich with half her mother’s estate bestowed upon her and all of her mother’s yearly income, Jahanara still fails to turn the course of India’s history and has to find love with Najabat Khan in unconventional ways.

    In a moment of weakness, the bartender—a lone wolf named Caesar Stiles with a chip on his shoulder and a Sicilian family curse hanging over him—agrees. What follows is a stylish literary mystery set in Brooklyn on the dawn of gentrification.While Caesar is initially trying to earn an honest living at the neighborhood watering hole, his world quickly unravels. In addition to being haunted by his past, including a brother who is intent on settling an old family score, Caesar is being hunted down by a mysterious nemesis known as The Orange Man. Adding to this combustible mix, Caesar is a white man living in a deep-rooted African American community with decidedly mixed feelings about his presence. In the course of his search for the French girl's missing brother, Caesar tumbles headlong into the shadowy depths of his newly adopted neighborhood, where he ultimately uncovers some of its most sinister secrets.Taking place over the course of a single week, Outerborough Blues is a tightly paced and gritty urban noir saturated with the rough and tumble atmosphere of early 1990s Brooklyn.Andrew Cotto has written for numerous publications, including The New York Times, Men's Journal, Salon.com, Teachers & Writers magazine and The Good Men Project. He has an MFA in creative writing from The New School. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

    It's been even longer since any of his students have shown promise. Enter Angela Argo, a pierced, tattooed student with a rare talent for writing. Angela is just the thing Swenson needs. And, better yet, she wants his help. But, as we all know, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. . . .Deliciously risqué, Blue Angel is a withering take on today's academic mores and a scathing tale that vividly shows what can happen when academic politics collides with political correctness.

    A lonely child growing up in the woods of northern Michigan in the 1950s, Milo gives little thought to his talent, and not until his acceptance at U.C. Berkeley does he realize the extent, and the risks, of his singular gifts. California in the seventies is an initiation and a seduction, opening Milo’s eyes to the allure of both ambition and indulgence. The research he begins there will make him a legend; the woman, and the rival, he meets there will haunt him always. For Milo’s brilliance is inextricably linked to a dark side that ultimately threatens to unravel his work, his son and daughter, and his life.

    Thought to be buried somewhere within the Mato Grosso region of the Amazon rainforest, the lure of the vanished riches has long proven deadly to treasure-seekers who brave the forbidding wilderness and mysterious creatures in search of it. Disgraced historian Dr. Hunter Winslow, fired from a lucrative professorship for stealing rare documents in order to gain a competitive edge over his colleagues, thinks the key to Manuscript 512 lies not in its words, but in its paper itself. The only problem is that to confirm his hypothesis means to destroy the document, something the Brazil National Library in Rio de Janeiro will never allow. But old habits die hard, and Hunter knows his way around a Special Collections room. After a brazen theft that triggers an international manhunt, the rogue historian is able to reveal the document’s secrets in a way no one else can, or ever will be able to again—by using its physical properties to reveal missing sections that had supposedly been irreversibly damaged. Armed with this new information, Hunter embarks on an expedition to the deepest Amazon to put to rest the mystery of the lost city once and for all. But while Hunter is looking for the fabled treasure, the long arm of the law is looking for him. Will they catch up to him before he can locate the treasure of a thousand lifetimes, or will he become as lost as the city he seeks?