A family displaced by World War II finds a new home in Central America, only to watch their fortunes rise and fall on the back of a revolution—from the California Book Award silver medalist and Simpson Literary Prize finalist.Fleeing the ravages of wartime Vienna, Pepa and her family find safe harbor in the small town of El Castillo, on the banks of the San Juan River in Nicaragua. There her parents seek to eradicate yellow fever while Pepa falls under the spell of...

"Every word here feels set down with care and fierce conscience. The resulting narrative glows." —San Francisco ChronicleA novel of rich details and landscapes, Winter Kept Us Warm follows three friends through six decades—from postwar Berlin to Manhattan, 1960s Los Angeles to contemporary Morocco. A twisting narrative reveals their mysteries in fragments, examining their long–ago love triangle and how it changed their lives forever.

Ulli is a young woman, half English and half German, squatting in a dismal, empty Berlin apartment one year after the war has ended. She’s scraping together a living as an interpreter between Berlin-based GIs and the wide-eyed local girls eager to meet them. One night Ulli meets two American soldiers: Leo, handsome and ambitious and desperate to escape his small-town upbringing, and intellectual, asthmatic Isaac, whose refugee parents had fled Russia and then Paris for New York.

Front porches, family cars, playgrounds, swimming pools: from such familiar haunts of childhood, these stories look out on the world through young eyes and hearts. Wise beyond their years—or soon to be—Ruthie, Omar, J.J., and the other kids in these stories veer in and out of touching distance to hard lessons about trust, love, and mortality. However engaged or aloof, grownups are always nearby. Far-from-perfect emissaries to the realm of adulthood, they pose questions for children even as...

"You’ll see how beautiful it is in the morning—jungle all around us," says one of the characters in Anne Raeff’s story collection, referring to the way that the jungle that threatens can also provide solace. The jungle in these stories is both metaphorical and real, taking the reader from war-torn Europe to Bolivia and from suburban New Jersey to Vietnam. Raeff examines how war and violence, like the jungle, seep into our lives, even when we are no longer in danger and long after the war i...

Death, that ending of all endings, is the shared concern of these stories, which have been chosen from among the hundreds that have appeared in the prestigious Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction series.More than seventy volumes, which include approximately eight hundred stories, have won the Flannery O’Connor Award. This stunning trove of always engaging, often groundbreaking short fiction is the common source for this anthology on death–and for planned anthologies on such t...

When I was younger, I wished I had been born in a concentration camp like my mother, instead of in boring Englewood Hospital. I used to imagine all the prisoners crying mutely with joy while my grandmother lay swallowing her screams so the guards wouldnt hear. So writes Deborah Gelb, the teenage daughter of the title character, in her opening chapter. Deborahs voice is complemented by that of Ruth Mondschein Claras mother, who recounts her life story to Tommy, a patient at the AIDS hospice w...

Fleeing the ravages of wartime Vienna, Pepa and her family find safe harbor in the small town of El Castillo, on the banks of the San Juan River in Nicaragua. There, her parents seek to eradicate yellow fever while Pepa falls under the spell of the jungle and the town’s eccentric inhabitants. But Pepa’s life—including her relationship with local boy Guillermo—comes to a halt when her family abruptly moves to New York, leaving the young girl disoriented and heartbroken. As the years pass, P...

In this gripping novel of small-town scandal and sizzling passion, New York Times bestselling author Nora Roberts tells the story of a renowned artistwhoconfronts a mystery from her past—and finds that her family secrets have not been laid to rest.Famed sculptor Clare Kimball has commanded the attention of the New York art world, but troubling memories from childhood have drawn her home to Maryland, to the town where she grew up and where her father died s...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Two million copies sold! Inspired by the life of a real World War II heroine, this remarkable debut novel reveals the power of unsung women to change history in their quest for love, freedom, and second chances.“Extremely moving and memorable . . . This impressive debut should appeal strongly to historical fiction readers and to book clubs that adored Kristin Hannah’s The Nightingale and Anthony Doerr’s All ...

The passionate love story that led to The Bronze Horseman.They gave up everything to be together, but love was just the beginning …Italian immigrant Gina, independent, compassionate and strong, desperately wants a family. Boston blue-blood Harry, idealistic and political, wants to create a better world. Bound together by tormented passion, they rail, rage, and break each other’s hearts, only to come face to face with a stark final choice that will forever determine their des...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST AND O: THE OPRAH MAGAZINE • Look for special features inside. Join the Random House Reader’s Circle for author chats and more.“My father’s wife died. My mother said we should drive down to his place and see what might be in it for us.”So begins this remarkable novel by Amy Bloom, whose critically acclaimed Away was called “...