An ambitious young musician captures the attention of a world-class virtuoso in this novel of love and disillusionment that "shimmers with magical talent" (Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times).At eighteen, Paul Porterfield's dream is to play the piano at the world's great concert halls, so it is with great pride that he takes a position turning pages for his idol, Richard Kennington, a former piano prodigy on the cusp of middle age. It is a rare opportunit...

Three "sly, self-knowing, and hilarious" novellas from the highly acclaimed author of The Lost Language of Cranes ( The New York Times).Here are three novellas of escape and exile, touching and funny and at times calculatedly outrageous. In "Saturn Street," a disaffected LA screenwriter delivers lunches to homebound AIDS patients, only to find himself falling in love with one of them. In "The Wooden Anniversary," Nathan and Celia—familiar character...

It is the summer of 1940, and Lisbon, Portugal, is the only neutral port left in Europe—a city filled with spies, crowned heads, and refugees of every nationality, tipping back absinthe to while away the time until their escape. Awaiting safe passage to New York on the SS Manhattan, two couples meet: Pete and Julia Winters, expatriate Americans fleeing their sedate life in Paris; and Edward and Iris Freleng, sophisticated, independently wealthy, bohemian, and beset by the social a...

Set against the rise of fascism in 1930s Europe, While England Sleeps tells the story of a love affair between Brian Botsford, an upper-class young English writer, and Edward Phelan, an idealistic employee of the London Underground and member of the Communist Party. Though far better educated than Edward, Brian is also far more callow, convinced that his homosexuality is something he will outgrow. Edward, on the other hand, possesses "an unproblematic capacity to accept" both Bria...

Set in the 1980s against the backdrop of a swiftly gentrifying Manhattan, The Lost Language of Cranes tells the story of twenty-five-year-old Philip Benjamin, who realizes he must come out to his parents after falling in love for the first time with a man. Philip's parents are facing their own problems: pressure from developers and the loss of their longtime home. But the real threat to the family is Philip's father's own struggle with his suppressed homosexuality, realized only i...

Based on the remarkable true story of G. H. Hardy and Srinivasa Ramanujan, and populated with such luminaries such as D. H. Lawrence, Bertrand Russell, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, The Indian Clerk takes this extraordinary slice of history and transforms it into an emotional and spellbinding story about the fragility of human connection and our need to find order in the world. A literary masterpiece, it appeared on four bestseller lists, including the Los Angeles Times, and r...

A bestseller in 1945, this book has been out of print for over thirty yearsLike Wescott’s extraordinary novella The Pilgrim Hawk (which Susan Sontag described in The New Yorker as belonging “among the treasures of 20th-century American literature”), Apartment in Athens concerns an unusual triangular relationship. In this story about a Greek couple in Nazi-occupied Athens who must share their living quarters with a German officer, Wescott ...

"A gorgeous-and sexy-evocation of lost love, youthful longing, and the way that time folds and expands many times during a life . . . Bright Monday is utterly delicious." -Lauren GroffThe story of a 1990s romance between two men rekindled decades later in Milan-from two-time PEN/Faulkner finalist David Leavitt, “a phenomenal and prescient writer” (Justin Torres).Adam is translating into English his Italian friend Valeria's new nove...

Denny is a secretary who has just begun an affair with her boss, while also maintaining a friendship with his wife. Invited to the family's house for Thanksgiving dinner, she enters into a chain of events that will change everyone's lives in ways that none can imagine. Hilarious, scorching, and full of surprises, The Body of Jonah Boyd is a tribute to the power of home, the lure of success, and, above all, the sisterhood of secretaries."The book, with its acerbic tone and t...

David Leavitt displays his masterful range, his deep emotional intelligence and wit in these nine stories, a cosmopolitan selection set variously over the past century, from fin de siècle London to early-60s Hollywood, from Florida to Rome. Here is a survey of human relationships, from the most intimate to the most unexpected, and human experience, veering from the light into the dark, as in the title story, where a man tries to make sense of his partner's murder, and in “Black Box,” about...

Nicholas is beautiful, wealthy and hopelessly vain. With his older brother in tow, he jets from one glamorous scene to another. Whether it's in Rome, Madrid, or Mexico, what matters to him most is the admiration of others. Then one day, not even forty and his beauty faded, his life comes to an early end. His brother is left to pick up the pieces and make sense of Nicholas' untimely demise. "I Look Divine" is a precisely told and moving tale about what lurks beneath the ripples of Narcissus...

A "skillful and literate" (New York Times Book Review) biography of the persecuted genius who helped create the modern computer.To solve one of the great mathematical problems of his day, Alan Turing proposed an imaginary computer. Then, attempting to break a Nazi code during World War II, he successfully designed and built one, thus ensuring the Allied victory. Turing became a champion of artificial intelligence, but his work was cut short. As an openly gay man at a time ...