This "sharp-edged comedic novel of a semi-hapless Italian lawyer" who finds himself employed by the mob was a finalist for Italy's prestigious Strega Prize ( Kirkus Reviews).Vincenzo Malinconico is a wildly unsuccessful lawyer who spends most of his time at the office trying to look busy. His wife has left him. His teenage children worry him to death. And he suffers from a chronic inability to control his sentence structure.When he is asked to fill...

A hapless Italian lawyer is wrapped up in the mock trial of a mafia boss in this "rollicking novel"—a "hilarious and touching" satire of the digital age ( Minneapolis Star-Tribune).A mild-mannered computer engineer has pulled off a seemingly impossible crime—kidnapping the Neapolitan mafia boss he believes is responsible for the death of his son. He plans to conduct an impromptu trial on live television during which he will list the various crimes of the a...

**This dazzling collection of four stories features characters bound together by their parallel moments of reckoning with their pasts—and proves the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Empire Falls is also a master of the short story.“Beautiful…. Will abruptly break your heart.” —The New York Times**The characters in these four expansive stories are a departure from the blue-collar denizens that populate so many of Richard Russo’s novels. In “Horseman,” a you...

Judith Viorst is known and loved by readers of all ages, for children’s books such as Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day; nonfiction titles, including the bestseller Necessary Losses; and her collections of humorous poetry in her "decade" series, which make perfect gifts for birthdays, Mother’s Day, graduation, Christmas, Chanukah, or at any time of year.Suddenly Sixty is a funny and touching book that speaks dire...

Have you ever wanted to lash out at someone but lacked the appropriate putdown? The Machiavellian's Guide to Insults takes a humorous approach to dealing with such annoying personalities as the drama queen, the wealth flaunter, the self-proclaimed brain, the temperamental twit, and the talkaholic. Recommended insults range from the subtle and seemingly unintended to the outright declaration of war. Both have a place in your arsenal.Had Machiavelli written a book on insults...

"[A] splendid and subtle memoir in essays" —The New York Times Book ReviewHaving lost eight friends in ten years, Cooley retreats to a tiny medieval village in Italy with her husband. There, in a rural paradise where bumblebees nest in the ancient cemetery and stray cats curl up on her bed, she examines a question both easily evaded and unavoidable: mortality. How do we grieve? How do we go on drinking our morning coffee, loving our life partners, stumblin...

From the New York Times–bestselling author of My Brilliant Friend, this novel of a deserted wife's descent into despair—and rage—is "a masterpiece" ( The Philadelphia Inquirer).One of the New York Times's 100 Best Books of the 21st CenturyThe Days of Abandonment is the gripping story of an Italian woman's experiences after being suddenly left by her husband after fifteen years of marriage. With two...

**A woman discovers her marriage is built on an illusion in this harrowing and ultimately inspiring memoir.“Be forewarned: You won’t sleep until you finish the last page.”—Caroline Leavitt, author of Cruel Beautiful World**One night. One email. Two realities...Before: Jen Waite has met the partner of her dreams. A handsome, loving man who becomes part of her family, evolving into her husband, her best friend, and the father of her infant d...

Antonio is a killer.He's beautiful, educated, a prodigy of a thief and as violent a man as ever came off the boat from Napoli.Theresa knows it, but that doesn't stop her from getting emotionally and physically entangled with him, and this is how she got it in her head that she can protect him.Every time she tries to protect him, she practically gets him killed, and the tighter he grips her, the more dangerous she becomes.It's almost as if pro...

In the vein of Lebowitz's acclaimed Netflix limited series, Pretend It's a City—The Fran Lebowitz Reader brings together two of the famed author's bestsellers, Metropolitan Life and Social Studies.In "elegant, finely honed prose" (The Washington Post Book World), Lebowitz limns the vicissitudes of contemporary urban life—its fads, trends, crazes, morals, and fashions. By turns ironic, facetious, deadpan,...

From personal loss to phantom diseases, The Empathy Exams is a bold and brilliant collection, winner of the Graywolf Press Nonfiction PrizeA Publishers Weekly Top Ten Essay Collection of Spring 2014Beginning with her experience as a medical actor who was paid to act out symptoms for medical students to diagnose, Leslie Jamison's visceral and revealing essays ask essential questions about our basic understanding of others: How shou...

Exquisitely and hypnotically written, like a bold and terrifying dream, The Kiss is breathtaking in its honesty and in the power and beauty of its creation.In this extraordinary memoir, one of the best young writers in America today transforms into a work of art the darkest passage imaginable in a young woman's life: an obsessive love affair between father and daughter that began when Kathryn Harrison, twenty years old, was reunited with a parent whose abs...