For All the Obvious Reasons is Lynn Stegner’s superb collection of nine, remarkably distinct tales of passion, clear-eyed wisdom, and honesty honed to a cutting edge. These are stories the reader can’t shake: A woman living a marital shadow-life realizes that her long compensating heart has begun to ominously decompensate. An affluent New Yorker becomes a hoarder to escape a future he cannot bear to take up. A baby dies in a miasma of sibling resentments and from that, the secrets...

A tour de force work of fiction with interweaving themes of environmentalism, past trauma, and redemption. Here is a novel that explores the manner in which Clair and Mason take on guilt where none is warranted and its lasting impact on how they navigate their lives.Lynn Stegner’s acclaimed novels and story collections have drawn comparisons to the works of Margaret Atwood, Barbara Kingsolver, Alice Munro, and John Updike. Now in her new novel, The Half-Life of...

Lynn Stegner's acclaimed novels and story collections have drawn comparisons to the works of Margaret Atwood, Barbara Kingsolver, Alice Munro, and John Updike. Now in her new novel, The Half-Life of Guilt, Stegner tells the story of Clair Bugato and Mason Comstock. Together they journey to the world's largest saltworks in Baja California, where a proposed expansion threatens the California gray whale population, recently come back from the brink of extinction.In the midst ...

Wallace Stegner founded the acclaimed Stanford Writing Program-a program whose alumni include such literary luminaries as Larry McMurtry, Robert Stone, and Raymond Carver. Here Lynn Stegner brings together eight of Stegner's previously uncollected essays-including four never-before-published pieces -on writing fiction and teaching creative writing. In this unique collection he addresses every aspect of fiction writing-from the writer's vision to his or her audience, from the use of symboli...

What does it mean to be a westerner? With all the mythology that has grown up about the American West, is it even possible to describe "how it was, how it is, here, in the West—just that," in the words of Lynn Stegner? Starting with that challenge, Stegner and Russell Rowland invited several dozen members of the western literary tribe to write about living in the West and being a western writer in particular. West of 98 gathers sixty-six literary testimonies, in essays and poe...

The Girl with Ghost Eyes is a fun, fun read. Martial arts and Asian magic set in Old San Francisco make for a fresh take on urban fantasy, a wonderful story that kept me up late to finish.”-#1 New York Times bestselling author Patricia BriggsIt’s the end of the nineteenth century in San Francisco’s Chinatown, and ghost hunters from the Maoshan traditions of Daoism keep malevolent spiritual forces at bay. Li-lin, the daughter of a renowned ...

The New York Times–bestselling food writer delivers “a propulsively well-written trio of novellas . . . A richly layered book, full of surprises and pleasures” (Kate Christensen).In his three novellas, “In Short Measures,” “Strong Conspirators,” and “Sally Forth,” Michael Ruhlman delves deeply into the nuanced complexity of romantic and sexual love—and the inevitable evolution of the heart over the span of years and decades.Each novella asks questi...

The bestselling author of A Hundred Summers brings the Roaring Twenties brilliantly to life in this enchanting and compulsively readable tale of intrigue, romance, and scandal in New York Society, brimming with lush atmosphere, striking characters, and irresistible charm.As the freedom of the Jazz Age transforms New York City, the iridescent Mrs. Theresa Marshall of Fifth Avenue and Southampton, Long Island, has done the unthinkable: she’s fallen ...

From the acclaimed author of The Jungle : The first in a Pulitzer Prize–winning historical saga about the son of an American arms dealer during WWI.Lanning "Lanny" Budd spends his first thirteen years in Europe, at the center of his mother's glamorous circle of friends. In 1913, he enters a Swiss boarding school and befriends Rick, an English boy, and Kurt, a German. The three schoolmates are privileged, happy, and precoc...

Elegant, brutal, and profound—this magnificent debut captures the grit and glory of modern Hawai'i with breathtaking force and accuracy.In a stunning collection that announces the arrival of an incredible talent, Kristiana Kahakauwila travels the islands of Hawai'i, making the fabled place her own. Exploring the deep tensions between local and tourist, tradition and expectation, façade and authentic self, This Is Paradise provides an unfor...

The Pulitzer Prize–winning novel of an American in Germany fighting against the rise of Nazism, from the New York Times– bestselling author of World's End.In the wake of the 1929 stock market crash, Lanny Budd's financial acumen and his marriage into great wealth enable him to continue the lifestyle he has always enjoyed. But the devastation the collapse has wrought on ordinary citizens has only...

Since Temple Grandin's life story was told in the 15 x Emmy-nominated film Temple Grandin, and since her heartwarming speech at the award ceremony, she has become one of the world's most well-known members of its community.In this fascinating biography, Annette Wood delves deep into Grandin's life from childhood to adulthood. Wood tells of the trials and tribulations of the icon: What difficulties Grandin struggled with and how she's become a hero for the autistic communit...