National Book Award finalist Mary Gaitskill’s classic debut collection from the 1980s—powerful stories of dislocation, longing, and desireNow towering and inevitable in its influence on writing by and for young urbanites, Bad Behavior heralded Mary Gaitskill’s arrival on the literary scene and her establishment as one of the sharpest writing talents of her time, or any time: exquisitely funny and startlingly honest; bold and eye-opening on relationships, s...

Following her National Book Award–nominated Veronica, here is Mary Gaitskill’s most poignant and powerful work yet—the story of a Dominican girl, the Anglo woman who introduces her to riding, and the horse who changes everything for her.Velveteen Vargas is eleven years old, a Fresh Air Fund kid from Brooklyn. Her host family is a couple in upstate New York: Ginger, a failed artist and shakily recovered alcoholic, and her academic husband, Paul, who wonder what it will mean...

"In this collection commissioned by Amy Scholder, nine original essays explore the specific and personal impact of cultural icons." — Publishers WeeklyWhose poster hung on your wall as a teenager? Whose record did you wear out? Whose life story could you not resist? Fascination works in mysterious ways—it can be born out of inspiration, or repulsion, or both. In these daring essays, some of the most provocative writers of our time offer a private view on a...

A finalist for the National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award, here is an evocative novel about female friendship in the glittering 1980s.One of the New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century • One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 YearsAlison and Veronica meet amid the nocturnal glamour of 1980s New York: One is a young model stumbling away from the wreck of her career, the o...

This captivating novel shimmers with dark intensity and wicked wit. In a stunning synthesis of eroticism, rage, pathos, and humor, Gaitskill's "fine storyteller's pace and brilliant metaphors" (The New York Times Book Review) create a haunting and unforgettable journey into the dark side of contemporary life and the deepest recesses of the soul.

**A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR • A stunning synthesis of eroticism, rage, pathos, and humor, this evergreen debut novel, with its "fine storyteller's pace and brilliant metaphors" (New York Times Book Review) examines the lives of two women as they journey into the dark side of contemporary life and the deepest recesses of the soul"Darkly, erotically compelling."—USA Today**Originally published in 1991, this exploration of loneliness ...

**From a visionary explorer of the mutable, sometimes treacherous edge of gender relations comes an electrifying update to her #metoo story This Is Pleasure, in which the voices of the women accusers expand and proliferate, as do the consequences for the man they accuse; this special “flipbook” edition includes the two narratives back to back.“A tale for our time, if ever there was one.” —Katy Thompsett, Refinery29“Gaitskill writes with visceral power. . ....

Gathered and passed down over the centuries from India, Persia, and across the Arab world, the mesmerizing stories of One Thousand and One Nights tell of the real and the supernatural, love and marriage, power and punishment, wealth and poverty, and the endless trials and uncertainties of fate. They are related by the beautiful, wise, young Shahrazad, who gives herself up to murderous King Shahrayar. The king has vowed to deflower and then kill a virgin every night—but Shahrazad w...

A Vintage Shorts “Short Story Month” SelectionIt was the first autumn of the Iraq War, when Ella saw Dani again. “Today I’m Yours” is a story of seduction and layered memory, a love affair fifteen years past but not forgotten—from the author of the National Book Award nominated and National Book Critics Circle Award finalist Veronica.Mary Gaitskill is widely acclaimed as a caustically sharp observer of American culture high and low, of bodily temptations and sensua...

Starting with Bad Behavior in the 1980s, Mary Gaitskill has been writing about gender relations with searing, even prophetic honesty. In This Is Pleasure, she considers our present moment through the lens of a particular #MeToo incident.The effervescent, well-dressed Quin, a successful book editor and fixture on the New York arts scene, has been accused of repeated unforgivable transgressions toward women in his orbit. But are they unforgivable? And who has the ri...

Mary Gaitskill returns with a luminous new collection of stories—her first in more than ten years. In “College Town l980,” young people adrift in Ann Arbor debate the meaning of personal strength at the start of the Reagan era; in the urban fairy tale “Mirrorball,” a young man steals a girl’s soul during a one-night stand; in “The Little Boy,” a woman haunted by the death of her former husband is finally able to grieve through a mysterious encounter with a needy child. Each story delivers ...

A collection of startling and breathtaking stories about people struggling with the disparity between what they want and what they know.A New York Times Notable BookA man tells a story to a woman sitting beside him on a plane, little suspecting what it reveals about his capacity for cruelty and contempt. A callow runaway girl is stranded in a strange city with another woman’s fractiously needy children. An uncomprehending father helplessly lashes o...