In this brilliantly told short story collection, critically acclaimed author David Updike skillfully portrays the multi-faceted nature of love and of the heart. From a father's painful realization his son has discovered the dark heart of racism still beats, to a quiet love affair that needs an audience to bloom; from the bumbling of a professor who unwittingly falls for one of his students to the wistful memories of a bittersweet affair tinged in regret, Updike portrays the intricacies of ...

THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS' CHOICE • The arc of literary giant John Updike’s life emerges in these luminous daily letters to family, friends, editors, and lovers—a remarkable outpouring over six decades, from his earliest consciousness as a writer to his final days.As James Schiff writes in the introduction to this volume, of the writer who would eventually “express himself in written form as copiously and as elegantly as any American writer” b...

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • In this ambitiously multilayered novel from the bestselling, award-winning author of A Visit from the Goon Squad, a fashion model named Charlotte Swenson emerges from a car accident in her Illinois hometown with her face so badly shattered that it takes eighty titanium screws to reassemble it.She returns to New York still beautiful but oddly unrecognizable, a virtual stranger in the world she once effortlessly occupied.

The Pulitzer Prize–winning author's "astonishing" debut novel, about a son's struggle to find his own identity and integrity ( The New York Times).Michael Chabon, author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Moonglow, and The Yiddish Policeman's Union, is one of the most acclaimed talents in contemporary fiction. The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, published when Chabon was just twenty-five, is the beautifully crafted d...

"In addition to scaring the daylights out of us, The Diviner's Tale stands up for the offbeat and unconventional in human nature" ( The Boston Globe).Cassandra Brooks is a diviner, what used to be called a water-witch. Hired by a developer to dowse some land in upstate New York, she is walking a lonely forested valley one spring morning when she comes upon the shocking vision of a young girl hanged from a tree. When she returns with authorities to...

“Killing yourself at any age is a seriously tricky business. But when I was seven, the odds felt insurmountable.”As a young girl, Terri Cheney’s life looked perfect. Her family lived in a lovely house in a tranquil Los Angeles suburb where the geraniums never once failed to bloom. She was pretty and smart, an academic superstar and popular cheerleader whose father doted on her. But starting with her first suicide attempt at age seven, it was clear that her...

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...

**The #1 New York Times bestselling author of Ghost Story—and 8-time Bram Stoker Award winner—gathers 24 bone-chilling, nail-biting, frightfully imaginative stories that represent the best of contemporary horror writing.“Revelatory.... A remarkably consistent, frequently unsettling book.” —The Washington Post“[Straub] collects the best scary short stories out there.” —TimeDan Chaon “The Bees”Elizab...

A cop races against time to prevent his own death in this heart-pounding thriller from #1 New York Times bestselling author Dean Koontz.Harry Lyon is a rational man, a cop who refuses to let his job harden his soul. His partner urges him to surrender to the chaos of life. But Harry believes in order and reason. Then one fateful day, he's forced to shoot a man—and a homeless stranger with bloodshot eyes utteres the haunting words that challenge Harry Lyon’s...

**Blazingly intelligent, wickedly funny, and piercingly honest, a memoir that captures the perils and pleasures of girlhood, womanhood, and life itself.“One of my favorite books of the last few years.” —Cheryl Strayed“Sentence for sentence, a more pleasure-yielding midlife memoir is hard to think of.” —The Atlantic**At mid-life, Claire Dederer developed a sudden yearning for jailbreak. In this exuberant memoir, she reflects on two periods in her life uncann...

Shortlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize"A magnificent debut filled with characters so vivid, strange, and richly imagined, you emerge feeling changed." —Sarah Shun-lien BynumIn New York City, a girl called Lenora vanishes without a trace. Years earlier and miles upstate, Goldie, a wild, negligent mother, searches for a man to help raise her precocious son, Paul, who later discovers that the only way to save his soul is to run away. The S...

"This terrific and surprising collection of tales by a diverse group of writers lives up to Diaz's 'rah-rah' (his term) rallying cry for the form." — USA Today"If the novel is our culture's favored literary form, upon which we heap all our desiccated literary laurels, if the novel is, say our Jaime Lannister, then the short story is our very own Tyrion: the disdained little brother, the perennial underdog. But what an underdog," writes Junot Diaz in his int...