Robert Boswell's first novel since Century's Son showcases once again his "dazzling technical skill, intelligence and moral seriousness" (The New York Times Book Review)*A Library Journal "Best Indie Fiction of 2013" *At age thirty-three, James Candler seems to be well on the road to success. He's in line for a big promotion at Onyx Springs, the treatment facility where he's a therapist. He has a fiancée, a sizable house, and a Por...

Nine long stories and essays, originally published in the acclaimed Ploughshares Solos digital series, create this fourth annual print collection.Visit a small island off the coast of Maine where the reappearance of an old friend might just push a painter suffering from artist’s block over the edge. Meet a newly divorced lecturer of critical theory who, in an effort to spice up his life, gets more than he bargained for. Tag along with a teenage figure-skating star as she returns to...

There's a specter floating above the pews at afternoon mass. Father Montgovery has no idea why the ghostly presence has followed him around for years, but, when a longtime parishioner asks for help in getting his drug-addicted daughter clean, Father Montgovery must do his best to ignore the phantom and shift his focus to the physical, and sometimes harrowing, world. Written by esteemed author and former Ploughshares guest editor Robert Boswell, "The Soul in Paraphrase" explores sin, redemp...

A rigorous examination of the workings of fiction by the novelist Robert Boswell, "one of America's finest writers" (Tom Perrotta)Robert Boswell has been writing, reading, and teaching literature for more than twenty years. In this sparkling collection of essays, he brings this vast experience and a keen critical eye to bear on craft issues facing literary writers. Examples from masters such as Leo Tolstoy, Flannery O'Connor, and Alice Munro illustrate this engagin...

Heyday of the Insensitive Bastards is an exhilarating collection, as brash as it is wise, by Robert Boswell one of our great storytellersSet mainly in small, gritty American cities, each of these stories is a world unto itself. A man's obsessive visits to a fortuneteller leave him nearly homeless. Time collapses as two marriages slowly dissolve. And in the searing title story, a young man recounts the summer he spent in a mountain town, squatting in a borrowed hous...

Publisher's summaryBrand-new stories by: Tom Abrahams, Robert Boswell, Sarah Cortez, Anton DiSclafani, Stephanie Jaye Evans, Wanjiku Wa Ngugi, Adrienne Perry, Pia Pico, Reyes Ramirez, Icess Fernandez Rojas, Sehba Sarwar, Leslie Contreras Schwartz, Larry Watts, and Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton.Critic reviews"Brooklyn Noir came first in 2004, and now, 15 years later, Houston Noir--14 stories of intrigue, betrayal and death set from Tanglewood to Third Ward penned by cu...

Elizabeth Strout “animates the ordinary with an astonishing force,” wrote The New Yorker on the publication of her Pulitzer Prize–winning Olive Kitteridge. The San Francisco Chronicle praised Strout’s “magnificent gift for humanizing characters.” Now the acclaimed author returns with a stunning novel as powerful and moving as any work in contemporary literature.Haunted by the freak accident that killed their father when they were children, Jim and Bob Bur...

SHORTLISTED FOR THE ROMANTIC NOVELISTS' ASSOCIATION HISTORICAL ROMANTIC NOVEL AWARDA gripping and poignant love story set in a remote village in the Scottish Highlands at the end of the Second World War, from the bestselling author of Water for Elephants.'The only fault I can find with this book is that I've already finished it' Jodi PicoultAfter disgracing themselves at a high s...

The instant New York Times bestseller The Washington Post calls a “stunning…superbly rendered” novel, and Entertainment Weekly describes as “a gripping family saga, maybe the best…since The Corrections.”As an Irish immigrant in Queens in 1941, Eileen has dreamed of more in her life—but when she and her family seem to be moving closer to that dream, devastation hits and they must learn how to not only hold on to t...

The perfect gift for all Jane Austen fans!THE SUNDAY TIMES TOP TEN BESTSELLERA RICHARD AND JUDY BOOKCLUB PICK'Utterly engrossing' GuardianIt is wash-day for the housemaids at Longbourn House, and Sarah's hands are chapped and raw. Domestic life below stairs, ruled with a tender heart and an iron will by Mrs Hill the housekeeper, is about to be disturbed by the arrival of a ne...

Us: a brilliant, bittersweet novel about love and family, husbands and wives, parents and children | Longlisted for the Booker Prize'Perfect'INDEPENDENT'I honestly can't imagine loving a novel much more'SUNDAY TIMES'I loved this book. Funny, sad, tender: for anyone who wants to know what happens after the Happy Ever After'JOJO MOYESDouglas and Connie - scient...

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Glass Castle and Hang the Moon**, Jeannette Walls’s gripping coming-of-age novel about two sisters “transports us with her powerful storytelling...contemplates the extraordinary bravery needed to confront real-life demons in a world where the hardest thing to do may be to not run away” (O, T...