Front porches, family cars, playgrounds, swimming pools: from such familiar haunts of childhood, these stories look out on the world through young eyes and hearts. Wise beyond their years—or soon to be—Ruthie, Omar, J.J., and the other kids in these stories veer in and out of touching distance to hard lessons about trust, love, and mortality. However engaged or aloof, grownups are always nearby. Far-from-perfect emissaries to the realm of adulthood, they pose questions for children even as...

"You’ll see how beautiful it is in the morning—jungle all around us," says one of the characters in Anne Raeff’s story collection, referring to the way that the jungle that threatens can also provide solace. The jungle in these stories is both metaphorical and real, taking the reader from war-torn Europe to Bolivia and from suburban New Jersey to Vietnam. Raeff examines how war and violence, like the jungle, seep into our lives, even when we are no longer in danger and long after the war i...

Death, that ending of all endings, is the shared concern of these stories, which have been chosen from among the hundreds that have appeared in the prestigious Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction series.More than seventy volumes, which include approximately eight hundred stories, have won the Flannery O’Connor Award. This stunning trove of always engaging, often groundbreaking short fiction is the common source for this anthology on death–and for planned anthologies on such t...

When I was younger, I wished I had been born in a concentration camp like my mother, instead of in boring Englewood Hospital. I used to imagine all the prisoners crying mutely with joy while my grandmother lay swallowing her screams so the guards wouldnt hear. So writes Deborah Gelb, the teenage daughter of the title character, in her opening chapter. Deborahs voice is complemented by that of Ruth Mondschein Claras mother, who recounts her life story to Tommy, a patient at the AIDS hospice w...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Two million copies sold! Inspired by the life of a real World War II heroine, this remarkable debut novel reveals the power of unsung women to change history in their quest for love, freedom, and second chances.“Extremely moving and memorable . . . This impressive debut should appeal strongly to historical fiction readers and to book clubs that adored Kristin Hannah’s The Nightingale and Anthony Doerr’s All ...

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BYNPR • The Seattle Times • The Globe and Mail • Kirkus Reviews • Daily Mail • The Vancouver SunFrom the author of The Italian Teacher and The Imperfectionists comes a brilliant, intricately woven novel about a young woman who travels the world to make sense of her puzzling past.Look in the back of the book for a conversation between Tom Rachman and J. R. Moehringer

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST AND O: THE OPRAH MAGAZINE • Look for special features inside. Join the Random House Reader’s Circle for author chats and more.“My father’s wife died. My mother said we should drive down to his place and see what might be in it for us.”So begins this remarkable novel by Amy Bloom, whose critically acclaimed Away was called “...

**NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALISTNAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY MICHIKO KAKUTANI, THE NEW YORK TIMES • NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY TIMENAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY MORE THAN 45 PUBLICATIONS, INCLUDING The New York Times Book Review • The Washington Post • NPR • The New Yorker • San Francisco Chronicle • The Economist • The Atlantic • Ne...

From the international-bestselling author comes a “taut, entertaining archaeological murder-mystery-meets-spy-thriller” (Kirkus Reviews).When journalist Rivka Kleinberg is brutally murdered in a Jerusalem cathedral, it’s a complicated case for detective Arieh Ben-Roi. Kleinberg had racked up a wide array of enemies exposing corruption in the halls of power—from international corporations and the Russian mob to the Israeli government.Learning that K...

'The best short story writer in the world' Susan Hill'This book is a spectacular literary revelation' Sunday TimesThe collected stories of an award-winning, modern classic American writer who has been compared to Alice Munro, John Updike - and even Anton ChekhovTenderly, incisively, Edith Pearlman captured life on the page like no one else. Spanning forty years of writing, moving from tsarist Russia to the ...

A long-lost painting stolen by the Nazis turns up at a Boston pawnshop—and leads to a string of murders—in this "fast-paced and tightly written thriller" ( The Seattle Times).In April 1945, the Nazis, reeling and near defeat, frantically work to hide the huge store of art treasures that Hitler has looted from Europe. Truck convoys loaded with the cultural wealth of the Western world pour in an unending stream into the compound of the vast Altaussee salt mi...

The Watchmaker's Daughter tells the story of a child of two refugees: a watchmaker who saved lives within Dachau prison, and his wife, a gifted concert pianist about to make her debut when the Nazis seized power. In this memoir, Sonia Taitz is born into a world in which the Holocaust is discussed constantly by her insular concentration camp-surviving parents. This legacy, combined with Sonia's passion and intelligence, leads the author to forge an adventurous life in which she see...