“A tour de force of erotic realism, a romantic cliff-hanger; an opaline vision of Americans in France. . . . A Sport and a Pastime succeeds as art must. It tells us about ourselves.” —The New York Times Book ReviewTwenty-year-old Yale dropout Phillip Dean is traveling Europe aimlessly in a borrowed car with little money, until stopping for a few days in a church-quiet town near Dijon, where he meets Anne-Marie Costallat, a young shop assistant. Sh...

A novel about a lonely mountain climber from the author of All That Is: "Beautifully composed . . . will remind readers of Camus and Saint-Exupéry" ( The Washington Post).Vernon Rand is a charismatic figure whose great love—whose life, in fact—is climbing. He lives alone in California, where he combats the drudgery of a roofing job with the thrill of climbing in the nearby mountain ranges. Sure of only his talent and nerve, Rand decides to test hi...

**A brilliant portrait of a marriage from the PEN/Faulkner Award-winner and author of A Sport and a Pastime, with an introduction by Richard Ford.“Light Years is a novel of almost holy radiance to me. It is great in every sense of the word: vast, and timeless, and enduring.”—Lauren Groff, bestselling author of Fates and Furies**“Remarkable. An unexpectedly moving ode to beautiful lives frayed by time.”—James Wolcott, Esquire

**NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A New York Times Book Review Notable Book • An NPR "Great Reads" Book • Here is PEN/Faulkner winner James Salter's dazzling, sometimes devastating portrait of love and ambition.“Shimmering. . . . Intoxicating. . . . Few can match Salter’s depictions of life’s physical pleasures, the sheer sensual delight of being in this world.”—San Francisco Chronicle**All That Is explores a life unfolding in a world on the brink of change...

“[A] well–edited collection . . . More than friends and less than lovers, Salter and Phelps were literary soul mates.” —Publishers WeeklyIt was James Salter’s third novel, A Sport and a Pastime—together with his film Three and a script he had written for Downhill Racer—that in 1969 prompted Robert Phelps to write a letter of admiration. Though the two writers didn’t know each other, their correspondence went on to span decades.

In Cassada, Salter captures the strange comradeship of loneliness, trust, and alienation among military men ready to sacrifice all in the name of duty and pride.The lives of officers in an Air Force squadron in occupied Europe encompass the contradictions of military experience and the men's response to a young newcomer, bright and ambitious, whose fate is to be an emblem of their own.After futile attempts at ordinary revision, Salter elected to be...

The classic novel of courage and rivalry—a fighter pilot whose dream of becoming an ace is tested by combat, his fellow airmen, and his own faltering confidence during the Korean WarCaptain Cleve Connell has already made a name for himself among pilots when he arrives in Korea during the war there to fly the newly operational F–86 fighters against the Soviet MIGs. His goal, like that of every fighter pilot, is to chalk up enough kills to become an ace.But t...

A former Air Force pilot who flew F–86 fighters in Korea, James Salter writes with matchless insight about the terror and exhilaration of the pilot's lifeA singular life often circles around a singular moment, an occasion when one's life in the world is defined forever and the emotional vocabulary set. For the extraordinary writer James Salter, this moment was contained in the fighter planes over Korea where, during his young manhood, he flew more than one hundred ...

**A spellbinding collection of stories about passion–by turns fiery and subdued, destructive and redemptive, alluring and devastating.“Life is a volatile mess, and no one portrays that mess better than James Salter. . . . All of the stories in Last Night are superb.”–The New York Times Book Review**In powerful stories, Salter portrays men and women in their most intimate moments. A book dealer faces the truth about his life–as it is and never will be again...

James Salter’s exalted place in American letters is based largely on the intense admiration of other writers, but his work resonates far beyond the realm of fellow craftsmen, addressing themes--youth, war, erotic love, marriage, life abroad, friendship--that speak to us all.Following the publication of his first novel, Salter left behind a military career of great promise to write full-time and--through decades of searching, exacting work--became one of American literature’s master...

New Yorker staff writer A.J. Liebling recalls his Parisian apprenticeship in the fine art of eating in this charming memoir, Between Meals: An Appetite for Paris."There would come a time when, if I had compared my life to a cake, the sojourns in Paris would have presented the chocolate filling. The intervening layers were plain sponge."In his nostalgic review of his Rabelaisian initiation into life's finer pleasures, Liebling celebr...

In this brilliant book of recollection, one of America's finest writers re-creates people, places, and events spanning some fifty years, bringing to life an entire era through one man's sensibility. Scenes of love and desire, friendship, ambition, life in foreign cities and New York, are unforgettably rendered here in the unique style for which James Salter is widely admired.Burning the Days captures a singular life, beginning with a Manhattan boyhood and then, sat...