A collection of stories written in duet.Eight highly original stories, each woven from the joint inspiration of two amazing writers.Sixteen celebrated authors respond, play, twist and develop their story in turn. Without the certainty of being in full control, Duets brings a new dimension to the drama of reading and writing.

Hung-over and grief-stricken, a man contemplated suicide at the edge of a cliff, until he is unexpectedly distracted by the sight of a woman emerging from the water below...A group of art students protesting the demolition of a housing block decide to turn its destruction into a creative act...Waiting in her car for the rain to pass after her mother's funeral, a woman nurses her child and reflects on a world outside that remains headless of her sorrow...The stories ...

**A Washington Post “Notable Work of Fiction” of the Year“A captivatingly strange masterpiece.” —Miranda Seymour, Financial TimesIn a grand English country house in 1899, an aspiring art forger must unravel whether the man claiming to be her long-lost cousin is an impostor.**Brought to her uncle’s decaying Oxfordshire estate when she was a child, Grace has grown up on the periphery of a once-great household, an outsider in her own home. Now a self-...

In this tale of two writers, Nell Stevens interweaves her own life as a twenty-something graduate student with that of the English author, Elizabeth Gaskell. Although they are separated by more than 150 years, Nell finds herself drawn to the Victorian novelist by their shared experiences of unrequited love—Gaskell for an American critic she met in Rome, Nell for a soulful American screenwriter living in Paris. As Nell’s romance founders and her passion for academia fails to materialize, sh...

When she was twenty-seven, Nell Stevens—a lifelong aspiring novelist—won an all-expenses-paid fellowship to go anywhere in the world to write. Would she choose a glittering metropolis, a romantic village, an exotic paradise? Not exactly. Nell picked Bleaker Island, a snowy, windswept pile of rock in the Falklands. Other than sheep, penguins, paranoia, and the weather, there aren’t many distractions, but as Nell soon discovers, total isolation and 1,085 calories a day are far from ideal con...

In a grand English country house in 1899, an aspiring art forger must unravel whether the man claiming to be her long-lost cousin is an impostor.Brought to her uncle’s decaying Oxfordshire estate when she was a child, Grace has grown up on the periphery of a once-great household, an outsider in her own home. Now a self-possessed and secretive young woman, she has developed unusual predilections: for painting, particularly forgery; for deception; for other girls.

*A Cosmopolitan Best Book of Summer * One of BuzzFeed’s Most Anticipated LGBTQ+ Books*An “exquisite…too lovely to bear” (The New York Times Book Review) debut novel from an award-winning writer: a playful and daring tale about a teenage ghost who falls in love with the writer George Sand.In 1473, fourteen-year-old Blanca dies in a hilltop monastery in Mallorca. Nearly four hundred years later, when George Sand, he...

In this tale of two writers, Nell Stevens interweaves her own life as a twenty-something graduate student with that of the English author, Elizabeth Gaskell. Although they are separated by more than 150 years, Nell finds herself drawn to the Victorian novelist by their shared experiences of unrequited love—Gaskell for an American critic she met in Rome, Nell for a soulful American screenwriter living in Paris. As Nell’s romance founders and her passion for academia fails to materialize, sh...

A girl, a laptop, and a waddle of penguins. In this witty and genre-defying memoir, a young writer can travel anywhere she wants to finally finish her novel—and ends up on a frozen island at the bottom of the world.Twenty-seven-year-old Nell Stevens was determined to write a novel, but life kept getting in the way. Then came a game-changing opportunity: she won a fellowship that would let her live, all expenses paid, anywhere in the world to research and write a bo...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “This Year’s Must-Read Memoir” (W magazine) about the choices a young woman makes in her search for adventure, meaning, and loveNAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BYVogue • Time • Esquire • Entertainment Weekly • The Guardian • Harper’s Bazaar • Library Journal • NPRAll her life, Ariel Levy was told that ...

When Isabel meets Edward, both are at a crossroads: he wants to follow his late wife to the grave, and she is ready to give up on love. Thinking she is merely helping Edward's daughter—who lives far away and asked her to check in on her nonagenarian dad in New York—Isabel has no idea that the man in the kitchen baking the sublime roast chicken and light as air apricot soufflé will end up changing her life.As Edward and Isabel meet weekly for the glorious dinners that Edward prepare...

**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.**Tooly Zylberberg, the American owner of an isolated bookshop in the Welsh countryside, conducts a life full of reading, ...