**A literary tour through the notable diaries of history, giving us a window into the private lives of the famous and infamous, with a new introduction by the author“Charming, diverting, and exceptionally intelligent.” —The New Yorker**Before the age of social media, chronicling one’s life was a private matter. In this literary tour through the notable diaries of history, Thomas Mallon is a witty guide to the personal journals of the famous and infamous, bringing t...

**A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • ONE OF NPR’S “BOOKS WE LOVE” • From the renowned novelist and critic, an exquisite collection of journal entries from the 1980s and ’90s, tracking a young, gay author’s literary coming-of-age in New York during the AIDS crisis"Illuminating, heartbreaking, hilarious, romantic, terrifying, thrilling, baffling, joyous—such is life! And such are the diaries of our great writer Thomas Mallon. . . . I found myself reading addictively. A wor...

From the beloved author of Fellow Travelers and the "master of the historical novel" (Newsweek), a soulful, engrossing novel about a space-obsessed grade-schooler who skips class to follow the flight of the Aurora 7 mission.This acclaimed novel vividly tells the story of a single day in May—May 24, 1962. While astronaut Scott Carpenter orbits the earth in his Aurora 7 capsule, the lives of a host of characters seem interwoven on the ground below—e...

**A WASHINGTON POST BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • Through the curious life of Dick Kallman—a real-life celebrity striver, poisonously charming actor, and eventual murder victim—the unforgiving worlds of postwar showbiz and down-low gay sexuality are thrown into stark relief in this “page-turning blast” (James Ellroy, author of Widespread Panic)"Engrossing…[A] keen portrait of 1980s New York…a pensive, often gorgeous depiction of…gay life in Manhattan before Stonewall an...

This first volume of the definitive edition of her fiction includes four novels and eight classic stories by the witty and provocative writer who defined a generationIn 1942, Mary McCarthy provoked a scandal with her electrifying debut novel, The Company She Keeps, announcing the arrival of a major new voice in American literature. A candid, thinly-veiled portrait of the late-1930s New York intellectual scene, its penetrat...

On the evening of Good Friday, 1865, Henry Rathbone and Clara Harris joined the Lincolns in the Presidential box at Ford’s Theater, becoming eyewitnesses to one of the great tragedies of American history.In this riveting novel, Thomas Mallon re-creates the unusual love story of this young engaged couple whose fateful encounter with history profoundly affects the remainder of their lives. Lincoln’s assassination is only one part of the remarkable life they share, a ...

With a new introduction by Thomas MallonDubin's Lives (1979) is a compassionate and wry commedia, a book praised by Christopher Lehmann-Haupt in The New York Times as Malamud's "best novel since The Assistant. Possibly, it is the best he has written of all."Its protagonist is one of Malamud's finest characters; prize-winning biographer William Dubin, who learns from lives, or thinks he does: those he writes, those he shares, the life he lives. Now i...

Set during the tumultuous middle of the George W. Bush years—amid the twin catastrophes of the Iraq insurgency and Hurricane Katrina—Landfall brings Thomas Mallon's cavalcade of contemporary American politics, which began with Watergate and continue with Finale, to a vivid and emotional climax.The president at the novel's center possesses a personality whose high-speed alternations between charm and petulance, resoluteness and self-pity, continually energ...

A New York Times Notable BookOne of the Best Books of the Year: The Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, The Daily Beast, The Miami Herald, St. Louis Post-DispatchAdding to a fiction chronicle that has already spanned American history from the Lincoln assassination to the Watergate scandal, Thomas Mallon now brings to life the tumultuous administration of the most consequential and ...

Astronomy, politics, and romance join forces in this novel from the writer John Updike has called "one of the most interesting American novelists at work."It's the spring of 1877 in Washington, D.C., and at the U.S. Naval Observatory, Hugh Allison has conceived a secret ambition: to project an image through time and space. But his plan takes on urgent life only when the mathematically gifted Cynthia May enters his orbit as one of the observatory's human "computers." A Civil War wid...

From a writer whose last book, Henry and Clara, prompted John Updike to declare Thomas Mallon one of the most interesting American novelists at work, comes a story that perfectly captures the delightful romance and wistful magic of our recent, and more innocent, past.Thomas Mallon has masterfully appropriated a jubilant legend (and famous headline) of modern American history -- Harry Truman's upset victory over Thomas E. Dewey in t...

For its 75th anniversary and Frank Sinatra’s centennial: the Jazz Age masterpiece that inspired the iconic Sinatra film and the hit Broadway musical, and featuring the musical’s libretto and lyricsOn the seedy side of Chicago nightlife in the 1930s, Joey Evans is a poor man’s Bing Crosby—a big-talking, small-time nightclub crooner down on his luck but always on the make. In slangy, error-littered letters signed “Pal Joey,” he recounts his exploits with brash nightc...