In a fusion of fact and fiction, nineteenth-century women institutionalized as hysterics reveal what history ignored“City of Incurable Women is a brilliant exploration of the type of female bodily and psychic pain once commonly diagnosed as hysteria—and the curiously hysterical response to it commonly exhibited by medical men. It is a novel of powerful originality, riveting historical interest, and haunting lyrical beauty.” —Sigrid Nunez

In a trance-like state, Albert walks-from Bordeaux to Poitiers, from Chaumont to Macon, and farther afield to Turkey, Austria, Russia-all over Europe. When he walks, he is called a vagrant, a mad man. He is chased out of towns and villages, ridiculed and imprisoned. When the reverie of his walking ends, he's left wondering where he is, with no memory of how he got there. His past exists only in fleeting images.Loosely based on the case history of Albert Dadas, a psychiatric patient...

Publisher Marketing: In a trance-like state, Albert walks--from Bordeaux to Poitiers, from Chaumont to Macon, and farther afield to Turkey, Austria, Russia--all over Europe. When he walks, he is called a vagrant, a mad man. He is chased out of towns and villages, ridiculed and imprisoned. When the reverie of his walking ends, he's left wondering where he is, with no memory of how he got there. His past exists only in fleeting images.Loosely based on the case history of Albert Dadas, a psyc...

Isabelle, a woman in her thirties without any of the trappings of a grown-up life, has just been fired from her job at a San Francisco phone company. Returning to the midwestern suburb of her childhood, Standardsville, Illinois, she contends with her dating single mother, a neighbor who once appeared on The Honeymooners, and an ex-boyfriend. She also becomes a mystery shopper for a temp agency, posing as a variety of potential tenants for newly built suburban communities to access their ex...

In a trance-like state, Albert walks – from Bordeaux to Poitiers, from Chaumont to Macon, and farther afield to Turkey, Austria, Russia – all over Europe. When he walks, he is called a vagrant, a mad man. He is chased out of towns and villages, ridiculed and imprisoned. When the reverie of his walking ends, he's left wondering where he is, with no memory of how he got there. His past exists only in fleeting images.Loosely based on the case history of Albert Dadas, a psychiatric pat...

A sensitive and nuanced exploration of a seldom-discussed subject by an acclaimed novelistThe fourteenth volume in the Art of series conjures an ethereal subject: the idea of mystery in fiction. Mystery is not often discussed—apart from the genre—because, as Maud Casey says, “It’s not easy to talk about something that is a whispered invitation, a siren song, a flickering light in the distance.” Casey, the author of several critically acclaimed novels, reac...

On the assumption that John Updike was correct when he asserted, in a 1978 letter to Joyce Carol Oates, that "Nobody can read like a writer," Why I Like This Story presents brief essays by forty-eight leading American writers on their favorite American short stories, explaining why they like them. The essays, which are personal, not scholarly, not only tell us much about the story selected, they also tell us a good deal about the author of the essay, about what elements of fiction...

You are about to discover the secrets of The Quick –But first you must travel to Victorian Yorkshire, and there, on a remote country estate, meet a brother and sister alone in the world and bound by tragedy. In time, you will enter the rooms of London’s mysterious Aegolius Club – a society of some of the richest, most powerful men in fin-de-siecle England. And at some point – we cannot say when – these worlds will collide.It is then, and only then,...

The Loire Valley, 1895. When seventeen-year-old Sara Thibault's father is killed in a mudslide, her mother sells their vineyard to a rival family whose eldest son marries Sara's sister, Lydia. But a violent tragedy compels Sara and her sister to flee to New York, forcing Sara to put aside her dream of following in her father's footsteps as a master winemaker. Meanwhile, Philippe Lemieux has arrived in California with the ambition of owning the largest vineyard in Napa by 1900. When he rece...

An absorbing novel of romance and revolution, loyalty and family, sacrifice and undying loveWe have three souls, or so I'd been told. But only in death could I confirm this....So begins the haunting and captivating tale, set in 1935 China, of the ghost of a young woman named Leiyin, who watches her own funeral from above and wonders why she is being denied entry to the afterlife. Beside her are three souls—stern and scholarly yang; impulsive, romantic ...

Land of Careful Shadows by award-winning author Suzanne Chazin is a powerful mystery full of passion and secrets that deals with a clash of cultures and familial relationships, and it's full of drama, mystery, and raw emotions.When the dead body of a Latino woman is found in a reservoir about fifty miles north of Manhattan, with a photo of a baby in her purse nearby, the police try to determine who the child is and if it is still alive. Along with the photo, they also find...

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERSOON TO BE A MAJOR FILM PRODUCED BY JULIA ROBERTSA provocative and hauntingly powerful debut novel reminiscent of Sliding Doors, The Bookseller follows a woman in the 1960s who must reconcile her reality with the tantalizing alternate world of her dreams.Nothing is as permanent as it appears...Denver, 1962...