At once a subversive autobiography of a mercurial woman and a mesmerizing history of the body as a site of resistance to power."I bite my friends to heal them."—Diogenes the Cynic, c. 350 BCEFrom a Roman amphitheater where 4th century martyrs are fed to wild beasts to the S&M leather bars of New York in the 1970s, this sinuous and illuminating book by novelist and cultural critic Fernanda Eberstadt explore the lives of uncommonly brave men and women—saints,...

Fifteen-year-old Celia Bonnet, nicknamed “Rat,” lives a peaceful life with her mother, Vanessa, a free-spirited local beauty, and Morgan, the nine-year-old orphan they have taken in. Their farmhouse compound, nestled just north of the Spanish Catalan border, is surrounded by artichoke fields and glittering ocean, cliffs where they can spy down on the rich tourists below. But when Vanessa falls for a dangerous new boyfriend, Rat must leave this place she loves.Together with Morgan, ...

“Enchanting . . . Bursting with talent and love of life,” said the Washington Post Book World of Fernanda Eberstadt’s extraordinary first novel, Low Tide. Now her exuberant gifts are even more abundantly evident on a larger scale.Isaac and His Devils tells the story of a boy who throws off sparks of what might be genius—and of his father, a man who has walked away from the possibilities of his own brilliance.Isaac Hooker, from birth to his twenty-se...

In 1998, Fernanda Eberstadt, her husband, and their two small children moved from New York to an area outside Perpignan, France — a city with one of the largest Gypsy populations in Western Europe. Here she found a jealously guarded culture, a society made, in part, of lawlessness and defiance of non-Gypsy norms; and she met MoÏse Espinas, the lead singer of the Gypsy band, Tekameli.As her relationship with the Espinas family developed over the years, progressing from mutual baffle...

There aren't any zombies (yet), but the world is still at the brink of destruction: It's 2028 and global warming has led to rising oceans, crazy weather, and resource scarcity. On top of that, someone just turned the Internet off. Seeing as how it's humanity's last chance to turn things around manners are a bit frayed.Bookish etiquette buff Olive O'Malley is busy microfarming her urban property and minding her own business (and her chickens) when the government comes calling. Their...

The "wise, wildly funny story" of a self-destructive writer's lost weekend by a Pulitzer Prize–winning, New York Times–bestselling author ( Chicago Tribune).A wildly successful first novel made Grady Tripp a young star, and seven years later he still hasn't grown up. He's now a writing professor in Pittsburgh, plummeting through middle age, stuck with an unfinishable manuscript, an estranged wife, a pregnant girlfriend, and a talented but deeply di...

**From the New York Times bestselling author of If I Stay comes a book about love, heartbreak, travel, and the “accidents” of fate that often prove the people we are seeking are much closer than we know.“Reading like a teen version of Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love, this tale of romance and mystery engages readers and will cause them to examine their definitions of love and self-identity.”—School Library Journal, starred review“Offer...

Charles Bukowski examines cats and his childhood in You Get So Alone at Times, a book of poetry that reveals his tender side. The iconic tortured artist/everyman delves into his youth to analyze its repercussions.“The Walt Whitman of Los Angeles.”—Joyce Carol Oates“He brought everybody down to earth, even the angels.”—Leonard Cohen, songwriterWhat happens when the “dirty old man” of American letters turns his gaze inward?Raw and Honest Writing:...

I'm not your average hero. I actually wasn't your average anything. Just a poor guy working an after-school job at a South Beach shoe repair shop to help his mom make ends meet. But a little magic changed it all.It all started with a curse. And a frognapping. And one hot-looking princess, who asked me to lead a rescue mission.There wasn't a fairy godmother or any of that. And even though I fell in love along the way, what happened to me is unlike any fairy tale I've ever he...

These superbly crafted stories reveal an astonishing range, with settings that vary from a farm on the Canadian prairies to Bloomsbury in London, from a high-rise apartment to a mine-shaft. Vanderhaeghe has the uncanny ability to show us the world through the eyes of an eleven-year-old boy as convincingly as he reveals it through the eyes of an old man approaching senility. Moving from the hilarious farce of teenage romance all the way to the numbing tragedy of life in a ward for incurable...

SHORTLISTED FOR CBC CANADA READS 2019WINNER OF THE BEST TRANSLATED BOOK AWARDEighty-five years of art and history through the eyes of a woman who fled her family – as re-imagined by her granddaughter.Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette never knew her mother’s mother. Curious to understand why her grandmother, Suzanne, a sometime painter and poet associated with Les Automatistes, a movement of dissident artists that included Pau...

Meet Peter and Rebecca Harris: mid-forties denizens of Manhattan’s SoHo, nearing the apogee of committed careers in the arts—he a dealer, she an editor. With a spacious loft, a college-age daughter in Boston and lively friends, they are admirable, enviable contemporary urbanites with every reason, it seems, to be happy. Then Rebecca’s much younger lookalike brother, Ethan (known in the family as Mizzy, “the mistake”), shows up for a visit. A beautiful, beguiling twenty-three-year-old with ...