Rising costs and increasing global competition press institutions to do more with less. At the same time, deep budget cuts and a general social and political impatience have revived calls for reform in educational affordability, curriculum, and outcome measurement. Yet within this environment, a myriad of success stories are being forged among educational institutions, supporting industries, and educational consortia that are embracing innovative approaches to all aspects of the higher edu...

Twenty-five years after Jesus’ Son, a haunting new collection of short stories on mortality and transcendence, from National Book Award winner and two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Denis JohnsonThe Largesse of the Sea Maiden is the long-awaited new story collection from Denis Johnson. Written in the luminous prose that made him one of the most beloved and important writers of his generation, this collection finds Johnson in new territory, contempla...

Random House presents the audiobook edition of The Largesse of the Sea Maiden by Denis Johnson, read by Nick Offerman, Michael Shannon, Dermot Mulroney, Will Patton, and Liev Schreiber.The Largesse of the Sea Maiden is the long-awaited new story collection from Denis Johnson, author of the groundbreaking, highly acclaimed Jesus’ Son. Written in the same luminous prose, this collection finds Johnson in new territory, contemplating mortalit...

American master Denis Johnson's nationally bestselling collection of blistering and indelible tales about America's outcasts and wanderers.Denis Johnson's now classic story collection Jesus' Son chronicles a wild netherworld of addicts and lost souls, a violent and disordered landscape that encompasses every extreme of American culture. These are stories of transcendence and spiraling grief, of hallucinations and glories, of getting lost and found and lost...

From the award-winning author of the national bestseller Idaho comes a “stunning collection” (Harper’s Bazaar) of stories that explore how unexpected intuitions forever alter the lives of ordinary people.“These are marvelous and unsettling stories.”—Kelly Link, author of The Book of Love“In clear and distinctive prose, Emily Ruskovich evokes the epic scope of quiet lives.”—Paula Hawkins, author of A Sl...

Random House presents the audiobook edition of The Porpoise, written by Mark Haddon, read by Tim McInnerny.‘I really am so very, very sorry about this,’ he says, in an oddly formal voice… They strike the side of a grain silo. They are travelling at seventy miles per hour.A newborn baby is the sole survivor of a terrifying plane crash.She is raised in wealthy isolation by an overprotective father. She knows nothing of the ru...

A powerful, eerily unsettling story collection from a major international literary star.Unearthly and unexpected, the stories in Mouthful of Birds burrow their way into your psyche and don't let go. Samanta Schweblin haunts and mesmerizes in this extraordinary, masterful collection.Schweblin's stories have the feel of a sleepless night, where every shadow and bump in the dark take on huge implications, leaving your pulse racing, and the line betwee...

**A gripping collection of propulsive, psychologically suspenseful stories by the legendary Joyce Carol Oates “who is surely on any shortlist of America’s greatest living writers” (The New York Times Magazine)“A genius in the truest sense of the word.”—Rebecca Makkai“One of the greatest writers among us today.”—Gillian Flynn**“Haunting . . . masterfully orchestrated . . . Oates’s best work is simmering and remorseless.”—Vogue

**A New York Times Notable Book for 2011One of The Economist's 2011 Books of the YearOne of NPR's 10 Best Novels of 2011From the National Book Award-winning author Denis Johnson** (Tree of Smoke) comes Train Dreams**, an epic in miniature, and one of Johnson's most evocative works of fiction.**Suffused with the history and landscapes of the American West—its...

**The National Book Award Finalist from acclaimed New York Times bestselling author Francine Prose—now the major motion picture Submission“Screamingly funny … Blue Angel culminates in a sexual harassment hearing that rivals the Salem witch trials.” —USA Today**It's been years since Swenson, a professor in a New England creative writing program, has published a novel. It's been even longer since any of his students have shown promise. Ente...

A stunning collection of stories exploring love and art, luck and loss, from “one of our greatest living short story writers” (Esquire), the author of How to Behave in a Crowd and The MaterialONE OF BARACK OBAMA’S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE SUMMER AND ONE OF THE NEW YORKER AND ESQUIRE’S BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR (SO FAR)“Camille Bordas is an expert chronicler of misfits. . . . [These stories] ran...

In the stories that make up Oblivion**, David Foster Wallace joins the rawest, most naked humanity with the infinite involutions of self-consciousness — a combination that is dazzlingly, uniquely his.**These are worlds undreamt of by any other mind. Only David Foster Wallace could convey a father’s desperate loneliness by way of his son’s daydreaming through a teacher’s homicidal breakdown (“The Soul Is Not a Smithy”). Or could explore the...