Like many young people, Heidi Julavits kept a diary. Decades later she found her old diaries in a storage bin, and hoped to discover the early evidence of the person (and writer) she’d since become. Instead, “The actual diaries revealed me to possess the mind of a paranoid tax auditor.”Thus was born a desire to try again, to chronicle her daily life as a fortysomething woman, wife, mother, and writer. The dazzling result is The Folded Clock, in which the diary form becomes ...

**New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice • A sharply observed memoir of motherhood and the self, and a love letter to Maine, by a writer Eula Biss calls “witty, sly, critical, inventive” and whose mind Leslie Jamison calls “electric.”“An absolute stunner: frank, funny, self-aware, constantly surprising.”—George Saunders**That night, in his bed, I spread my son’s palm wide and tried to read it. If the hand was a map that led to a future person, was there any...

From the acclaimed novelist and The Believer editor HEIDI JULAVITS, a wildly imaginative and emotionally intense novel about mothers, daughters, and the psychic damage women can inflict on one another.Is the bond between mother and daughter unbreakable, even by death?Julia Severn is a student at an elite institute for psychics. Her mentor, the legendary Madame Ackermann, afflicted by jealousy, refuses to pass the torch to her young disciple. Instea...

'An absolute stunner: frank, funny, self-aware, constantly surprising ... One of the most insightful representations I've read of what it feels like to be alive these days' GEORGE SAUNDERS________________________A memoir of finding where you are - so you know where you're goingOne day Heidi Julavits sees her son silhouetted by the sun and notices he is at the threshold of what she calls 'the end times of childhood.'...

One Autumn day in 1985, sixteen-year-old Mary Veal vanishes from her Massachusetts prep school. A few weeks later she reappears unharmed and with little memory of what happened to her--or at least little that she is willing to share. Was Mary abducted, or did she fake her disappearance? This question haunts Mary's family, her psychologist, even Mary herself. Weaving together three narratives, The Uses of Enchantment conjures a spell in which the hallucinatory power of a young woma...

Following her acclaimed debut, The Mineral Palace, Heidi Julavits presents a quirky, compelling novel about two sisters, a bizarre event, and the elusive nature of truth—a New York Times Notable Book.Does Alice really hate her sister, or is that love? Was she really enrolled in grad school, or was that an elaborate hoax? Is this really a hijacking, or is it merely the effect of living backwards?“Heidi Julavits—no stranger to edgy, dark top...

An insightful meditation on time, relationships and identity, The Folded Clock is a funny, thoughtful and inquisitive diary for fans of Olivia Laing and Jenny Offill'Exquisite ... Witty, sly, critical, inventive and adventurous' New York Times'Scathingly funny ... Exhilarating ... An engaging portrait of a woman's sense of identity' LA TimesLike many young ...

**New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice • A sharply observed memoir of motherhood and the self, and a love letter to Maine, by a writer Eula Biss calls “witty, sly, critical, inventive” and whose mind Leslie Jamison calls “electric.”“An absolute stunner: frank, funny, self-aware, constantly surprising.”—George Saunders**That night, in his bed, I spread my son’s palm wide and tried to read it. If the hand was a map that led to a future person, was there any...

In a bold debut novel of the Great Depression, a young doctor's wife uncovers the sordid secrets of a withering Colorado mining town, even as she struggles with the ravaging truths about her marriage and her child.In the drought-ridden spring of 1934, Bena Jonnsen, her husband Ted, and their newborn baby relocate from their home in Minnesota to Pueblo, a Western plains town plagued by suffocating dust storms and equally suffocating social structures. Little can thrive in this bleak...

In late afternoon on November 7, 1985, sixteen-year-old Mary Veal was abducted after field hockey practice at her all-girls New England prep school. Or was she?A few weeks later an unharmed Mary reappears as suddenly and mysteriously as she disappeared, claiming to have little memory of what happened to her. Her mother, concerned that Mary has somehow been sullied by the experience, sends her to therapy with a psychologist named Dr. Hammer. Mary turns out to be a cagey and difficul...

**THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERWomen in Clothes is a book unlike any other. It is essentially a conversation among hundreds of women of all nationalities—famous, anonymous, religious, secular, married, single, young, old—on the subject of clothing, and how the garments we put on every day define and shape our lives.**It began with a survey. The editors composed a list of more than fifty questions designed to prompt women to think more deeply about their pe...

Aimee Bender sits down with Heidi Julavits to discuss her book, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake. Lillo Wei reads an excerpt from the book.