In this powerful and virtuosic collection of interlocking stories, each one "a marvel of concision and compassion" (Washington Post), a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist and "master of his form" (New York Times) takes the short story to new heights.Through forty-four compressed gems, Peter Orner, a writer who "doesn't simply bring his characters to life, he gives them souls" (NYT Book Review), chronicles people whose lives are a...

Convinced that the key to the unraveling of his own life is tied to the tragic death of a young Hollywood starlet, an unheralded writer embarks on a quest to solve the cold case—a new novel by “a major talent” (New York Times) and “one of the most distinctive voices of his generation” (Granta).Jed Rosenthal hasn’t published a book in fourteen years, the mother of his child left him in a “trial separation” that has stretched on indefinitely, and he...

These remarkable oral histories of undocumented men and women struggling to carve a life for themselves in the U.S. “[fill] a gap in our understanding of [immigration] by humanizing the people at the center of an otherwise cold debate” (Huffington Post)They arrive from around the world for countless reasons. Many come simply to make a living. Others are fleeing persecution in their native countries. Millions of immigrants risk deportation and imprisonment ...

This National Book Critics Circle Award is “an entrancing attempt to catch what falls between: the irreducibly personal, messy, even embarrassing ways reading and living bleed into each other, which neither literary criticism nor autobiography ever quite acknowledges" (The New York Times).“Stories, both my own and those I’ve taken to heart, make up whoever it is that I’ve become,” Peter Orner writes in this collection of essays about reading, writing, and ...

Peter Orner zeroes in on the strange ways our memories define us: A woman's husband dies before their divorce is finalized; a man runs for governor of Illinois and loses much more than an election; two brothers play beneath the infamous bridge at Chappaquiddick. Employing the masterful compression for which he has been widely praised, Orner presents a kaleidoscope of individual lives viewed in startling, intimate close-up.Whether writing of Geraldo Rivera's attempt to reveal the co...

Set in Namibia just after independence in the early 1990s, Peter Orner's first novel is a chronicle of the long days, short loves, and cold nights at Goas, an all-boys Catholic primary school so deep in the veld that "even the baboons feel sorry for us."Though physically isolated in semi-desert beneath a relentless sun, the people of Goas create an alternate, more fertile universe through the stories they tell each other. The book's central character is Mavala Shik...

Alexander Popper can't stop remembering. Four years old when his father tossed him into Lake Michigan, he was told, Sink or swim, kid. In his mind, he's still bobbing in that frigid water. The rest of this novel's vivid cast of characters also struggle to remain afloat: Popper's mother, stymied by an unhappy marriage, seeks solace in the relentless energy of Chicago; his brother, Leo, shadow boss of the family, retreats into books; paternal grandparents, Seymour and Bernice, once high flie...

“In these 35 stories, one struggles to find a sentence that is anything less than jewel–box perfect.” —The New York Times Book ReviewGina Berriault is known for the complexity and compassion with which she weaves her characters, and her stories are such models of economy that they seem almost telepathic. In this reissue of her collected stories—twenty years after its first publication—with a new introduction by renowned author and devoted Berriault advocat...

The discovery of a murdered man in a bathrobe by the side of a road, the destruction of a town's historic City Hall building, and the recollection of a cruel wartime decision are equally affecting in Orner's vivid and intimate gaze. The first half of the book concerns the lives of unrelated strangers across the American landscape, and the second introduces two very different Jewish families, one on the East Coast, the other in the Midwest. Yet Orner's real territory is memory, and this boo...

AN NYRB CLASSICS ORIGINALMavis Gallant’s novels are as memorable as her renowned short stories. Full of wit and psychological poignancy, A Fairly Good Time, here with Green Water, Green Sky, encapsulates Gallant’s unparalleled skill as a storyteller.Shirley Perrigny (née Norrington, then briefly Higgins), the heroine of A Fairly Good Time, is an original. Derided by the Parisians she lives among and chided by her fellow C...

**Finalist for the Vermont Book AwardFinalist for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the EssayA new collection of pieces on literature and life by the author of Am I Alone Here?, a finalist for the NBCC Award for Criticism**Stationed in the South Pacific during World War II, Seymour Orner wrote a letter every day to his wife, Lorraine. She seldom responded, leading him to plead in 1945, “Another day and still no word from you.” Seventy years...

Hope Deferred asks the question: How did Zimbabwe, a country with so much promise—a stellar education system, a growing middle class, a sophisticated economic infrastructure, a liberal constitution, and an independent judiciary—come so close to collapse? In their own words, Zimbabweans tell their stories of losing their homes, land, livelihoods, and families as a direct result of political violence. They describe being tortured in detention, firebombed at work, or beaten up or rap...