Heroic Measures

Exit Ghost

Philip Roth · 304 pages

After eleven years of solitude working on his New England mountain as a writer, Nathan Zuckerman returns to New York to confront a turbulent city in the wake of September 11, as well as the aging Amy Bellette, one-time muse to his first literary hero, E.I. Lonoff.

Starting Out in the Evening

Brian Morton · 336 pages

The Brooklyn Follies

Paul Auster · 320 pages

Nathan Glass has come to Brooklyn to die. Divorced, estranged from his only daughter, the retired life insurance salesman seeks only solitude and anonymity. Then Nathan finds his long-lost nephew, Tom Wood, working in a local bookstore - a far cry from the brilliant academic career he'd begun when Nathan saw him last. Tom's boss is the charismatic Harry Brightman, whom fate has also brought to the

Emily, Alone

Stewart O'Nan · 255 pages

Newly independent widow Emily Maxwell dreams of visits by grandchildren and mourns changes in her quiet Pittsburgh neighborhood before realizing an inner strength to pursue developing opportunities.

Mr. Sammler's Planet

Saul Bellow · 313 pages

"Sammler, a New Yorker in his seventies, a refugee from Nazism, a thinker of complex thoughts, a touchstone around whom a heterogeneous group revolves, is not simply the protagonist but the prime mover of a many-sided novel held together by the centripetal force of his presence. The counterpoint of personalities, subplots, and incidents constitutes a tragi-comic commentary on twentieth-century urb

The Great Man

Kate Christensen · 312 pages

From the acclaimed author of The Epicure's Lament, a novel of literary rivalry in which two competing biographers collide in their quest for the truth about a great artist.Oscar Feldman, the "Great Man," was a New York city painter of the heroic generation of the forties and fifties. But instead of the abstract canvases of the Pollocks and Rothkos, he stubbornly hewed to painting one subject--the

Thirteen Ways of Looking

Colum McCann · 264 pages

The Sunken Cathedral

Kate Walbert · 212 pages

"In Sunken Cathedral, Kate Walbert tells the stories of four women living in New York's Chelsea neighborhood, more or less now. Two, Marie and Simone, friends for decades, are widows in their seventies, yet robust, engaged, appetiteful, even ready to find love again. They were immigrants, survivors of World War II in Europe, and now are living alone in the houses where they raised their children.

RL's Dream

Walter Mosley · 267 pages

RL's Dream is a novel about the blues - the blues as an expression of black poetry and black tragedy and how they sit in judgment on the American experience. In contemporary New York, aging bluesman Soupspoon Wise is alone, ill, and dying. He has played his music in a thousand bars, clubs, and juke joints, but never so memorably as the time he played with one Robert "RL" Johnson in the Mississippi

A Severed Wasp

Madeleine L'Engle · 388 pages

Katherine Forrester Vigneras, in a continuation of her story from The Small Rain, returns to New York City from Europe to retire. Now in her seventies, she encounters an old friend from her Greenwich Village days who, it turns out, is the former Bishop of New York. He asks Katherine to give a benefit concert at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. This leads to new demands on her resources--human

To Dance with the White Dog

Terry Kay · 217 pages

When a widower starts talking about a white dog that only he sees, his family is worried about his state of mind.

They May Not Mean To, But They Do

Cathleen Schine · 304 pages

"Joy Bergman is not slipping into old age with the quiet grace her children, Molly and Daniel, would prefer. She won't take their advice, and she won't take an antidepressant. Her marriage to their father, Aaron, has lasted through health and dementia, as well as some phenomenally lousy business decisions. The Bergman clan has always stuck together, growing as it incorporated in-laws, ex-in-laws,

A Life Force

Will Eisner · 139 pages

Chronicles the lives of ordinary people surviving the Great Depression in the Bronx, portraying the economic collapse, leftist politics, and rise in Nazism.

And the Birds Rained Down

Jocelyne Saucier · 157 pages

Tom and Charlie have decided to live out the remainder of their lives hidden away in a remote forest, their only connection to the outside world a couple of pot growers who deliver whatever they need that they can't eke out for themselves. But one summer two women arrive. One is a young photographer documenting a series of catastrophic forest fires that swept Northern Ontario, and the elderly aunt

Lives of the Monster Dogs

Kirsten Bakis · 291 pages

Here is a first novel like no other: a spellbinding tale that both creates its own fully realized world perspective and provides an incisive look at the ways that humans and animals resemble each other. A group of elegant monster dogs in top hats, tails, and bustle skirts become instant celebrities when they come to New York in 2008. Refugees from a town whose residents had been utterly isolated

Fox Tracks

Rita Mae Brown · 320 pages

While outside on Manhattan's Midtown streets a fierce snowstorm rages ferociously, nothing can dampen the excitement inside the elegant ballroom of Manhattan's Pierre Hotel. Hunt clubs from all over North America have gathered for their annual gala, and nobody is in higher spirits than Sister Jane, Master of the Jefferson Hunt in Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains. Braving the foul weather, Sister an

The Illuminations

Andrew O'Hagan · 293 pages

A British army captain whose artistic pioneer grandmother lived an illusory life to cope with hardships begins transforming his own sense of reality in the aftermath of a mission gone wrong before confronting a mystery from his family's past.

The Goldfinch

Donna Tartt · 817 pages

"The Goldfinch is a rarity that comes along perhaps half a dozen times per decade, a smartly written literary novel that connects with the heart as well as the mind....Donna Tartt has delivered an extraordinary work of fiction."--Stephen King, The New York Times Book Review Composed with the skills of a master, The Goldfinch is a haunted odyssey through present day America and a drama of enthra

Closing Time

Joseph Heller · 464 pages

In a novel as darkly comic and audaciously ambitious as was Catch-22, Joseph Heller has dared to write the sequel to his American classic, using many of Catch-22's characters, now older if not wiser, to deftly satirize the realities and the myths of America in the half century since they fought World War II. In 1961, Joseph Heller's remarkable first novel made its way immediately into the America

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Jonathan Safran Foer · 326 pages

A new novel by the author of Everything Is Illuminated introduces Oskar Schell, the nine-year-old son of a man killed in the World Trade Center bombing who searches the city for a lock that fits a black key his father left behind. Jonathan Safran Foer emerged as one of the most original writers of his generation with his best-selling debut novel, Everything Is Illuminated. Now, with humor, tendern

Autumn Laing

Alex Miller · 452 pages

Autumn Laing has long outlived the legendary circle of artists she cultivated in the 1930s. Now 'old and skeleton gaunt', she reflects on her tumultuous relationship with the abundantly talented Pat Donlon and the effect it had on her husband, on Pat's wife and the body of work which launched Pat's career. A brilliantly alive and insistently energetic story of love, loyalty and creativity.

Hunting and Gathering

Anna Gavalda · 485 pages

Prize-winning author Anna Gavalda has galvanized the literary world with an exquisite genius for storytelling. Here, in her epic new novel of intimate lives-and filled with the "humanity and wit" (Marie Claire) that has made it a bestselling sensation in France-Gavalda explores the twists of fate that connect four people in Paris. Comprised of a starving artist, her shy, aristocratic neighbor, his

A Christmas Memory, One Christmas, & The Thanksgiving Visitor

Truman Capote · 45 pages

*A reminiscence of a Christmas shared by a seven-year-old boy and a sixtyish childlike woman, with enormous love and friendship between them.* Seven-year-old Buddy knows that the Christmas season has arrived when his cousin, Miss Sook Falk exclaims: "It's fruitcake weather!" Thus begins an unforgettable portrait of an odd, but enduring, friendship between two innocent souls—one young and one ol

The Buried Giant

Kazuo Ishiguro · 331 pages

The Buried Giant begins as a couple set off across a troubled land of mist and rain in the hope of finding a son they have not seen in years.