Fiction

Nathan Hill is a maestro. John IrvingIt s 2011, and Samuel Andresen-Anderson hasn t seen his mother Faye in decades not since she abandoned the family when he was a boy. Now she s re-appeared, having committed an absurd crime that electrifies the nightly news and inflames a politically divided country. The media paints Faye as aradical hippie with a sordid past, but as far as Samuel knows, his mot

The New York Times bestselling classic of a young woman's journey in work, love, and life  

"In this swinging, funny, and tender study of contemporary relationships, Bank refutes once and for all the popular notions of neurotic thirtysomething women." -Entertainment Weekly  

"Truly poignant." -Time

1972, BLACK RIVER FALLS, WISCONSIN: Alicia Western, twenty years old, with forty thousand dollars in a plastic bag, admits herself to the hospital. A doctoral candidate in mathematics at the University of Chicago, Alicia has been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, and she does not want to talk about her brother, Bobby. Instead, she contemplates the nature of madness, the human insistence on

1980, PASS CHRISTIAN, MISSISSIPPI: It is three in the morning when Bobby Western zips the jacket of his wet suit and plunges from the Coast Guard tender into darkness. His dive light illuminates the sunken jet, nine bodies still buckled in their seats, hair floating, eyes devoid of speculation. Missing from the crash site are the pilot's flight bag, the plane's black box, and the tent

Ten superb new stories by one of our most beloved and admired writers--the winner of the 2009 Man Booker International Prize. In the first story a young wife and mother receives release from the unbearable pain of losing her three children from a most surprising source. In another, a young woman, in the aftermath of an unusual and humiliating seduction, reacts in a clever if less-than-admirable fa