Once upon a very recent time in New York City, there was a couple, two ordinary single people who met the way city people meet. Even though mismatched, they fell in love. And after some hesitations they decided, finally, to marry-only to look up and find their world caving in around them. Sexy, vivacious Elisa, of the miniskirts and tiny T-shirts, still in art school and just coming off an affair with a temper-driven fellow artist, initiated things. She came on to cool, quiet Gabe who wore his hair in a graying ponytail and kept a low profile. A good bit older than Elisa-more than twenty years older, in fact-he found himself buoyed by her youth and her brashness. To her great surprise,...

One of our most gifted writers of fiction returns with a bold and piercing novel about a young single mother living in New York, her eccentric aunt, and the decisions they make that have unexpected implications for the world around them. Reyna knows her relationship with Boyd isn't perfect; yet she sees him through a three-month stint at Riker's Island, their bond growing tighter. Kiki, now settled in the East Village after a youth that took her to Turkey and other far-off places -- and loves -- around the world, admires her niece's spirit but worries that motherhood to four-year-old Oliver might complicate a difficult situation. Little does she know that Boyd is pulling Reyna into a...

In his introduction to this one hundredth volume of the beloved Best American Short Stories, guest editor T. C. Boyle writes, "The Model T gave way to the Model A and to the Ferrari and the Prius . . . modernism to postmodernism and post-postmodernism. We advance. We progress. We move on. But we are part of a tradition." Boyle's choices of stories reflect a vibrant range of characters, from a numb wife who feels alive only in the presence of violence to a new widower coming to terms with his sudden freedom, from a missing child to a champion speedboat racer. These stories will grab hold and surprise, which according to Boyle is "what the best fiction offers, and there was no shortage of...

"Joan Silber writes with wisdom, humor, grace, and wry intelligence. Her characters bear welcome news of how we will survive." - Andrea Barrett Supple and precise, these stories cover lifetimes, much in the manner of Alice Munro and William Trevor. Set in France, Italy, New York, and China, in the past and present, they are about longings - about how sex and religion become parallel forms of dedication and comfort. Though the stories stand alone, a minor element in one becomes major in the next. In "My Shape," a woman is taunted by her dance coach, who later suffers his own heartache. A Venetian poet of the 1500s, another storyteller, is introduced to a modern traveler reading Rilke....

Winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award: "Unqualified praise goes to this rarity: an extraordinary novel about ordinary people."--Chicago Tribune The year is 1940, and Rhoda Taber is pregnant with her first child. Satisfied with her comfortable house in a New Jersey suburb and her reliable husband, Leonard, she expects that her life will be predictable and secure. Surprised by an untimely death, an unexpected illness, and the contrary natures of her two daughters, Rhoda finds that fate undermines her sense of entitlement and security. Shrewd, wry, and sometimes bitter, Rhoda reveals herself to be a wonderfully flawed and achingly real woman caught up in the unexpectedness of her own life.

Love and family loyalty meet up with the allure of far-off vistas in elegant new fiction by an acclaimed novelist. A richly imagined novel--set in wartime Vietnam, Thailand, Mexico, Sicily, and contemporary America--about men and women whose jolting encounters with the unfamiliar force them to realize how many "riffs there are to being human." Travelers, colonials, immigrants, and returned ex-pats meet or pass one another in narratives spanning lifetimes. In the book's opening, an engineer in Vietnam is shaken to discover why his company's planes are getting lost. A modern marriage between a Thai Muslim and an American woman leads to a terrible family fight. In 1920s Siam a young...

A dazzling new collection of interconnected stories by the National Book Award finalist. When is it wise to be a fool for something? What makes people want to be better than they are? From New York to India to Paris, from the Catholic Worker movement to Occupy Wall Street, the characters in Joan Silber’s dazzling new story cycle tackle this question head-on. Vera, the shy, anarchist daughter of missionary parents, leaves her family for love and activism in New York. A generation later, her own doubting daughter insists on the truth of being of two minds, even in marriage. The adulterous son of a Florida hotel owner steals money from his family and departs for Paris, where he takes...