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For years, the D’Amico family has enjoyed an idyllic life in Greenwich, Connecticut. Isabel D’Amico is widely envied and respected, and her husband, Bob, rules his Manhattan investment bank ruthlessly. But in the fall of 2008, the women of this community are swept up in a national crisis. In the wake of Bob’s public downfall, they must learn to negotiate power on their own terms and ultimately ask themselves what, if anything, is worth saving.So begins Our Little Racket, an examination of men, women, money, and culpability in the highest echelons of American society. As Bob’s headstrong teenage daughter, Madison, begins to probe her father’s heretofore secret life for information, she and the four other women close to her watch their roles shift in a community that has kept them protected but so often sidelined. Forced to acknowledge the fragile foundations of their world, they are met with another painful question: where is the line between willful ignorance and unspoken complicity?

Now a TV Series on AMC starring Pierce Brosnan and co-written by Philipp Meyer.Now in paperback, the critically acclaimed, New York Times bestselling epic, a saga of land, blood, and power that follows the rise of one unforgettable Texas family from the Comanche raids of the 1800s to the oil booms of the 20th century.Part epic of Texas, part classic coming-of-age story, part unflinching examination of the bloody price of power, The Son is a gripping and utterly transporting novel that maps the legacy of violence in the American west with rare emotional acuity, even as it presents an intimate portrait of one family across two centuries.Eli McCullough is just twelve-years-old when a marauding band of Comanche storm his Texas homestead and brutally murder his mother and sister, taking him as a captive. Despite their torture and cruelty, Eli--against all odds--adapts to life with the Comanche, learning their ways, their language, taking on a new name, finding a place as the adopted son of the chief of the band, and fighting their wars against not only other Indians, but white men, too-complicating his sense of loyalty, his promised vengeance, and his very understanding of self. But when disease, starvation, and westward expansion finally decimate the Comanche, Eli is left alone in a world in which he belongs nowhere, neither white nor Indian, civilized or fully wild.Deftly interweaving Eli's story with those of his son, Peter, and his great-granddaughter, JA, The Son deftly explores the legacy of Eli's ruthlessness, his drive to power, and his life-long status as an outsider, even as the McCullough family rises to become one of the richest in Texas, a ranching-and-oil dynasty of unsurpassed wealth and privilege.Harrowing, panoramic, and deeply evocative, The Son is a fully realized masterwork in the greatest tradition of the American canon-an unforgettable novel that combines the narrative prowess of Larry McMurtry with the knife edge sharpness of Cormac McCarthy.

A young researcher at MIT, Jane Weiss is obsessed with finding the genetic marker for Valentine’s disease, a neurodegenerative disorder that killed her mother. With a fifty percent chance of developing the disease herself, Jane throws herself into her research and steers clear of romantic entanglement, for fear of becoming a burden. Then, the summer before her father’s second wedding, Jane falls hard for her future stepbrother, Willie, who has his own tragic past with Valentine’s. If Jane succeeds in making history, will she be brave enough to face the truth this newfound knowledge could hold for their lives?

Back in print in this deluxe edition, the former Poet Laureate of the United States and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet's only collection of short fiction, now part of the Ecco Art of the Story series."Imagine a writer who combines Woody Allen's sense of exaggeration--his ability to extrapolate situations to their funniest extremes--with the perspective and self-consciously elegant language of John Updike. That's right, you'd have a creature who is never very likely to walk the face of the earth. But Strand, the prize-winning Canadian-born poet and professor of English at the University of Utah, comes close to that model. The stories in this first collection, originally printed in Vogue, The New Yorker, and Michigan Quarterly Review, vary widely. Yet several of them share a spirit of stubborn determination in the pursuit of idiosyncratic meanings of happiness. In one story a U.S. President noted mainly for reading Chekhov to his Cabinet and creating the 'National Museum of Weather, ' resigns. . . . Another tale is about a man who says he has been married five times and in love six, with none of the 11 experiences overlapping. Then there's Stanley R., the killer poet who murders his parents so he can write a poem about the experience. . . . . Few writers, though, can manage to make one of man's favorite pastimes' futile longing seem to be so hilarious, touching and ultimately admirable as Strand does, in very succinct ways" (People magazine).

A bold new translation of Euripides' shockingly modern classic work, from Forward Prize-winning poet Robin Robertson, with a new preface by bestselling and award-winning writer, critic, and translator Daniel MendelsohnThebes has been rocked by the arrival of Dionysus, the god of wine and ecstasy. Drawn by the god's power, the women of the city have rushed to worship him on the mountain, drinking and dancing with frenzied abandon.Pentheus, the king of Thebes, is furious, denouncing this so-called god as a charlatan and an insurgent. But no mortal can deny a god, much less one as powerful and seductive as Dionysus, who will exact a terrible revenge on Pentheus, drawing the king to his own tragic destruction.This stunning translation by award-winning poet Robin Robertson reinvigorates Euripides' masterpiece. Updating it for contemporary readers, he brings the ancient verse to fervid, brutal life, revealing a work of art as devastating and relevant today as it was in the fifth century BC.

Denizens of the shadows who live outside the law—from the desolate meth labs of the Ozark Mountains to the dog-fighting rings of Detroit to the lavish Los Angeles hotels where the famous run wild—the characters in Love and Other Wounds all thirst for something seemingly just beyond their reach. Some are on the run, pursued by the law or propelled relentlessly forward by a dangerous past that is disturbingly close. Others are searching for a semblance of peace and stability, and even love, in a fractured world defined by seething violence and ruthless desperation. All are bruised, pushed to their breaking points and beyond, driven to extremes they never imagined.Crackling with cinematic energy, raw and disquieting yet filled with pathos and a darkly vital humor, Love and Other Wounds is an unforgettable debut from an electrifying new voice, and a welcome addition to the pulp poetry canon.

From master storyteller Paul Bowles comes a new addition to ecco's the art of the story series—"essential reading" for any witness to the magic of the short form, writes vendela vidaAll the tales are a variety of detective story," writes Bowles of this, his first short story collection, "in which the reader is the detective; the mystery is in the motivation for the characters' behavior." In such stories as "A Distant Episode" and "How Many Midnights," Bowles pushes human character beyond socially defined limits, mapping a transformed—often horribly transformed—reality. Bowles captures the duality of human frailty and cruelty in these seventeen taut and atmospheric tales, written between 1939 and 1949. Brutal and gorgeous, visceral and profound, this timeless collection is "one of the most profound, beautifully wrought, and haunting collections in our literature... at once austere, witty, violent, and sensuous....His language has a purity of line, a poise and authority entirely its own, capable of instantly modulating from farce to horror without a ruffle" (Tobias Wolff).

This twentieth-anniversary reissue of a timeless collection celebrates the joys of poetry for children of all ages. Bringing together essential classic children's poems with the best of modern and contemporary international poetry, A Child's Anthology of Poetry is an indispensable introduction to literature and life for the young readerThe simple pleasures of reading and listening to poetry are unforgettable memories of childhood, and, for young minds, poetry is the gateway to an interest in language and storytelling. From Robert Frost to Maya Angelou, Shel Silverstein to Emily Dickinson, this collection emphasizes the fun and diversity of poetry, providing readers with a well-rounded, inclusive selection of poets. With the guidance of a special advisory board of esteemed poets— Deborah Digges, Gerald Early, Louise Glück, Jorie Graham, Edward Hirsch, Garrett Hongo, Maxine Kumin, Cynthia MacDonald, William Matthews, Thylias Moss, Ishmael Reed, Sarah Rosenstock, and Mark Strand—the editors have fashioned a delightful volume that encourages parents not to underestimate their children's ability to appreciate the music of the written word. It is a volume that will be treasured by generations of readers.Featuring artwork by Tom Pohrt, the wellknown illustrator of Crow and Weasel, and including favorite poems such as William Blake's "The Tyger" and Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky," in addition to more recent classics such as Elizabeth Bishop's "Sestina" and Theodore Roethke's "My Papa's Waltz," A Child's Anthology of Poetry is full of surprises and lyric charm.

Now in paperback, the inventive, lushly imagined debut novel—reminiscent of The Tiger's Wife and The History of Love—that explores the intersections of family secrets, Jewish myths, the legacy of war and history, and the bonds between sisters Sisters Marjorie and Holly are best friends—until Holly converts to a mysterious Jewish sect and marries a controlling man Marjorie despises. When Holly announces she's expecting her first child, Marjorie fears that she's lost her sister forever.But then Marjorie discovers their late grandfather Eli's notebook and its tale about a wizard named the White Rebbe and his struggle against the Angel of Losses, protector of the lost letter of the alphabet, which completes the secret name of God. Everything Marjorie thought she knew about her family comes undone. To learn the truth, she embarks on an odyssey that will lead her deep into the past and back to the present—and finally to her estranged sister, Holly, whom she must save from the consequences of Eli's secrets.Interweaving history, theology, and both real and imagined Jewish folktales, The Angel of Losses is a family story of what lasts, and of what we can—and cannot—escape.

Illuminating and essential, Can a Bee Sting a Bee? is a timeless gift, a handbook for curious children and their perplexed parents Many of the questions children ask in the course of growing up can stump even the best educated adult: Why can't I tickle myself? Are we all related? Who named all the cities? Do aliens exist? What makes me me? Is it okay to eat a worm? Who invented chocolate? If the universe started from nothing, how did it become something? How do you fall in love? Who is God? Why are some people mean?This charming and informative collection has been compiled from schoolchildren's actual questions, which are answered by the world's greatest experts, including Mary Roach, Richard Dawkins, Philip Pullman, Bear Grylls, David Eagleman, Philippa Gregory, Noam Chomsky, and Mario Batali.

The Riddle of the Labyrinth is the true story of the quest to solve one of the most mesmerizing linguistic riddles in history and of the three brilliant, obsessed, and ultimately doomed investigators whose combined work would eventually crack the code. An award–winning journalist trained as a linguist, Margalit Fox not only takes readers step-by-step through the forensic process involved in cracking an ancient secret code, she restores one of the primary investigators, Alice Kober, to her rightful place in what is one of the most remarkable intellectual detective stories of all time.

It's 2008, and Sweet Kirkendall's life is unraveling: her father is in jail for harboring undocumented Mexicans, her husband is away working, her young son is turning into a bully, she's a full-time caretaker for an invalid elderly family member, and now Sweet has to take in her orphaned ten-year-old nephew, Dustin, because his grandpa has been jailed. A contemporary everywoman, Sweet struggles to hold her family together under pressures from within and without. She has little money, no help, and surely no time to truck with current political issues—until they come roaring into her life via a new state immigration law, a fractured family, a lost child, an ambitious legislator, a grandstanding sheriff, a niece in desperate need of help, and the national news media camped on her doorstep.In a novel that tackles hot-button subjects—immigration, religion, civil rights, small-town politics, and the everyday struggles of working families—Rilla Askew vividly weaves together an authentic and compelling narrative with grace and humor.

The screenplay for McCarthy's classic film, bearing in full measure his gift—the ability to fit complex and universal emotions into ordinary lives and still preserve all of their power and significanceIn the spring of 1975 the film director Richard Pearce approached Cormac McCarthy with a screenplay idea. Though already a widely acclaimed novelist, the author of such modern classics as The Orchard Keeper and Child of God, McCarthy had never before written a screenplay. Using a few photographs in the footnotes to a 1928 biography of a famous pre–Civil War industrialist as inspiration, McCarthy and Pearce roamed the mill towns of the South researching their subject. A year later McCarthy finished The Gardener's Son, a taut, riveting drama of impotence, rage, and violence spanning two generations of mill owners and workers, fathers and sons, during the rise and fall of one of America's most bizarre utopian industrial experiments. Produced as a two-hour film and broadcast on PBS in 1976, The Gardener's Son received two Emmy Award nominations and was shown at the Berlin and Edinburgh Film Festivals.Set in Graniteville, South Carolina, The Gardener's Son is the tale of two families: the wealthy Greggs, who own and operate the local cotton mill, and the McEvoys, a family of mill workers beset by misfortune. The action opens as Robert McEvoy, a young mill worker, is having his leg amputated after an accident rumored to have been caused by James Gregg, the son of the mill's founder. Crippled and consumed by bitterness, McEvoy deserts both his job and his family.Returning two years later at the news of his mother's terminal illness, McEvoy arrives only to confront the grave diggers preparing her final resting place. His father, the mill's gardener, is now working on the factory line, the gardens forgotten. These proceedings stoke the slow-burning rage McEvoy carries within him, a fury that will ultimately consume both families.

Stockholm, 1791. Emil Larsson is a self-satisfied bureaucrat in the Office of Customs and Excise. He is a true man of the Town–a drinker, card player, and contented bachelor. That is until Mrs. Sofia Sparrow, fortune-teller and proprietor of an exclusive gaming parlor, shares with him a vision she has had of a golden path that will lead Emil to love and connection. She lays an Octavo for him, a spread of eight cards that augur the eight individuals who can help him realize this vision–if he can find them.But as Emil eagerly searches for his eight, he comes to the startling realization that finding them is no longer just a game of the heart, but crucial to pulling his country back from the crumbling precipice of rebellion and chaos.

With The Rage of a Privileged Class, Ellis Cose, a venerated and bestselling voice on American life, offered an eye-opening look at the simmering anger of the black middle class. Some sixteen years later, Cose has discovered this group is much less angry and even optimistic about its future, despite a flagging economy and a deeply divided body politic. With The End of Anger, Cose examines these new attitudes as well as the decline of white guilt and the intergenerational shifts in how blacks and whites view and interact with each other. Weaving material from interviews and two large and ambitious surveys, Cose—an esteemed journalist—offers an invaluable portrait of contemporary America, one that attempts to make sense of what a people do when the American dream, for some, is finally within reach, as one historical era ends and another begins. The End of Anger is an indispensable exploration of how mores change from one generation to the next and may well be the most important book dealing with race and class to be published in recent decades.

When a head injury obliterated twenty-two-year-old Molly Birnbaum’s sense of smell, it destroyed her dream of becoming a chef. Determined to reawaken her nose, she bravely sets off on a quest to rediscover the scented world. On the way, she seeks out everyone from former poet laureate Robert Pinsky to neuroscientist Oliver Sacks. A moving personal story packed with surprising facts about the senses, Season to Taste brims with the scents of Molly’s world—cinnamon, cedarwood, fresh bagels, and lavender—lost and finally found. In Season to Taste, Molly describes an ineffable, but indispensable, layer of life.

Celebrated legal scholar Kenji Yoshino's first book, Covering, was acclaimed—from the New York Times Book Review to O, The Oprah Magazine to the American Lawyer—for its elegant prose, its good humor, and its brilliant insights into civil rights and discrimination law. Now, in A Thousand Times More Fair, Yoshino turns his attention to the question of what makes a fair and just society, and delves deep into a surprising source to answer it: Shakespeare's greatest plays. Through fresh and insightful readings of Measure for Measure, Titus Andronicus, Othello, and others, he addresses the fundamental questions we ask about our world today and elucidates some of the most troubling issues in contemporary life. Enormously creative, engaging, and provocative, A Thousand Times More Fair is an altogether original book about Shakespeare and the law, and an ideal starting point to explore the nature of a just society–and our own.

From the acclaimed author of the 2007 New York Times Notable Book Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name comes a stunning novel about the love between husbands and wives, mothers and children.Twenty-eight years ago, Peter and Yvonne honeymooned in the beautiful coastal village of Datça, Turkey. Now Yvonne is a widow, her twin children grown. Hoping to immerse herself in memories of a happier time—as well as sand and sea—Yvonne returns to Datça. But her plans for a restorative week in Turkey are quickly complicated. Instead of comforting her, her memories begin to trouble her.Overwhelmed by the past and unexpectedly dislocated by the environment, Yvonne clings to a newfound friendship with Ahmet, a local boy who makes his living as a shell collector. But a devastating accident upends her delicate peace and throws her life into chaos—and her sense of self into turmoil.With the crystalline voice and psychological nuance for which her work has been so celebrated, Vendela Vida has crafted another unforgettable heroine in a stunningly beautiful and mysterious landscape.

The long-awaited paperback edition of Selected Poems, revised and updated with more than forty new poems never before published in English2011 marks the centenary year of one of the twentieth century’s most important poets, Nobel laureate Czeslaw Milosz. To mark the occasion, Anthony Milosz has translated into English the last poems his father wrote, granting readers new insight into the work of an unparalleled master of the form. Life opened for Czeslaw Milosz with the clash of civilizations in northeastern Europe. What unfolded around him was a century of catastrophe and madness: two world wars, revolutions, invasions, and the murders of tens of millions of people. In the thick of this upheaval, wide awake and in awe of living, Milosz tried to understand both history and the moment, with humble respect for the suffering of each individual. He wrote masterful poetry infused with a tireless spirit and a penetrating insight into fundamental human dilemmas and the staggering yet simple truth that “to exist on the earth is beyond any power to name.”

The only novel by avant-garde literary star Jane Bowles, the highly influential wife of legendary writer Paul Bowles, Two Serious Ladies is a modernist cult classic, mysterious, profound, anarchic, and funny, that follows two "respectable" women as they descend into debauchery—updated with an introduction by Claire Messud, bestselling author of The Emperor's Children and The Woman Upstairs.Christina Goering, eccentric and adventurous, and Frieda Copperfield, anxious but enterprising, are two serious ladies who want to live outside of themselves. Old friends, each will take a surprising path in search of salvation: during a visit to Panama, Mrs. Copperfield abandons her husband, finding solace in a relationship with a teenage prostitute; while Miss Goering, a wealthy spinster, pursues sainthood via sordid encounters with the basest of men. At the end the two women meet again, each radically altered by her experience.

There is no "you" consciously making decisions. So how do we make decisions? How can we have free will if we don't pull the levers on our own behavior? What moral and legal implications follow if we don't have free will? Who's in Charge? is a primer for a new era in the understanding of human behavior that ranges across neuroscience, psychology, ethics, and the law with a light touch but profound implications.

A madcap new novel from Jonas Jonasson, author of the #1 internationally bestselling The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared and The Girl Who Saved the King of SwedenA gangster, a vicar, and a receptionist walk into a bar . . .Killer-for-hire Anders is fresh out of prison and trying to keep his head down when he meets two unlikely new business partners at a 1-star hotel: one, an atheist former Protestant vicar fired from her church, and the other the hotel’s receptionist, the ruined grandson of an ex-millionaire. Together they cook up an idea for an enterprising venture involving Swedish gangsters that is set to make them all a fortune—until, all of a sudden and to everyone’s surprise, Anders finds Jesus. The perfect plan—if it weren’t for Hitman Anders’s curiosity about the meaning of it all. In conversations with the vicar, he turns to Jesus and, against all odds, Jesus answers him! Anders’s sudden interest in religion might be good for his soul, but it’s not good for business, and the vicar and the receptionist have to find a new plan, quick.As wildly funny and unexpected as Jonasson’s previous bestselling novels, Hitman Anders and the Meaning of It All is a zany, feel-good adventure story, tenderly and hilariously exploring belief, redemption, and the fact that it’s never too late to start again.

One of TIME's Best New Books to Read This Summer?Brilliant?a keen, elegantly written, and scorching account of the American family today. Through vivid stories, sharp analysis and wit, Quart anatomizes the middle class's fall while also offering solutions and hope.? ? Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and DimedFamilies today are squeezed on every side?from high childcare costs and harsh employment policies to workplaces without paid family leave or even dependable and regular working hours. Many realize that attaining the standard of living their parents managed has become impossible.Alissa Quart, executive editor of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, examines the lives of many middle-class Americans who can now barely afford to raise children. Through gripping firsthand storytelling, Quart shows how our country has failed its families. Her subjects?from professors to lawyers to caregivers to nurses?have been wrung out by a system that doesn't support them, and enriches only a tiny elite.Interlacing her own experience with close-up reporting on families that are just getting by, Quart reveals parenthood itself to be financially overwhelming, except for the wealthiest. She offers real solutions to these problems, including outlining necessary policy shifts, as well as detailing the DIY tactics some families are already putting into motion, and argues for the cultural reevaluation of parenthood and caregiving. Written in the spirit of Barbara Ehrenreich and Jennifer Senior, Squeezed is an eye-opening page-turner. Powerfully argued, deeply reported, and ultimately hopeful, it casts a bright, clarifying light on families struggling to thrive in an economy that holds too few options. It will make readers think differently about their lives and those of their neighbors.

This new era offers the promise of immensely powerful machines, but it also reframes a question first raised more than half a century ago, when the intelligent machine was born. Will we control these systems, or will they control us? In this sweeping history of the complicated and evolving relationship between humans and computers, Markoff traces the different ways developers have addressed this fundamental tension between man and machine and the ethical quandaries raised as the pace of technological change accelerates dramatically. We are on the brink of the next stage of the computer revolution, and robots have already begun to transform modern life. Designers must draw a bright line between what is human and what is machine. We must decide to design ourselves into our future—or risk being excluded from it altogether.

This brilliantly imagined debut tells the story of Flora 717, a devout young worker bee who finds herself in possession of a deadly secretFlora 717 is a sanitation worker, a member of the lowest caste in her orchard hive, where work and sacrifice are the highest virtues and worship of the beloved Queen the only religion. But Flora is not like other bees. With circumstances threatening the hive's survival, her curiosity is regarded as a dangerous flaw, but her courage and strength are assets. She is allowed to feed the newborns in the royal nursery and then to become a forager, flying alone and free to collect nectar and pollen. A feat of bravery grants her access to the Queen's inner sanctum, where she discovers mysteries about the hive that are both profound and ominous.But when Flora breaks the most sacred law of all—daring to challenge the Queen's preeminence—enemies abound, from the fearsome fertility police who enforce the hive's strict social hierarchy to the high priestesses jealously wedded to power. Her deepest instincts to serve and sacrifice are now overshadowed by a greater power: a fierce maternal love that will bring her into conflict with her conscience, her heart, and her society—and lead her to perform unthinkable deeds.Thrilling, suspenseful, and spectacularly imaginative, The Bees and its dazzling young heroine will forever change the way you look at the world outside your window.

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning and New York Times bestselling author of Less and Less is Lost The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells is a rapturously romantic story of a woman who finds herself transported to the ?other lives? she might have lived.After the death of her beloved twin brother and the abandonment of her long-time lover, Greta Wells undergoes electroshock therapy. Over the course of the treatment, Greta finds herself repeatedly sent to 1918, 1941, and back to the present. Whisked from the gas-lit streets and horse-drawn carriages of the West Village to a martini-fueled lunch at the Oak Room, in these other worlds, Greta finds her brother alive and well?though fearfully masking his true personality. And her former lover is now her devoted husband...but will he be unfaithful to her in this life as well? Greta Wells is fascinated by her alter egos: in 1941, she is a devoted mother; in 1918, she is a bohemian adulteress.In this spellbinding novel by Andrew Sean Greer, each reality has its own losses, its own rewards; each extracts a different price. Which life will she choose as she wrestles with the unpredictability of love and the consequences of even her most carefully considered choices?