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In this eye-opening, authoritative biography, Adam Begley offers a captivating portrait of John Updike, the author who saw himself as a literary spy in small-town and suburban America, and who dedicated himself to the task of transcribing "middleness with all its grits, bumps, and anonymities." Updike explores the stages of the writer's pilgrim's progress: his beloved home turf of Berks County, Pennsylvania; his escape to Harvard; his brief, busy working life as the golden boy at The New Yorker; his family years in suburban Ipswich, Massachusetts; his extensive travel abroad; and his retreat to another Massachusetts town, Beverly Farms, where he remained until his death in 2009. Begley examines how Updike's fiction was shaped by his tumultuous personal life?including his enduring religious faith, his two marriages, and his firsthand experience of the "adulterous society" he was credited with exposing in the bestselling novel Couples. With a sharp critical sensibility, Begley probes Updike's best-loved works and reveals a surprising and deeply complex character fraught with contradictions: a kind man with a vicious wit, a gregarious charmer who was ruthlessly competitive, a private person compelled to spill his secrets on the printed page.Candid, intimate, and utterly absorbing, Updike is a masterful biography of a national treasure whose writing continues to resonate like no one else's.

In the winter of 1897, midwife Elspeth Howell arrives at her isolated farmstead in upstate New York to discover an unthinkable crime. The only survivor is her twelve-year-old son, Caleb, who joins her in mourning the tragedy and planning its reprisal.Their long journey leads them to a roughhewn lake town, defined by the violence of both its landscape and its inhabitants. There Caleb is forced into a brutal adulthood as he slowly discovers truths about his family he never suspected, and Elspeth must confront the terrible urges and unceasing temptations that have haunted her for years.Throughout it all, the love between mother and son serves as the only shield against a merciless world.

Set in America and Europe, David John's Flight from Berlin is a masterful blend of fact and fiction, drama and suspense?a riveting story of love, courage, and betrayal that culminates in a breathtaking race against the forces of evil.August 1936: The eyes of the world are on Berlin, where Adolf Hitler is using the Olympic Games to showcase his powerful new regime. British journalist Richard Denham is determined to report the truth: that the carefully staged spectacle masks the Nazis' ruthless brutality. Sparks fly when the cynical newspaperman meets the beautiful and rebellious American socialite Eleanor Emerson, an athlete covering the Games as a celebrity columnist. Their chance encounter at a reception thrown by Joseph Goebbels leads them into a treacherous game of espionage. At stake: a mysterious dossier that threatens the leadership of the Third Reich. While Berlin welcomes the world, the Nazi capital becomes a terrifying place for Richard and Eleanor. Drawn together by danger and passion, they must execute a daring plan to survive. But one wrong move could be their last.

Edgar Kellogg has always yearned to be popular. When he leaves his lucrative law career for a foreign correspondent post in a Portuguese backwater with a homegrown terrorist movement, Edgar recognizes Barrington Saddler, the disappeared reporter he's replacing, as the larger-than-life character he longs to emulate. Yet all is not as it appears. Os Soldados Ousados de Barba?"The Daring Soldiers of Barba" ?have been blowing up the rest of the world for years in order to win independence for a province so dismal and backward that you couldn't give the rathole away. So why, with Barrington vanished, do incidents claimed by the "SOB" suddenly dry up? A droll, playful novel, The New Republic addresses terrorism with a deft, tongue-in- cheek touch while also pressing a more intimate question: What makes particular people so magnetic, while the rest of us inspire a shrug?

From the author of the international bestseller The Bride Stripped Bare comes the raw and resonant story of a middle-aged wife and mother who attempts to reclaim her lost sense of self by exploring the memory of an old love affair, the consequences of which have remained unresolved for years. Nikki Gemmell is "one of the few truly original voices to emerge in a long time" (Time Out New York), and With My Body is a unique and captivating novel. Poetic and boldly, unabashedly sensual, Gemmell's gorgeous writing and explosive content evoke the seductive power of The Secret Life Of Catherine M, Damage, and The Story of O, but this instant classic bears a modern insight into present-day sexuality and that could only come from the intimate and invigorating voice of Nikki Gemmell.

The news arrives in a letter to his sister, Nannerl, in December 1791. But the message carries more than word of Nannerl's brother's demise. Two months earlier, Mozart confided to his wife that his life was rapidly drawing to a close . . . and that he knew he had been poisoned.In Vienna to pay her final respects, Nannerl soon finds herself ensnared in a web of suspicion and intrigue?as the actions of jealous lovers, sinister creditors, rival composers, and Mozart's Masonic brothers suggest that dark secrets hastened the genius to his grave. As Nannerl digs deeper into the mystery surrounding her brother's passing, Mozart's black fate threatens to overtake her as well.Transporting readers to the salons and concert halls of eighteenth-century Austria, Mozart's Last Aria is a magnificent historical mystery that pulls back the curtain on a world of soaring music, burning passion, and powerful secrets.

In this New York Times Notable Book from one of today's most acclaimed writers, two lives stretched between two cities converge in a chance meeting that will irrevocably change their lives. "Hadley is a supremely perceptive writer of formidable skill and intelligence, someone who goes well beyond surfaces." --New York Times Book ReviewUnsettled by the recent death of his mother, Paul sets out in search of Pia, his daughter from his first marriage, who has disappeared into the labyrinth of London. Discovering her pregnant and living illegally in a run-down council flat with a pair of Polish siblings, Paul is entranced by Pia's excitement at living on the edge. Abandoning his second wife and their children in Wales, he joins her to begin a new life in the heart of London.Cora, meanwhile, is running in the opposite direction, back to Cardiff, to the house she has inherited from her parents. She is escaping her marriage, and the constrictions and disappointments of her life in London. But there is a deeper reason why she cannot stay with her decent Civil Service husband; the aftershocks of which she hasn't fully come to terms with herself.Connecting both stories is the London train, and a chance meeting that will have immediate and far-reaching consequences for both Paul and Cora.

First in To Kill a Mockingbird and fifty-five years later with Go Set a Watchman, Harper Lee's beloved characters resonate with readers long after the books are finished. To Kill a Mockingbird, published in July 1960, has become a touchstone in American literary and social history. It may well be our national novel.With Scout, Atticus & Boo, Mary McDonagh Murphy commemorates more than half a century of To Kill a Mockingbird by exploring the novel's history and influence. In compelling interviews, Anna Quindlen, Tom Brokaw, Oprah Winfrey, James Patterson, James McBride, Scott Turow, Wally Lamb, Andrew Young, Richard Russo, Adriana Trigiani, Rick Bragg, Jon Meacham, Allan Gurganus, Diane McWhorter, Lee Smith, Rosanne Cash, and others reflect on their own personal connections to Lee's masterpiece, what it means to them?then and now?and how it has affected their lives and careers.

A knight in the Holy Land. A woman in the frozen north. A war that kept them apart... Among the last bastion of God's holy warriors determined to save Jerusalem from the Muslims, Arn Magnusson of the Knights Templar is renowned as a man of compassion, strength, and faith, even among the enemy Saracens?Saladin and his Muslim followers. Yet, neither time nor distance can lessen Arn's pain of separation from his beloved Cecilia; confined to a cloister back home in western Götaland, his betrothed, the mother of their newborn son, is a pawn in a war between clans vying for control of the crown.And when an accident of fate brings together Arn and Saladin, an unlikely friendship is forged that will alter the course of the Templar knight's life, and the history of Jerusalem itself.

Nancy Mitford meets Nora Ephron in the pages of The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street, Helene Hanff's delightful travelogue about her "bucket list" trip to LondonWhen devoted Anglophile Helene Hanff is invited to London for the English publication of 84, Charing Cross Road--in which she shares two decades of correspondence with Frank Doel, a British bookseller who became a dear friend--she can hardly believe her luck. Frank is no longer alive, but his widow and daughter, along with enthusiastic British fans from all walks of life, embrace Helene as an honored guest. Eager hosts, including a famous actress and a retired colonel, sweep her up in a whirlwind of plays and dinners, trips to Harrod's, and wild jaunts to their favorite corners of the countryside. A New Yorker who isn't afraid to speak her mind, Helene Hanff delivers an outsider's funny yet fabulous portrait of idiosyncratic Britain at its best. And whether she is walking across the Oxford University courtyard where John Donne used to tread, visiting Windsor Castle, or telling a British barman how to make a real American martini, Helene always wears her heart on her sleeve. The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street is not only a witty account of two different worlds colliding but also a love letter to England and its literary heritage--and a celebration of the written word's power to sustain us, transport us, and unite us.

A Wildly Funny and Shockingly True Compendium of the Bad Boys (and Girls) of Western LiteratureRock stars, rappers, and actors haven't always had a monopoly on misbehaving. There was a time when authors fought with both words and fists, a time when poets were the ones living fast and dying young. This witty, insightful, and wildly entertaining narrative profiles the literary greats who wrote generation-defining classics such as The Great Gatsby and On the Road while living and loving like hedonistic rock icons, who were as likely to go on epic benders as they were to hit the bestseller lists. Literary Rogues turns back the clock to consider these historical (and, in some cases, living) legends, including Edgar Allan Poe, Oscar Wilde, Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Dorothy Parker, Hunter S. Thompson, and Bret Easton Ellis. Brimming with fasci- nating research, Literary Rogues is part nostalgia, part literary analysis, and a wholly raucous celebration of brilliant writers and their occasionally troubled legacies.

"A keen sociological eye for class and ideology; an understanding of the contradictory impulses of the human heart; an ability to conjure a place, a mood and a time through seemingly matter-of-fact descriptions." -- Michiko Kakutani, New York TimesShocking, intimate, often uncomfortably honest, Adore reaffirms Doris Lessing's unrivaled ability to capture the truth of the human condition.Roz and Lil have been best friends since childhood. But their bond stretches beyond familiar bounds when these middle-aged mothers fall in love with each other's teenage sons--taboo-shattering passions that last for years, until the women end them, vowing to have a respectable old age.

"It's an admirable endeavor to have Iraq addressed by someone who is in so many ways able to approach it from two worlds. . . . Tamara Chalabi has the stuff, in every sense, that is needful to undertake this." --Christopher HitchensIn the tradition of Jung Chang's Wild Swans and Bhutto Benazir's Reconciliation comes Tamara Chalabi's unique memoir of returning to her family's homeland, Iraq. In this epic story of one daughter's journey through the annals of her family's tumultuous history, Chalabi's powerful voice and piercing vision illuminate her country and its people as never before.Just ten days after Baghdad's fall in 2003, Tamara Chalabi arrived in the city after a lifetime in exile--finally entering the homeland she'd known only through stories and her own imagination.Investigating four generations of her family's history at the forefront of Iraqi society, Chalabi offers a rich portrait of Middle Eastern life and a provocative look at a lost Iraq. Unforgettable characters provide glimpses of the end of the Ottoman Empire, the birth of the Iraqi state, the flowering of "the Paris of the Middle East," and Iraq's descent into chaos. At once intimate and magisterial, Chalabi's memoir of return and reclamation vividly captures the rich history of a country shattered by war and a family that has never forgotten its past.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER"The most succinct and accessible overview of philosophy I have come across, and perfect for anyone who wants to dip their toe into the waters of philosophy without drowning in intimidating prose." ¿Matt Haig, Washington PostFrom the timeless wisdom of the ancient Greeks to Christianity, the Enlightenment, existentialism, and postmodernism, Luc Ferry's instant classic brilliantly and accessibly explains the enduring teachings of philosophy--including its profound relevance to modern daily life and its essential role in achieving happiness and living a meaningful life. This lively journey through the great thinkers will enlighten every reader, young and old.

When Nicholas Shakespeare stumbled across a box of documents belonging to his glamorous, mysterious late aunt, Priscilla, he was completely unaware of where this discovery would take him and what he would learn about her hidden past. Piecing together fragments of one woman's remarkable and tragic life, Priscilla is at once a stunning story of detection, a loving portrait of a flawed woman trying to survive in terrible times, and a spellbinding slice of history.

Vienna, 1913. Lysander Rief, a young English actor in town seeking psychotherapy, is caught up in a feverish affair with a beautiful, enigmatic woman?until she goes to the police to press charges of rape. Only a frenzied getaway plotted by two mysterious British diplomats saves him from trial. But after Lysander returns to a London on the cusp of war, the traumatic ordeal haunts him at every turn. The men who coordinated his escape recruit him to carry out a brutal murder. His lover shows up at a party, ready to resume their liaison. Suddenly plunged into the dangerous theater of wartime intelligence?a murky world of sex, scandal, and spies?Lysander must unravel a secret that threatens Britain's safety.Moving from Vienna to London's West End, from the battlefields of France to hotel rooms in Geneva, Waiting for Sunrise is a mesmerizing journey into the human psyche, a beautifully observed portrait of wartime Europe, a plot-twisting thriller, and a literary tour de force.

Twenty years have passed since Mary Ann Singleton left her husband and child in San Francisco to pursue her dream of a television career in New York. Now a pair of personal calamities has driven her back to the city of her youth and into the arms of her oldest friend, Michael ?Mouse? Tolliver, a gardener happily ensconced with his much-younger husband. More than three decades in the making, Armistead Maupin's legendary Tales of the City series rolls into a new age, still sassy, irreverent, and curious, and still exploring the boundaries of the human experience with insight, compassion, and mordant wit.

Booger Bottom, in rural Georgia, has no road signs, no stoplights, no stores. Nobody knows how it got its name, whether from the mythical booger?part panther, part wild dog?that is rumored to have roamed there, or from the Feds (?boogers?) who raided local moonshine stills during Prohibition. Today Booger Bottom's most famous product is Michael Waddell, one of the world's most accomplished hunters. Growing up in this wild land near the Chattahoochee River, Waddell was blessed with two great gifts: a wonderful father who stoked his passion for hunting, and endless time in which to pursue it. He eventually left the backwoods of Georgia to stalk elk, moose, caribou, wildebeest, eland, and everything in between, from Alaska to Africa.Mixing Waddell's best hunting stories with hilarious anecdotes about the people he's met along the way, Hunting Booger Bottom is a must-read for anyone who has ever wandered into the woods with "a stick and a string."

Today I buried my parents in the backyard.Neither of them were beloved.Marnie and her little sister, Nelly, are on their own now. Only they know what happened to their parents, Izzy and Gene, and they aren't telling. While life in Glasgow's Maryhill housing estate isn't grand, the girls do have each other.As the New Year comes and goes, Lennie, the old man next door, realizes that his young neighbors are alone and need his help. Lennie takes them in?feeds them, clothes them, protects them?and something like a family forms. But soon, the sisters' friends, their teachers, and the authorities start asking tougher questions. As one lie leads to another, dark secrets about the girls' family surface, creating complications that threaten to tear them apart.Written with ferce sympathy and beautiful precision, told in alternating voices, The Death of Bees is an enchanting, grimly comic tale of three lost souls who, unable to answer for themselves, can answer only for one another.

The sensational tale of the first mixed-race girl introduced to high-society England and raised as a lady...The illegitimate daughter of a captain in the Royal Navy and an enslaved African woman, Dido Belle was raised by her great-uncle, the Earl of Mansfield, one of the most powerful men of the time and a leading opponent of slavery. When the portrait he commissioned of his two wards, Dido and her white cousin, Elizabeth, was unveiled, eighteenth-century England was shocked to see a black woman and white woman depicted as equals. Inspired by the painting, Belle vividly brings to life this extraordinary woman caught between two worlds, and illuminates the great civil rights question of her age: the fight to end slavery.The feature film Belle is produced by Damian Jones (The Iron Lady, The History Boys, Welcome to Sarajevo), written by Misan Sagay, and directed by Amma Asante, and stars the extraordinary Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Dido Belle, Tom Wilkinson, Sam Reid, Miranda Richardson, Penelope Wilton, Tom Felton, Matthew Goode, and Emily Watson.

The New York Times bestseller, now available in paperback--an investigation into the killing of a local man from Maisie's childhood neighborhood leads the sleuth from her own doorstep to London's halls of power.In this latest entry in Jacqueline Winspear's acclaimed, bestselling mystery series--"less whodunits than why-dunits, more P.D. James than Agatha Christie" (USA Today)--Maisie Dobbs takes on her most personal case yet, a twisting investigation into the brutal killing of a street peddler that will take her from the working-class neighborhoods of her childhood into London's highest circles of power. Perfect for fans of A Lesson in Secrets, The Mapping of Love and Death, or other Maisie Dobbs mysteries--and an ideal place for new readers to enter the series--Elegy for Eddie is an incomparable work of intrigue and ingenuity, full of intimate descriptions and beautifully painted scenes from between the World Wars, from one of the most highly acclaimed masters of mystery, Jacqueline Winspear.

This book of interconnected stories depicts the chaotic life of a young boy on the run with his teenage mother. When Sarah reclaims Jeremiah from his foster parents, he finds himself catapulted into her world of motels and truck stops, exposed to the abusive, exploitative men she encounters. As he learns to survive in this harrowing environment, Jeremiah also learns to love his mother, even as she descends into drug-fueled madness. Told in spare, lyrical prose, rich with imagination and dark humor, The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things transforms the savagery of Jeremiah's world into an indelible experience of compassion. This special edition includes an additional seven stories, previously uncollected.

When a horrific act of violence shatters the peaceful October night in Provincetown, Massachusetts, the fates of nine-year-olds Gus Silva and Hallie Costa become inextricably entwined. Told in alternating voices, The Orphans of Race Point traces their relationship over the next three decades as they try to come to terms with the past. What begins as a childhood friendship evolves into something stronger, but when a terrible tragedy exhumes the ghosts they thought they'd put to rest, their dreams are abruptly destroyed.Hallie and Gus move forward to build separate lives, but Gus's hard-won peace is threatened when he meets a troubled woman who awakens memories of the childhood he has worked so hard to forget. Although helping her offers him a chance at the redemption he desperately desires, it will come at a devastating price. Turning around an unthinkable betrayal, this epic, all-consuming novel explores how far we will go for love, even if it means sacrificing everything?and in doing so, celebrates our capacity for faith, forgiveness, and hope.

A gripping and deeply revealing history of an infamous slave rebellion that nearly toppled New Orleans and changed the course of American historyIn January 1811, five hundred slaves, dressed in military uniforms and armed with guns, cane knives, and axes, rose up from the plantations around New Orleans and set out to conquer the city. Ethnically diverse, politically astute, and highly organized, this self-made army challenged not only the economic system of plantation agriculture but also American expansion. Their march represented the largest act of armed resistance against slavery in the history of the United States.American Uprising is the riveting and long-neglected story of this elaborate plot, the rebel army's dramatic march on the city, and its shocking conclusion. No North American slave uprising?not Gabriel Prosser's, not Denmark Vesey's, not Nat Turner's?has rivaled the scale of this rebellion either in terms of the number of the slaves involved or the number who were killed. More than one hundred slaves were slaughtered by federal troops and French planters, who then sought to write the event out of history and prevent the spread of the slaves' revolutionary philosophy. With the Haitian revolution a recent memory and the War of 1812 looming on the horizon, the revolt had epic consequences for America.Through groundbreaking original research, Daniel Rasmussen offers a window into the young, expansionist country, illuminating the early history of New Orleans and providing new insight into the path to the Civil War and the slave revolutionaries who fought and died for justice and the hope of freedom.

An eye-opening history of the technology that harnessed electricity and powered the greatest scientific and technological advances of our time.What begin as a long-running dispute in biology, involving a dead frog's twitching leg, a scalpel, and a metal plate, would become an invention that transformed the history of the world: the battery. Science journalist Henry Schlesinger traces the history of this essential power source and demonstrates its impact on our lives, from Alessandro Volta's first copper-and-zinc model in 1800 to twenty-first-century technological breakthroughs. Schlesinger introduces the charlatans and geniuses, the paupers and magnates, who were attracted to the power of the battery.

Adam Shepard boldly and ingeniously proved the viability of the American Dream in his first book, Scratch Beginnings. Now he tells us that the years we spend in college are The Best Four Years of our lives--and he offers a lively, entertaining, and eminently insightful guide on how to make the most of the college experience from orientation to graduation.

When Agatha Christie died in 1976, at age eighty-five, she had become the world's most popular author. At the end of 2004, following the death of Christie's daughter, Rosalind, a remarkable legacy was revealed: seventy-three handwritten volumes of notes, lists, and drafts outlining all her plans for her many books, plays, and stories. Buried in this treasure trove, all in the beloved author's unmistakable handwriting, are revelations about her famous books that will fascinate anyone who has ever read or watched an Agatha Christie story.Full of details she was too modest to reveal in her own autobiography, this remarkable book includes a wealth of excerpts and pages reproduced directly from the notebooks and her letters?plus, two complete, recently discovered Hercule Poirot short stories never before published.

One May evening in London, Adam Kindred, a young climatologist in town for a job interview, is feeling good about the future as he sits down for a meal at a little Italian bistro. He strikes up a conversation with a solitary diner at the next table, who leaves soon afterward. With horrifying speed, this chance encounter leads to a series of malign accidents, through which Adam loses everything--home, family, friends, job, reputation, passport, credit cards, cell phone--never to get them back.William Boyd's electrifying follow-up to the Costa Award-winning Restless, Ordinary Thunderstorms is a profound and gripping novel about the fragility of social identity, the corruption at the heart of big business, and the secrets that lie hidden in the seamy underbelly of every city.