A British stockbroker abandons his wife and career to pursue a simple life as an artist in Paris and then Tahiti.

"The first novel from award-winning author Gianfranco Calligarich to be published in English, Last Summer in the City is a witty and despairing classic of Italian literature. Biting, tragic, and endlessly quotable, this translated edition features an introductory appreciation from longtime fan New York Times bestselling author Andrae Aciman"-- In a city smothering under the summer sun and an overdose of la dolce vita, Leo Gazarra spends his time...

"Originally conceived as a novel but then transformed into a play by Ayn Rand, Ideal is the story of beautiful but tormented actress Kay Gonda. Accused of murder, she is on the run, and she turns for help to six fans who have written letters to her, eachtelling her that she represents their ideal a respectable family man, a far-left activist, a cynical artist, an evangelist, a playboy, and a lost soul. Each reacts to her plight in his own way, their...

"Andrea Bajani's "beautiful, original, and deeply moving" (Michael Cunningham) novel, which Jhumpa Lahiri asserts "accumulates with the quiet urgency of a snowstorm." A prismatic novel that records the indelible marks a mother leaves on her son after she abandons their home in Italy for a business she's building in Romania. Lorenzo, just a young boy when his mother leaves, recalls the incisive fragments of their life - when they would playfully wrestle...

William Stoner, the son of a dirt-poor Missouri farming family, embraces the scholar's life after attending college, but his education and marriage to a privileged young woman estranges him from his family.

Lauren Tranter knows what she saw: in her hospital room, a woman tried to take her newborn twins and replace them with her own creatures. Everyone thinks she's imagining things. A month passes-- and one morning the babies disappear from Lauren's side in a park. When they're found, something is different about them. The infants look like Morgan and Riley-- to everyone else. But to Lauren, something is off. Determined to bring her true infant sons home,...

A novel so compelling that it begs to be read in a single setting, The Sense of an Ending has the psychological and emotional depth and sophistication of Henry James at his best, and is a stunning achievement in Julian Barnes's oeuvre. This intense novel follows Tony Webster, a middle-aged man, as he contends with a past he never thought much about-until his closest childhood friends return with a vengeance: one of them from the grave, another maddeningly...

"Penny has never met anyone smarter than her. That's par for the course when you're a savant--one of less than one hundred in the world. But despite her photographic memory and super-powered intellect, there's one question Penny doesn't know the answer to: where did her father go when he left her and her mother years ago? On Penny's 21st birthday, she receives a card in the mail from her father, just as she has every year since he left. But this birthday...

Kate Youngblood is heading into an age where her eyes are less blue, her charm worn out, and soon no one will ever truly look at her, want to know her, again. Except one. Sam Grist is Kate's most promising student. An unflinching writer with razor-sharp clarity who gravitates towards dark themes and twisted plots, his raw talent is something Kate wants to nurture into literary success. But he's not there solely to be the best writer. He's been watching...

Something has happened to Peach. Staggering around the town streets in the aftermath of an assault, Peach feels a trickle of blood down her legs, a lingering smell of her anonymous attacker on her skin. It hurts to walk, but she manages to make her way to her home, where she stumbles into another oddly nightmarish reality: Her parents can't seem to comprehend that anything has happened to their daughter.