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When novelist Patience McKenna takes a job at a dubious publishing house, a corpse in her closet has her searching for the true crime culprit. Writing Enterprises makes Patience McKenna sick. A onetime romance novelist, she has recently vaulted into the arena of true crime—a happy side effect of being too close to a high-profile murder. Writing Enterprises preys on wannabes, offering vanity publishing, bogus “literary services,” and, worst of all, the insipid Writing Magazine. When Writing profiles several of McKenna's novelist friends, they want someone they trust to edit the copy. With great hesitation, McKenna takes the job. She's only been in the office a half hour when a corpse falls out of her closet. Clearly, Writing has some skeletons in the closet. McKenna has never liked this company, but now that she knows there's a killer in the office, she has no choice but to take him or her down.

A nagy angol regényíró saját életének, hányattatott gyermekkorának és ifjúságának élményeit is megörökített Copperfield Dávid történetében. A korán elárvult gyereket komisz mostohaapja a sivár nevelőintézet, majd a londoni gyerekmunka poklába taszítja, de egyenessége, jó esze és meleg szíve révén, no meg egy morcos, de aranyszívű nagynéni jóvoltából David kiemelkedik a nyomor mélyéről, és sikerrel elvégezheti iskoláit. Dickens, mint minden regényében, itt is a korabeli Anglia eleven rajzával és felejthetetlen alakok egész sorával ajándékozza meg az olvasót.

From award-winning mystery writer Robert Barnard comes a classic British whodunit about a bestselling author who is murdered—and his latest unpublished manuscript has gone missing.Sir Oliver Fairleigh-Stubbs, overweight and overbearing, collapses and dies at his birthday party while indulging his taste for rare liquors. He had promised his daughter he would be polite and charitable for the entire day, but the strain of such exemplary behavior was obviously too great. He leaves a family relieved to be rid of him, and he also leaves a fortune, earned as a bestselling mystery author. But the manuscript of the unpublished volume left to Sir Oliver's wife, a posthumous “last case” that might be worth millions, has disappeared. And Sir Oliver's death is beginning to look less than natural.

In ihrem vielleicht schönsten Roman erzählt Janet Frame von einer Frau, die, nachdem sie ihren Ehemann verloren hat, beschließt Schriftstellerin zu werden. Sie absolviert einen Kurs, geht auf Reisen, verliebt sich, heiratet erneut - und wird wieder Witwe. Auf Einladung von Freunden verbringt sie, die Neuseeländerin, den Sommer in Berkeley, Kalifornien, und erbt unversehens das Haus ihrer Freunde, die bei einem Erdbeben in Italien ums Leben kommen. Doch am Ende des Sommers tauchen sie quicklebendig wieder auf. Was ist Realität, was Fiktion, wie glaubwürdig ist die Erzählerin, die sich uns unter verschiedenen Namen vorstellt? Amüsant und detailreich, haarsträubend und bunt, in einer grandiosen Sprache erzählt dieser Roman lauter Geschichten und handelt dabei zugleich vom Schreiben und Erzählen selbst. Und das Maniototo, eine Hochebene in Neuseeland, die die Maori'Blutebene'nennen, ist eine Metapher für die Phantasiewelt der Autorin, für den'Ort der Imagination, den Knotenpunkt zwischen Literatur und Leben'(Manuela Reichart), den Janet Frame mit ihrer unvergleichlichen Sprache sichtbar macht.

This is a novel quite unlike any other: even the most avid reader will find it original and unforgettable. It has the power to shock, disgust, and appall at the same time that it amuses, intrigues, and evokes sympathy, even empathy, for its monstrous central character, an anti-hero whose frustration at not being able to publish a novel fuels his descent into a very real moral abyss.'I Hate Martin Amis et al.'provides a unique perspective on one of the worst war crimes of the modern age: the siege of Sarajevo seen through the eyes of a would be author and sniper killing innocent civilians just so he can write a novel about his experience.

Written in the tradition of Maggie O'Farrell and Louise Doughty, this is psychological suspense at its very best Dan and a group of his friends enjoy a Sunday lunch together on a perfect summer's day. They're pleased to welcome their glamorous new neighbor and novelist, Ellie, who has rented a house in the village to work on her book. She likes to place herself in the center of her plots, she says, although it's hard to see what she'll find to write about in this quiet country backwater. As Ellie slots effortlessly into the village social scene, Dan's wife begins to feel increasingly alienated from her friends and isolated from her family, but, for the life of her, she can't fathom why...

Russell Todaro, a young American translator, moves to Paris to take stock of his life and goals only to lose himself in the surprising twists fate has in store for him. One night, two men waving guns and knives break and enter their Paris hotel room,

Yannis Loukas is editing his father's autobiography. Going through the family archives, he discovers the manuscript of an aspiring novelist named Loukas Matthaiou. While reading it, Yannis feels as if someone has put to paper his innermost thou

Con una escritura de engañosa transparencia y una trama que no da tregua al lector, La velocidad de la luz indaga en nuestra ilimitada capacidad de hacer daño, en la infinita estupidez de la guerra y del éxito, pero sobre todo en el poder definitivo de la literatura para enfrentarse a la realidad y exorcizar sus demonios. Ésta es la historia de una amistad que empieza en 1987, cuando el narrador, un joven aspirante a novelista, viaja a una universidad del Medio Oeste estadounidense y conoce a Rodney Falk, su compañero de despacho, un ex combatiente de Vietnam huraño e inabordable, ferozmente lúcido y corroído en secreto por su pasado. Pero ésta es también la historia de una experiencia radical en el abismo indescifrable del mal y la culpa, que el propio narrador solo logrará entender y asumir años más tarde, como en una fulguración, cuando conozca el éxito y lo que éste tiene de corrupción insidiosa. Para entonces la figura imprecisa de Rodney y su historia devastadora se le acabarán imponiendo con la fuerza de lo necesario, como un emblema de su propia historia, y acaso de la condición humana. Reseñas: «La velocidad de la luz es un fascinante libro de zombis y fantasmas; [.. una elaborada exploración masculina de la culpa, lo aberrante y lo auténtico; la imposibilidad de la redención y la plausibilidad del autoperdón.» J. Harrison, The Guardian «Un despliegue casi extravagante de maestría artística en la que una compleja red de referencias cruzadas temáticas y verbales resuena por todo el texto.» Times Literary Supplement «Una aventura moral. Una lección magistral de invención y verdad.» J. Ernesto Ayala-Dip, El País

A house party turns a millionaire's hacienda hideaway into a crime scene in this classic detective novel from an Edgar Award–winning Grand Master. The Godfrey family is vacationing among the picturesque rocky cliffs of the North Atlantic seaboard, expecting peace, quiet, and, perhaps, a bit of golf or tennis. But one dusky evening in an isolated spot on the grounds of Spanish Cape, Rosa and her uncle David get into an argument about her secretive romance with one of their guests, the roguish John Marco, a handsome cad with a yellow roadster and no visible source of income. That's when a towering one-eyed man with a.38 revolver emerges from the twilight. When renowned sleuth Ellery Queen arrives the next day from New York City, looking forward to a summer getaway on the coast, he realizes his trip will be no walk on the beach. Rescuing Rosa, he discovers her captor mistook David for John and struck the former down instead. But Ellery has more work to do when Rosa's shady sweetheart is found stone dead and stark naked... aside from a black fedora and a theatrical-looking opera cloak. There are plenty of guests and members of the household who might have wanted John dead, but who did it—and what in the world happened to the victim's clothes? In this iconic series inspired by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and praised by none other than Agatha Christie, carefully planted clues, logical deduction, and an atmospheric 1930s setting combine for an irresistibly enjoyable read for anyone who loves a murderous puzzle.

NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTUREStarring Helen Mirren, Christopher Plummer, & James McAvoyIn 1910, Count Leo Tolstoy, the most famous writer in the world, is caught in the struggle between his devoted wife and an equally devoted acolyte over the master's legacy. Sofya Andreyevna fears that she and the children she has borne Tolstoy will lose all to Vladimir Chertkov and the Tolstoyan movement, which preaches the ideals of poverty, chastity, and pacifism.As Tolstoy seeks peace in his final days, Valentin Bulgakov is hired to be his secretary and enlisted as a spy by both camps. But Valentin's loyalty is to the great man, who in turn recognizes in the young idealist his own youthful struggle with worldly passions.Deftly moving among a colorful cast of characters, drawing on the writings of the people on whom they are based, Jay Parini has created a stunning portrait of an enduring genius and a deeply affecting novel.

A stylish puzzle mystery from the author who “took the intellectual game that was the formal detective novel to greater heights than any American writer” (The Weekly Standard). The windows of French's department store are one of New York's great attractions. Year-round, their displays show off the finest in fashion, art, and home décor, and tourists and locals alike make a point of stopping to see what's on offer. One afternoon, as the board debates a merger upstairs, a salesgirl begins a demonstration in one of the windows, showing off French's new Murphy bed. A crowd gathers to watch the bed lower from the wall after a single touch of a button. But as the bed opens, people run screaming. Out tumbles a woman—crumpled, bloody, and dead. The victim was Mrs. French, wife of the company president, and finding her killer will turn this esteemed store upside down. Only one detective has the soft touch necessary—debonair intellectual Ellery Queen. As Queen and his police inspector father dig into French's secrets, they find their killer is more serious than any window shopper.

The “intensely logical” master sleuth discovers a crowded coffin in one of his earliest and most puzzling cases (The New York Times). The scion of a famous New York art-dealing family, Georg Khalkis spent his final years housebound with blindness until he died of a heart attack. After his funeral, his will mysteriously vanishes. Following a thorough search, Inspector Richard Queen's son, Ellery, suggests checking the coffin, where they discover not one, but two corpses. When the second body is identified as an ex-convict, it becomes clear they have a murder case on their hands with links to the art world and a da Vinci forgery. It's up to young Ellery Queen to solve the case in “a lively and well-constructed yarn containing unusual setting, ingenuity of plot, a surprise solution and legitimate use of the analytico-deductive method” (New York Herald Tribune Book Review).

When an amnesiac friend wakes up with blood on his hands—and it seems to be someone else's—Ellery Queen takes the case in this “enigmatic entertainment” (Kirkus Reviews). Howard Van Horn wakes up in a Bowery flophouse. His knuckles are bruised, his head is bloodied, all his valuables are gone, and he has a strong urge to leap out the window. He has been unconscious for nineteen days—another in a long line of amnesiac episodes that have destroyed this once-promising sculptor. As he comes to grips with this latest blackout, he realizes something awful. The blood on his clothes suggests that another life has been wrecked. Van Horn goes to an old friend, amateur sleuth Ellery Queen, who works hand in hand with the New York Police Department. Though Queen has solved countless murders, never before has he been asked to determine whether a crime was committed at all. To get to the root of the sculptor's attacks, Queen forces him to return to Boston, to confront a family secret so dark that Van Horn's mind destroyed itself rather than face it.

What if the Martian invasion was not entirely the product of H.G. Wells's vivid imagination? What if Wells witnessed something that spurred him to write The War of the Worlds as a warning? From drafty London flats to the steamy Sahara, to the surface of the moon and beyond, The Martian War takes the reader on an exhilarating journey with Wells and his companions.

In this follow-up to Bech: A Book, Henry Bech, the priapic, peripatetic, and unproductive Jewish American novelist, returns with seven more chapters from his mock-heroic life. He turns fifty in a confusing blend of civic and erotic circumstances while publicizing himself in Australia and Canada. He marries a shiksa and travels with her to Israel, where she falls in love with the land, and to Scotland, where he does. And—sweating buckets! thinking big! minting miracles!—he writes an ingeniously tawdry bestseller. Bech's aesthetic and moral embarrassments reveal acid truths about both his trade and our times.

One of the great Golden Age detectives is back in a mystery that “pioneered a style which countless writers would follow in the decades to come” (American Culture). It's Christmas in Chicago, and Inspector Richard Queen is enjoying a busman's holiday at a conference on gangland violence—but his son, amateur sleuth Ellery, isbored silly. Until, that is, Ellery reads of an unusual killing in rural Arroyo, West Virginia: A schoolmaster has been found beheaded and crucified. Ellery hustles his father into his roadster and heads east, since there is nothing he'd like better for Christmas than a juicy, gruesome puzzle. When the Queens arrive in Arroyo, they learn that the victim was an eccentric atheist, but not the sort to make enemies. What initially looks to be the work of a sadistic cult turns out to be something far more sinister. In the months ahead, more victims will turn up all over the world—all killed in the same horrifying manner. It will take several bodies before Queen divines the clue that unlocks the mystery of the Christmas crucifixion.

A journalist searches for the true story of his glamorous sibling's deathWhen rock star J. C. Tripper died, only his brother Lee was by his side, and in the decades since, Lee has been deviled by questions of what really happened that night in Tangier. He thinks he knows the truth, but his recollection of that final drug-soaked bender is about to be called into question. An old acquaintance mails Lee a Nazi pistol and four Polaroid pictures of a dead body—an invitation to reopen a long-cold murder investigation. Lee then reconnects with Sam Innis, onetime best friend to the brothers Tripper, who urges him to track down J.C.'s former bandmates and music industry contacts. That night, Lee's girlfriend, a bestselling conspiracy theorist, is tortured to death in her tub. As his brother comes back to haunt him, Lee must unravel the mystery of J.C.'s last days, or risk joining him behind the velvet rope at the great after-party in the sky.

By the time Jim Thompson was sixteen years old, he had been a newspaper boy, a burlesque show hawker, a plumber's helper, a comedian in two-reel pictures, a night bellboy in a luxury hotel and over a dozen other occupations. By the time he was eighteen, he was driving across America in a broken-down Ford without a penny to his name and his mother and his kid sister Freddie in tow, looking for just one more paycheck to keep them all alive.A bittersweet comedy of a hard-won American life, ROUGHNECK chronicles the many jobs, near-criminal escapades, and downright unlawful grifts of the man who would become one of crime fiction's most enduring writers, in a larger-than-life literary memoir--or wildly entertaining tall tale--as only Thompson could tell it. Hard times have never sounded so good.

This is the story of Jane who finds the novel she is working on starts to write back. She's already realized novel writing isn't such a piece of cake after all, and the world of fiction is a far more complicated place than she ever imagined.

'The very model of the modern paranoid novel'(New York Times) and an ambitious work of semi-autobiographical fiction from one of England's greatest novelists. Gilbert Pinfold is a reclusive Catholic novelist suffering from acute inertia. In an attempt to defeat insomnia he has been imbibing an unappetizing cocktail of bromide, chloral, and creme de menthe. He books a passage on the SS Caliban and, as it cruises towards Ceylon, rapidly slips into madness.Almost as soon as the gangplank lifts, Pinfold hears sounds coming out of the ceiling of his cabin: wild jazz bands, barking dogs, and loud revival meetings. He is convinced that an erratic public-address system is letting him hear everything that goes on aboard ship... until instead of just sounds he hears voices. And not just any voices. These voices are talking, in the most frighteningly intimate way, about him!

In this dead-on satire of online obsessions, a novelist with writer's block finds a new—and very lucrative—stream of income in a virtual world that appears to give him everything he lacks in the real world.When Frank Dixon, a frustrated writer who has seen his career crash and burn, decides to dabble in online poker, he discovers he has a knack for winning. In this newfound realm, populated by alluring characters—each of them elusive, mysterious, and glamorous—he becomes a smash success: popular, rich, and loved. Going by the name Chip Zero, he sees his fortunes and romantic liaisons thrive in cyberspace while he remains blind to the fact that his real life is sinking. His online success, however, does not come without complications, as he comes to realize that his “virtual” friends and lovers are, in fact, very real, and one rival player is not at all happy that Mr. Zero has taken all his money.Heller's cautionary tale is continually surprising and startlingly real, a tour de force of satirical storytelling in the vein of Jonathan Tropper and Sam Lipsyte.

Winner of the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for FictionOne of Granta's Best Young British NovelistsFrom the prizewinning young writer of What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours, Gingerbread, and Peaces comes a brilliant and inventive story of love, lies, and inspiration.Fairy-tale romances end with a wedding, and the fairy tales don't get complicated. In this book, the celebrated writer Mr. Fox can't stop himself from killing off the heroines of his novels, and neither can his wife, Daphne. It's not until Mary, his muse, comes to life and transforms him from author into subject that his story begins to unfold differently.Mary challenges Mr. Fox to join her in stories of their own devising; and in different times and places, the two of them seek each other, find each other, thwart each other, and try to stay together, even when the roles they inhabit seem to forbid it. Their adventures twist the fairy tale into nine variations, exploding and teasing conventions of genre and romance, and each iteration explores the fears that come with accepting a lifelong bond. Meanwhile, Daphne becomes convinced that her husband is having an affair, and finds her way into Mary and Mr. Fox's game. And so Mr. Fox is offered a choice: Will it be a life with the girl of his dreams, or a life with an all-too-real woman who delights him more than he cares to admit?The extraordinarily gifted Helen Oyeyemi has written a love story like no other. Mr. Fox is a magical book, endlessly inventive, as witty and charming as it is profound in its truths about how we learn to be with one another.

Author Kaye Dacus will ignite your love of romance with book 2 of her Matchmakers series. Dylan Bradley, who once illustrated steamy romances under the name Patrick Callaghan, has moved into his grandparent's guest house in Nashville. Caylor Evans, having once written titillating novels under the penname Melanie Mason, lives with her grandmother. When their lives collide, due to the machinations of meddling matriarchs, the pasts of Dylan and Caylor threaten to derail their futures. Will they accept each other for who they now are—and once were? Or will they never discover the true art of romance?

Now available from Thomas Wolfe's original publisher, the final novel by the literary legend, that “will stand apart from everything else that he wrote” (The New York Times Book Review)—first published in 1940 and long considered a classic of twentieth century literature.A twentieth-century classic, Thomas Wolfe's magnificent novel is both the story of a young writer longing to make his mark upon the world and a sweeping portrait of America and Europe from the Great Depression through the years leading up to World War II. Driven by dreams of literary success, George Webber has left his provincial hometown to make his name as a writer in New York City. When his first novel is published, it brings him the fame he has sought, but it also brings the censure of his neighbors back home, who are outraged by his depiction of them. Unsettled by their reaction and unsure of himself and his future, Webber begins a search for a greater understanding of his artistic identity that takes him deep into New York's hectic social whirl; to London with an uninhibited group of expatriates; and to Berlin, lying cold and sinister under Hitler's shadow. He discovers a world plagued by political uncertainty and on the brink of transformation, yet he finds within himself the capacity to meet it with optimism and a renewed love for his birthplace. He is a changed man yet a hopeful one, awake to the knowledge that one can never fully “go back home to your family, back home to your childhood…away from all the strife and conflict of the world…back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time.”

This book covers the adaptation process used in the creation of Dead Lines, the screenplay, written by Craig Spector and Philip Nutman - adapted from the novel by Skipp & Spector. Jack Rowan thought his life was a living Hell. Then he tried dying. Now he'll do anything to get back into the world. Anything.

Dave, I just finished the first chapter of a new novel-a real crime novel with a dead body and all-and I thought of you... Paul and Lacey Hansen are pot-growing, twentysomething siblings sharing a modest rambler of a home in rural Northern California. When they find a headless corpse on their property they can't exactly call 911, so they simply move the body to another location. Let somebody else find it. Instead, the corpse reappears on their land. Clearly, someone is sending them a message, and it's getting riper by the day. But that's only half of the story...Enter authors Lisa Lutz and David Hayward-former real-life partners (professionally and personally) who have agreed to reunite for a tag- team mystery novel written in alternating chapters. One little problem: they disagree on pretty much every detail of how their novel should unfold. While the body count rises in Paul and Lacey's wildly unpredictable fictional world, so too does the intensity of Lisa and David's rivalry. The result is a literary brawl like no other, and a murder mystery every bit as unanticipated (and bloody).

From the author of the highly acclaimed In the Drink, a smart and sexy exploration of New York and its customs through the eyes of a disillusioned, yet secretly hopeful, gay man. Jeremy Thrane is a thirty-five-year-old writer in love with a married man. For years, Jeremy has posed as'archivist'to Ted Masterson, a Hollywood action star. Jeremy maintains Ted's New York brownstone and guards the secret that could destroy his career. But when Ted and his movie-star wife, Giselle, adopt a child and become America's most-photographed family, Jeremy finds himself without a job and, more importantly, bereft of the love of his life. With the same wit and authenticity that have made her a critical and popular favorite, Kate Christensen chronicles Jeremy's search for a new start as he ventures to every corner of the New York landscape, from watering holes where gossip columnists await an'item'to dives where waiters and busboys are eager to please patrons–especially after their shifts are over. In his spare time, he struggles to finish a novel based on his father's peripatetic life as a fanatical Marxist and turns out sizzling pornography for a one-man enterprise run by an old high school acquaintance. His sister, an up-and-coming rock musician, and his thrice-married, former flower-child mother, who found her true calling as a poet late in life, provide the mixture of criticism and compassion Jeremy has known all his life and now, for the most unexpected reasons, finally learns to appreciate. A fast-paced and funny social satire, Jeremy Thrane deftly captures the slippery chameleon quality of American identity, the power of youth and beauty, and the complexity of love.BONUS: This edition includes an excerpt from Kate Christensen's Blue Plate Special.

Poverty Castle is an absorbing work of contrasts and subtle irony centred around an idealistic family in Argyll. A compelling novel, it deals with human nature, as always with Jenkins, and the socialism of industrial Glasgow.

Of course she's obsessed with Jane Austen...Surrounded by appalling exes and fawning students, the only thing keeping professor Katherine Roberts sane is Jane Austen and her personal secret love for racy Regency romance novels. She thinks the Jane Austen Addicts conference in the English countryside is the perfect opportunity to escape her chaotic life and finally relax.But then she encounters a devilishly handsome man at the conference who seems determined to sweep her off her feet. Is he more fiction than fact? Or could he be the hero she didn't know she was looking for?PRAISE FOR VICTORIA CONNELLY:'Witty and original.'—The Romantic Novelists'Association

What happens when fictional detective, Katie Shields, not only takes psychic possession of her author, but also starts to treat her creator as a suspect in a crime?

Een vrouw heeft een afspraak met een onbekende, maar ontmoet een knappe man die lijdt aan geheugenverlies. Hij heeft haar visitekaartje, maar zij twijfelt over zijn identiteit.

The novel that inspired the 2016 major motion picture Nocturnal Animals, starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Amy Adams, is a dazzling, eerie, riveting thriller of fear and regret, blood and revenge. Many years after their divorce, Susan Morrow receives a strange gift from her ex-husband. A manuscript that tells the story of a terrible crime: an ambush on the highway, a secluded cabin in the woods; a thrilling chiller of death and corruption. How could such a harrowing story be told by the man she once loved? And why, after so long, has he sent her such a disturbing and personal message...? Originally published as Tony and Susan.

Murder and mystery continue in Book Four of the Cape Refuge series A famous mystery writer has just moved to Cape Refuge when a teenage girl is found murdered. Sheila Caruso–ex-con, mother to Sadie and Caleb, and resident of Hanover House–is working for the writer when she discovers that a scene in one of his novels matches the crime scene. When Police Chief Cade and Blair Owens discover a second dead teenager–mirroring a murder in another of the eccentric writer's books–Cade is drawn into a web of trickery and deceit. Evidence turns up in Cade's own truck, and suddenly he becomes the number-one suspect. Cade tries to clear his name, but when eighteen-year-old Sadie Caruso disappears, tensions mount to a fever pitch. Can Cade find the real killer before Sadie winds up dead? Is the novelist a demented killer, or a hapless victim? And what does Sadie's own mother have to do with the crimes? Secrets are uncovered, while lessons are learned about the sins of the father being visited upon his children. Will the consequences of Sheila's life be fatal, or is there redemption and mercy for her and her children? “Chief Matthew Cade rarely considered another line of work, but news of the dead teenage girl made him long for a job as an accountant or electrician—some benign vocation that didn't require him to look into the eyes of grieving parents.”

Literary critic Shearman Waxx can kill a good book with just a few acidly worded bon mots. And as one unlucky author is about to discover, that's not all he's prepared to kill.... From #1 New York Times bestselling master of suspense Dean Koontz comes a mesmerizing thriller about the battle of wills that ensues when a successful author and likable family man confronts a reclusive sociopath who wields an all-too-deadly poison pen. Respect Shearman Waxx's opinion and you might escape with your career intact. Cross him and he'll destroy you, your family, and everything you hold dear. For the title “America's most feared critic” isn't one Waxx takes lightly. He takes it literally. And now Cubby Greenwich, his wife, Penny, their brilliant six-year-old Milo, and their uniquely talented non-collie, Lassie, are all about to learn the true meaning of “culture war.”BONUS: This edition contains an excerpt from Dean Koontz's The City.

A woman who wants to know what she's been missing... A man perfectly suited to train her...Christie Kelley weaves a scintillating novel of one rapturous night of ecstasy...A Woman Yearning For A Taste Of The Forbidden...At twenty-six, aspiring novelist Avis Copley intends to wear spinsterhood as a badge of honor. But when she discovers a volume of erotica that ignites a searing fire within her, Avis realizes just how much she doesn't know about the actual pleasures of the flesh. Determined to learn more, she devises a daring plan... A Man Ready To Teach Her Much, Much More...Avis chooses Emory Billingsworth, a fellow novelist--not to mention a beautiful specimen of manhood--to instruct her in carnal pleasure. But when the brash earl of Selby, Banning Talbot, a man she has known for years, unearths Avis'true intentions, he claims she's made a dangerously bad choice. Volunteering his services for one wicked night of reckless, abandoned passion, Banning promises he will satisfy all of her deepest longings. Yet Banning cannot begin to imagine the effect his willful, voluptuous, and very eager student will have on him--or how far an innocent lesson in desire can go...

When Freya's car breaks down in the middle of the Lakeland wilderness, she is rescued by a stranger who tows her back to his Gothic mansion (Grimshaw Lodge) and offers shelter. He turns out to be Dylan Quest, famous literary novelist, and despite his reputation as a womanizer, she finds herself being drawn to him. But Freya has an ulterior motive: she has been sent on a mission by the mysterious John to discover the truth about Dylan. What dark secrets lie behind the mansion's Gothic façade and Dylan's public image? Who is John? And why has Freya been sent?

Thirty-two-year-old writer, Damian Cross returns from a disastrous debut book tour only to find out that his fiancÉe, who he's been with for seven years, has dumped him. Now, Damian holes up in his cousin's house, licking his wounds, trying to write a second novel, blogging, and dating for the first time in forever. Everyone tries to convince him to write'a booty novel'to make money. He steadfastly refuses, all the while blogging about his sexual misadventures.

In recent novels, which have been called'hypnotic,''stunning,'and'exhilarating,'David Markson has created his own personal genre. In this new work, The Last Novel, an elderly author (referred to only as'Novelist') announces that since this will be his final effort, he has'carte blanche to do anything he damned well pleases.'Pressed by solitude and age, Novelist's preoccupations inevitably turn to the stories of other artists — their genius, their lack of recognition, and their deaths. Keeping his personal history out of the story as much as possible, Novelist creates an incantatory stream of fascinating triumphs and failures from the lives of famous and not–so–famous painters, writers, musicians, sports figures, and scientists.As Novelist moves through his last years, a minimalist self–portrait emerges, becoming an intricate masterpiece from David Markson's astonishing imagination. Through these startling, sometimes comic, but often tragic anecdotes we unexpectedly discern the entire shape of a man's life.

The Commonwealth Prize-winning author of Divina Trace “has boldly recast Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises as a harrowing tale” set in the West Indies (Booklist, starred review). Robert Antoni has established himself as one of the most innovative voices to emerge from the Caribbean and the Americas. His novel Carnival—”easily his most engrossing, direct work to date”—takes readers on a journey from contemporary New York City to the glitter of Trinidadian Carnival, and deep into the island's mountainous interior (Miami Herald). Aspiring novelist William Fletcher has come to New York to escape his affluent West Indian roots, but a chance meeting reunites him with two of his childhood companions: Laurence, who escaped poverty to become a scholar and poet, and Rachel, William's second cousin and first love. Making good on a liquor-soaked pledge to return to Trinidad for Carnival, they soon find themselves sliding into a fog of ganja, alcohol, and sensual rhythm. But their hedonistic homecoming has also brought them face to face with the demons of history, prejudice, and violence they've spent their lives trying to forget. “Carnival is an appropriately heady and wild novel, in which the air is suffused with dope smoke, calypso drumming and menace” (Independent on Sunday).

Like Rip Van Winkle returning to his hometown to find that all has changed, Nathan Zuckerman comes back to New York, the city he left eleven years before. Alone on his New England mountain, Zuckerman has been nothing but a writer: no voices, no media, no terrorist threats, no women, no news, no tasks other than his work and the enduring of old age.Walking the streets like a revenant, he quickly makes three connections that explode his carefully protected solitude. One is with a young couple with whom, in a rash moment, he offers to swap homes. They will flee post-9/11 Manhattan for his country refuge, and he will return to city life. But from the time he meets them, Zuckerman also wants to swap his solitude for the erotic challenge of the young woman, Jamie, whose allure draws him back to all that he thought he had left behind: intimacy, the vibrant play of heart and body.The second connection is with a figure from Zuckerman's youth, Amy Bellette, companion and muse to Zuckerman's first literary hero, E. I. Lonoff. The once irresistible Amy is now an old woman depleted by illness, guarding the memory of that grandly austere American writer who showed Nathan the solitary path to a writing vocation.The third connection is with Lonoff's would-be biographer, a young literary hound who will do and say nearly anything to get to Lonoff's “great secret.” Suddenly involved, as he never wanted or intended to be involved again, with love, mourning, desire, and animosity, Zuckerman plays out an interior drama of vivid and poignant possibilities.Haunted by Roth's earlier work The Ghost Writer, Exit Ghost is an amazing leap into yet another phase in this great writer's insatiable commitment to fiction.

Donald Sempill has a beautiful wife who adores him, five perfect daughters and enough money that he doesn't have to work. In fact he can afford to buy a ruin in Argyllshire and restore it as a home for them all—Poverty Castle. The idyll can't last, though. Try as hard they might obsession and the outside world begin to creep into the Sempills'Eden and the stability and idealism they had worked so hard for is threatened. A subtly ironic tale from Scotland's master storyteller.

Drew Danner, an L.A.-based crime novelist, awakens in a hospital bed with a scar on his head, blood under his nails, and a cop by his side. Accused of murdering his ex-fiancée, Drew has no memory of the crime but reconstructs the story the only way he knows how—as a novel. As he searches the dark corridors of his life and the city he loves, another young woman is similarly murdered and Drew must confront the very real possibility of his own guilt. A thrilling piece of contemporary L.A. noir, The Crime Writer is sure to boost Hurwitz's profile as one of the coming masters of the genre.

Tanya is a typical teenager living with her bookish professor mother in a cramped Soviet apartment. She is obsessed with Dostoyevksy, and noticing that he always portrays his mistress and muse in his novels–never his wife–she determines to become a companion to a great writer. Her opportunity comes when, as a college graduate newly emigrated to America, she attends a Manhattan bookstore reading by Mark Schneider, a Significant New York Novelist. Tanya quickly moves in with Mark, ready to dazzle in bed, to serve and inspire... if only he would spend a little more time writing. But as she struggles to better understand her role as Muse, Tanya also learns more than she expected about the destiny she has imagined for herself.A touching and very funny novel in the great tradition of Russian realism, Memoirs of a Muse is also a lively meditation on the mysteries and absurdities of artistic inspiration.

Weekend met gevolgen Drie maanden na een hartstochtelijk weekend met Vic weet Claire wat de gevolgen zijn, en ze vindt het.... heerlijk! Voor Vic, die goede redenen heeft om geen vader te willen worden, is de schok bijna ondraaglijk. Dat geldt echter ook voor de zinderende spanning die Claire bij hem teweegbrengt! Liefde op de kraamafdeling Rory is terug! En hoewel Ally niet van plan is haar hart opnieuw te laten breken door de knappe arts, is het voor haar op de vreugdevolle kraamafdeling moeilijk om niet terug te denken aan de liefde die ze ooit samen deelden. Al weet ze ook nog goed dat hij geen kinderen wilde, en zij wel... (Covertekst)

On a beautiful summer day, crowds lined up outside a theater witness a sudden act of extreme road rage: a tap on a fender triggers a nearly homicidal attack. Jackson Brodie, ex-cop, ex-private detective, new millionaire, is among the bystanders. The event thrusts Jackson into the orbit of the wife of an unscrupulous real estate tycoon, a washed-up comedian, a successful crime novelist, a mysterious Russian woman, and a female police detective. Each of them hiding a secret, each looking for love or money or redemption or escape, they all play a role in driving Jackson out of retirement and into the middle of several mysteries that intersect in one sinister scheme. Kate Atkinson'writes such fluid, sparkling prose that an ingenious plot almost seems too much to ask, but we get it anyway,'writes Laura Miller for Salon. With a keen eye for the excesses of modern life, a warm understanding of the frailties of the human heart, and a genius for plots that turn and twist, Atkinson has written a novel that delights and surprises from the first page to the last.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the New York Times bestselling author of American Psycho and Less Than Zero comes a chilling tale that combines reality, memoir, and fantasy to create a fascinating portrait of this most controversial writer but also a deeply moving novel about love and loss, parents and children, and ultimately forgiveness. “John Cheever writes The Shining.” —Stephen King, Entertainment Weekly Bret Ellis, the narrator of Lunar Park, is the bestselling writer whose first novel Less Than Zero catapulted him to international stardom while he was still in college. In the years that followed he found himself adrift in a world of wealth, drugs, and fame, as well as dealing with the unexpected death of his abusive father.After a decade of decadence a chance for salvation arrives; the chance to reconnect with an actress he was once involved with, and their son. But almost immediately his new life is threatened by a freak sequence of events and a bizarre series of murders that all seem to connect to Ellis's past. His attempts to save his new world from his own demons makes Lunar Park Ellis's most suspenseful novel.

Eric Bogosian is one of our most singular and exhilarating commentators on American life. His award-winning solo performance works have been performed with acclaim all over the world. As the New York Times has pointed out, “Bogosian is a born storyteller with perfect pitch.” That is never more evident than in his newest book, which collects his three most recent plays. In Humpty Dumpty, five friends gather for a holiday at a mountain getaway where unforeseen events bring them to the brink of the end of the world; Griller, set in a New Jersey backyard, where a barbecue gathering turns sinister and deadly; and Red Angel, Bogosian's riff on Von Sternberg's The Blue Angel, reset on a college campus in 1990s New England.“I want theater to wake me up, not lull me to sleep. My theater is not about fantasy, it's not about seduction. My theater is not an outline for a film. It is not a TV sitcom onstage. I want my theater to be an event. I want it to push limits, bite the hand that feeds it and bang heads. It's about my fears, my ideas, my blind spots, my isolation.”—Eric BogosianEric Bogosian is the author of five plays including Talk Radio and subUrbia, as well as three Obie Award-winning solos: Drinking in America; Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll; Pounding Nails in the Floor with My Forehead and his most recent, Wake Up and Smell the Coffee, which was nominated for a Drama Desk Award. He wrote the screenplay adaptations of his first two plays, receiving the Berlin Film Festival's “Silver Bear” for his work in Talk Radio. Simon and Schuster will publish his second novel in 2005.

From the Booker Prize-winning, #1 international bestselling author of Schindler's List comes a brilliantly imagined novel reminiscent of Fahrenheit 451—a story of a celebrated novelist caught between the demands of his government and his impulse to run for his life. Thomas Keneally's literary achievements have been inspired by some of history's most intriguing events and characters, but in a rare reversal of time his brilliantly imagined new novel takes us into a near future that uncannily is all too familiar.In a detention camp where he is neither granted asylum nor readied to be sent back to his native land, a detainee bides his time. He insists on being called Alan Sheriff, a westernization of his given name; he was born in a country that had once been a friend to the United States but is now its enemy. Little else is known about Sheriff until a writer comes to interview him. Sheriff decides that the time is right to tell his visitor his story and embarks on the unraveling of events that have led to his current state with extraordinary detail—the basis of which forms this novel within a novel.Sheriff is a celebrated novelist in a country in which its brutal leader orders Sheriff to ghostwrite a work of fiction: an uneasy combination of invention, autobiography, and polemic—the very publication of which would overturn Western sanctions and shame the United States. The deadline is impossible, but the government enforcers guard his house and stalk his every move. It is not long before Sheriff becomes the tyrant's caged canary, as he races against the deadline that threatens to cost him everything and everyone he holds dear.Provocative and possibly prophetic, The Tyrant's Novel is a literary achievement inspired by recent history's most intriguing events and characters. Here, Keneally once more combines, as he did in Schindler's List, his fictional talent with his engagement in world politics.