Richard Russo

In his first collection, a master storyteller focuses on a fresh and fascinating range of human behavior. A jaded Hollywood movie-maker uncovers a decades-old flame he never knew he'd harbored; a precocious fifth grader puzzles over life, love, and baseball as he watches his parents' marriage dissolve; another child is forced into a harrowing cross-country escape; an elderly couple rediscovers the power of their relationship; and in the title story,...

Miles Roby, called back from college to the small town of Empire Falls in Dexter County, Maine to take care of his ailing mother, falls into a rut that keeps him trapped until years later when a series of revelations and tragedies jolts him back into an awareness of his life.

"From the Pulitzer Prize-winning Richard Russo--in his first stand-alone novel in a decade--comes a new revelation: a gripping story about the abiding yet complex power of friendship. One beautiful September day, three sixty-six-year old men convene on Martha's Vineyard, friends ever since meeting in college circa the sixties. They couldn't have been more different then, or even today--Lincoln's a commercial real estate broker, Teddy a tiny-press...

Tells the stories of the regulars at the Mohawk Grill and a secret from the past that leads to murder

A tenured professor confronts a young plagiarist as well as her own weaknesses as the Thanksgiving holiday approaches. A realtor facing an ominous medical prognosis finds himself in his father's shadow while he presses forward, or not. A semi-retired English professor is conned by his estranged brother into coming along on a group tour of the Biennale. A lapsed novelist, struggling with his wife's illness and trying to rekindle his screenwriting career,...

"A best-selling and beloved author, at the very top of his game, now returns to North Bath, in upstate New York, and the characters who made Nobody's Fool, his third novel, his first great success. The irresistible Sully, who in the intervening years has come by some unexpected good fortune, is now staring down a VA cardiologist's estimate that he only has a year or two left, and he's busy as hell keeping the news from the most important people in...

"While the title novella of Dubus's Finding a Girl in America returns to the somewhat off-the-rails literary life of Hank Allison, the collection's opening story strikes a much darker tone: "Killings"-the basis of the Academy Award-nominated film In the Bedroom-is a swift tale of revenge that leaves readers wondering what they might do in the name of family love. Dubus's prowess with narrative compression is on full display in the story "Waiting":...

In this enthusiastic, heartfelt, and sometimes humorous ode to bookstores and booksellers, 84 well-known writers pay tribute to the bricks-and-mortar stores they love and often call their second home. Writers include: Isabel Allende, Wendell Berry, Rick Bragg, Dave Eggers, Louise Erdrich, Fannie Flagg, Ian Frazier, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., John Grisham, Pete Hamill, Ann Hood, Stephanie Kallos, Laurie R. King, Kate Niles, Ann Packer, Chuck Palahniuk,...

Trying to get back on her feet, wild child Tanya looks to her buttoned-up, by-the-book sister Danica to help her get on track. As these polar opposites collide, with hilarious and sometimes disastrous results, Tanya discovers that Danica's picture-perfect life, including her mysterious boyfriend, may not be what it seems.