The celebrated Hindi novelist Vishwanath is heartbroken by the recent loss of his son in a car accident. The tragedy breaks a long dry spell and spurs him to write a novel set in the household of Lala Motichand in the early decades of the twentieth century. It follows the lives of the wealthy lala and his three sons: self-confident Dinanath, the true heir to Motichand's mercantile temperament; lonely Diwanchand, uninterested in business and steeped in poetry; and illegitimate Makhan Lal, a Marx-loving schoolteacher relegated to the periphery of his father s life. And in an illuminating act of self-reflection, Vishwanath, the son of a cook for a rich sethji, also tells the story of the lala's personal servant, Mange Ram, and his son, Parsadi. Fatherhood, brotherhood and childhood, love, loyalty and poetry all come to the fore as sons and servants await the lala's oncoming demise, against the devotional landscape of the Ramcharitmanas of Tulsidas. By writing about mortality and family, Vishwanath confronts the wreckage of his own life while seeking to make sense of the new India that comes into being in the first half of the twentieth century. Spellbinding and penetrating, Half the Night Is Gone raises questions of religion, literature and society that speak to our fractured times.

From National Book Award finalist Deb Caletti comes an intensely gripping story about love, loss, marriage, and secrets—perfect for readers of Jodi Picoult, Kristin Hannah, and Anna Quindlen. “One of the best books I’ve read all year.”—Barbara O’Neal, author of The Garden of Happy Endings “What do you think happened to your husband, Mrs. Keller?” The Sunday morning starts like any other, aside from the slight hangover. Dani Keller wakes up on her Seattle houseboat, a headache building behind her eyes from the wine she drank at a party the night before. But on this particular Sunday morning, she’s surprised to see that her husband, Ian, is not home. As the hours pass, Dani fills her day with small things. But still, Ian does not return. Irritation shifts to worry, worry slides almost imperceptibly into panic. And then, like a relentless blackness, the terrible realization hits Dani: He’s gone. As the police work methodically through all the logical explanations—he’s hurt, he’s run off, he’s been killed—Dani searches frantically for a clue as to whether Ian is in fact dead or alive. And, slowly, she unpacks their relationship, holding each moment up to the light: from its intense, adulterous beginning, to the grandeur of their new love, to the difficulties of forever. She examines all the sins she can—and cannot—remember. As the days pass, Dani will plumb the depths of her conscience, turning over and revealing the darkest of her secrets in order to discover the hard truth—about herself, her husband, and their lives together. “A thought-provoking and moving exploration.”—New York Times bestselling author Erica Bauermeister Look for special features inside. Join the Circle for author chats and more.

Wrongly arrested after fleeing from her abusive husband, a mother desperately fights corrupt authorities to recover her stolen children; while a man across the country hears the story on the news and identifies links to similar events in his own past.

For the first time—and in the best translation ever—the complete Book of Disquiet, a masterpiece beyond comparison The Book of Disquiet is the Portuguese modernist master Fernando Pessoa’s greatest literary achievement. An “autobiography” or “diary” containing exquisite melancholy observations, aphorisms, and ruminations, this classic work grapples with all the eternal questions. Now, for the first time the texts are presented chronologically, in a complete English edition by master translator Margaret Jull Costa. Most of the texts in The Book of Disquiet are written under the semi-heteronym Bernardo Soares, an assistant bookkeeper. This existential masterpiece was first published in Portuguese in 1982, forty-seven years after Pessoa’s death. A monumental literary event, this exciting, new, complete edition spans Fernando Pessoa’s entire writing life.

"A heart-wrenching and suspenseful novel of betrayal and revenge. Stunning!" --Carol Goodman, award-winning author of The Stranger Behind You One sultry summer, Maureen Haddaway arrives in the wealthy town of Opal Beach to start her life anew--to achieve her destiny. There, she finds herself lured by the promise of friendship, love, starry skies and wild parties. But Maureen's new life just might be too good to be true, and before the summer is up, she vanishes. Decades later, when Allison Simpson is offered the opportunity to house-sit in Opal Beach during the off-season, it seems like the perfect chance to begin fresh after a messy divorce. But when she becomes drawn into the mysterious disappearance of a girl thirty years before, Allison realizes the gorgeous homes of Opal Beach hide dark secrets. And the truth of that long-ago summer is not even the most shocking part of all... "This multi-layered and gorgeously structured tale will haunt you long after the book is over." --Hank Phillippi Ryan, bestselling author of Her Perfect Life

One of the most original, influential, and commercially successful American songwriters, Jerome Felder, aka Doc Pomus (1925-1991), gave the world a dazzling legacy of musical hits during rock 'n' roll's first decade. A role model for generations of writers and performers, Doc was renowned for his mastery of virtually every popular style, from the gutbucket rhythm and blues of "Lonely Avenue" to the symphonic soul of "Save the Last Dance for Me" to the pure pop of "Viva Las Vegas." His songs-"This Magic Moment," "A Teenager in Love," "Hushabye," "Little Sister," "Turn Me Loose," and many others-have been recorded by everyone from Ray Charles, Elvis Presley, and B. B. King to Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin, and Bruce Springsteen, with sales exceeding 100 million. Doc was ready-made for literature. His collaborator Mort Shuman once described him as an "entire rollicking soul neighborhood rolled into one man." Garrulous, profane, hilarious, and Rabelaisian, Doc was never inhibited about offering his opinions and his friendship. His confidants, collaborators, and discoveries included Duke Ellington, John Lennon, Dr. John, Jimmy Scott, Bette Midler, and Lou Reed. In the words of renowned producer Jerry Wexler, "If the music industry had a heart, it would be Doc Pomus." Despite, or more likely because of, his successes, few acquaintances knew that this writer of jukebox hits led one of the most dramatic and unlikely lives of his time. Spanning extravagant wealth and desperate poverty, suburban domesticity and the depths of New York's underworld, worldwide fame and near-total obscurity, enduring love and persistent loneliness, Doc's story remains one of the great untold American lives. Its chapters comprise a back-room history of rock 'n' roll, touching on more than a half-century of American popular music-from the blues Doc performed with Lester Young to his collaborations with the luminaries of New York's punk scene, shot through with vivid portraits of virtually every major player. Lonely Avenueis the first biography of this American original, so elegantly rendered that it reads like a novel, and fortified by full, exclusive access to Doc Pomus's family, friends, voluminous journals, and archives.

Poetry. HISTORY OF GONE is a collection of poems inspired by the life and unsolved disappearance of Barbara Newhall Follett, a once-famous child prodigy writer of the early 20th century. In the introduction, Schmeidler writes, "She's a woman we've never heard of destined to be the Next Great American Writer," who, by the age of 14 has published two books to glowing reviews. After a series of life-altering events (her father leaves; she and her mother set sail on an open-ended sea voyage; she falls in love), what begins as promise turns to uncertainty. "Because it's the Depression and she needs money. Because she's a woman. Because she's a writer. Because her editor father is no longer guiding her work into the hands of publishers. Because she falls in love. Because she travels, this time to Europe, this time with a man. Because she marries. Because she wants more, and also nothing more, than to be outside. Because all writing is in sand." All that is known of what happens is that one December night in 1939, after arguing with her husband, she leaves the house with a notebook and $30. She is never seen or heard from again. She is 25. "A daring conceptual feat of reanimated biography, HISTORY OF GONE arrives in its forms of oblique memorial drenched in lyric imagination: 'Everywhere you look there's a finger bone of some gone woman.' Schmeidler's rich lexicons frame intimate interior geographies--swoop and silhouette, beatitude and gingerbread, planets and wolfhounds--all the while replaying the 'stolen reel' of a forgotten life. As the lavish particulars unfold--a mouthbrooder, an anhinga, a purse dehisced--these poems invite charged questions about autonomy, creativity, and self-effacement: 'What kind of play is she in, 'finished by a death' or 'ended by a marriage'?' A cautionary tale of the erasures of domesticity, a vocational fable, an inside-out bildungsroman, this book envisions the prismatic possibilities when the self makes a 'clean sneak,' and the result is nothing short of levitation." --BK Fischer