At seventeen, Elsie Edwards, once the fat girl of fifth grade, later slender but insecure in ninth grade, now has boyfriend problems that once would have seemed too good to be true.

Answering the question "is a book the same the second time around?" this collection of essays includes contributions from Sven Krkerts, Allegra Goodman, Vivian Gornick, Patricia Hampl, Phillip Lopate, and Luc Sante, among others.

A fifth grade class, repelled by the overweight new student who has serious home problems, finally learns to accept her.

Booth Tarkington's wildly successful novel Seventeen satirizes the vagaries of American adolescence. Though 17-year-old protagonist William Sylvanus Baxter is awkward, tactless, and often less than likable, Tarkington's insightful -- and hilarious -- take on teenage life and love is sure to please readers who appreciate top-notch humor writing.

“A meditative and multilayered narrative that is as much about a man at a mid-life crossroads as it is about journalism or a plane crash.” —Los Angeles Review of Books 1985. Kazumasa Yuuki, a seasoned reporter at the North Kanto Times, runs a daily gauntlet of the power struggles and office politics that plague its newsroom. But when an air disaster of unprecedented scale occurs on the paper’s doorstep, its staff is united by an unimaginable horror and a once-in-a-lifetime scoop. 2003. Seventeen years later, Yuuki remembers the adrenaline-fueled, emotionally charged seven days that changed his and his colleagues’ lives. He does so while making good on a promise he made that fateful week—one that holds the key to its last solved mystery and represents Yuuki’s final, unconquered fear. From Hideo Yokoyama, the celebrated author of Six Four, comes Seventeen—an investigative thriller set amid the aftermath of disaster. “Adrenaline-filled.” —The New Yorker “Tense and powerful.” —The Wall Street Journal “An astringent, unforgiving picture of modern Japanese society.” —Barry Forshaw, The Guardian “Seventeen is a thrilling, thought-provoking, and important book, and one for anyone who cares about the state of journalism.” —Hans Rollmann, PopMatters “An engrossing thriller . . . Readers will be deeply moved.” —Publishers Weekly “A darkly humorous tale.” —Booklist

From the bestselling, Booker Prize-winning author of The Sense of an Ending and one of Britain’s greatest writers: a brilliant collection of essays on the books and authors that have meant the most to him throughout his illustrious career. • "[A] blissfully intelligent gathering of literary essays." —Financial Times In these seventeen essays (plus a short story and a special preface, “A Life with Books”), Julian Barnes examines the British, French and American writers who have shaped his writing, as well as the cross-currents and overlappings of their different cultures. From the deceptiveness of Penelope Fitzgerald to the directness of Hemingway, from Kipling’s view of France to the French view of Kipling, from the many translations of Madame Bovary to the fabulations of Ford Madox Ford, from the National Treasure status of George Orwell to the despair of Michel Houellebecq, Julian Barnes considers what fiction is, and what it can do. As he writes, “Novels tell us the most truth about life: what it is, how we live it, what it might be for, how we enjoy and value it, and how we lose it.”

When you get up in the morning, the last thing you expect to see is a murdered guy hanging outside your window. Things like that tend to draw the attention of the local police, and when you’re squatting in your parents’ old house until you can afford to buy it, another thing you can’t afford is the attention of the cops. Oh yeah. Hi. My name is Pet. It’s not my real name, but it’s the only one you’re getting. Things like names are important these days. And it’s not so much that I’m Pet. I am a pet. A human pet: I belong to the two Behindkind fae and the pouty vampire who just moved into my house. It’s not weird, I promise—well, it is weird, yeah. But it’s not weird weird, you know?