NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the award-winning author a "powerful and emotionally piercing" novel (The New York Times) set during the 1950 in West Virginia and Korea, that intertwines family secrets, war, dreams, and ghosts in a story about the love that unites us all. Lark and Termite is a rich, wonderfully alive novel about seventeen year old Lark and her brother, Termite, living in West Virginia in the 1950s. Their mother, Lola, is absent, while their aunt, Nonie, raises them as her own, and Termite’s father, Corporal Robert Leavitt, is caught up in the early days of the Korean War. Told with deep feeling, the novel invites us deep into the hearts and thoughts of Lark, on the verge of adulthood, and her brother, Termite, a child unable to walk and talk, who is filled with radiance. We are also with Corporal Leavitt, trapped by friendly fire alongside the Korean children he tries to rescue. We see Lark’s dreams for Termite and her own future, and how, with the aid of a childhood love and a spectral social worker, she makes them happen. We learn of Lola’s love for her soldier husband and her children, and unravel the mystery of her relationship with Nonie. We discover the lasting connections between past and future on the night the town experiences an overwhelming flood, and we follow Lark and Termite as their lives are changed forever.

Called “an enduring literary achievement . . . astonishing” by The New York Times, this highly acclaimed debut novel from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Night Watch introduces the Hampsons, an ordinary, small-town American family profoundly affected by the extraordinary events of history—from the Depression to the Vietnam War. One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years Here is a stunning chronicle that is revealed in the thoughts, dreams, and memories of each member of the Hampson family. Mitch struggles to earn a living as Jeans becomes the main breadwinner, working to complete college and raise the family. While the couple fight to keep their marriage intact, their daughter Danner and son Billy forge a sibling bond of uncommon strength. When Billy goes off to Vietnam, Danner becomes the sole bond linking her family, whose dissolution mirrors the fractured state of America in the 1960s. Deeply felt and vividly imagined, this lyrical novel is "among the wisest of a generation to grapple with a war that maimed us all" (The Village Voice), by a master of contemporary fiction.

Kate - whose care for her terminally ill mother coincides with the birth of her first child in the early months of a young marriage - must, in a single year, come to terms with radiant beginnings and profound loss. Kate's everyday world is enveloped by the gradual vanishing of her mother. And as the woman who has been her best friend and mentor disappears, we see Kate deal with timeless, perhaps unanswerable, questions of love and death.

A Story of Love, Murder and Obsession Chicago, 1931. Asta Eicher, a lonely widow with three children, is thrilled when Harry Powers asks her to marry him, and agrees to travel with him to West Virginia. She and her children are never seen alive again. Emily Thornhill, one of the few women in the Chicago press, is sent to cover their disappearance. Obsessed with trying to find out what happened to the family, her investigations lead deeper into the case, uncovering the terrifying truth behind the tragedy. ‘Extraordinary’ Observer ‘Brilliant’ Sunday Times

Jayne Anne Phillips has always been a master of portraiture, both in her widely acclaimed novels and in her short fiction. The stories in Fast Lanes demonstrated the breadth of her talent in a "tour de force" of voices, offering elegantly rendered views into the lives of characters torn between the liberation of detachment and the desire to connect. Three stories are collected in this edition for the first time: in "Alma," and adolescent daughter is made the confidante of her lonely mother; "Counting" traces the history of a dommed love affair; and "Callie" evokes memories of the haunting death of a child in 1920's West Virginia. Along with the original seven stories from Fast Lanes--each told in extraordinary first person narratives that have been hailed by critics as virtuoso performances--these incandescent portraits offer windows into the lives of an entire generation of Americans, demonstrating again and again why Jayne Anne Phillips remains one of our most powerful writers.

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Night Watch: the reputation-making debut short story collection that paved the way for a new generation of writers. • “Brilliant … Phillips is a virtuoso.” —The Chicago Tribune Jayne Anne Phillips's reputation-making debut collection paved the way for a new generation of writers. Raved about by reviewers and embraced by the likes of Raymond Carver, Frank Conroy, Annie Dillard, and Nadine Gordimer, Black Tickets now stands as a classic. With an uncanny ability to depict the lives of men and women who rarely register in our literature, Phillips writes stories that lay bare their suffering and joy. Here are the abused and the abandoned, the violent and the passive, the impoverished and the disenfranchised who populate the small towns and rural byways of the country. A patron of the arts reserves his fondest feeling for the one man who wants it least. A stripper, the daughter of a witch, escapes from poverty into another kind of violence. A young girl during the Depression is caught between the love of her crazy father and the no less powerful love of her sorrowful mother. These are great American stories that have earned a privileged place in our literature.

*THE BESTSELLING RICHARD & JUDY BOOK CLUB PICK* From the award-winning author of An American Marriage comes this breathtaking tale of a sisterhood defined by a father's secret, perfect for fans of Brit Bennett and Yaa Gyasi 'MY FATHER, JAMES WITHERSPOON, IS A BIGAMIST.' SECRETS Dana and Chaurisse are sisters who have never met. The only thing binding them together is the life-changing secret of their father's double life. LIES Only one of them knows the truth about James and his hidden family. When the girls do finally meet and become friends, the fragile promise that has kept his secrets safe for so long threatens to implode. HOPE This soulful story of friendship and sisterhood paints an unforgettable picture of the messy knots that bind families together, from the author of modern classic, An American Marriage. AN OBSERVER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR * A GUARDIAN 'BEST BOOK OF 2020 TO SUPPORT INDEPENDENT PUBLISHERS' * A BOOKSELLER SMALL PUBLISHERS 2020 TOP 20 'Do not miss this can’t-actually-stop-reading-it novel from the author of the Women's Prize for Fiction-winning An American Marriage.' Stylist