Prose, Francine

Profiles nine women who served as muses to famous artists, discussing how each of them inspired the works of their artistic counterpart.

Though mocked by the rest of the villagers, poor Schmuel the shoemaker turns out to be a very special person.

Ninth-grader Maisie's concepts of friendship, loyalty, self-acceptance, and truth are tested to their limit after a school bus incident involving three boys who have been her best friends since early childhood.

Profiles nine women who served as muses to famous artists, discussing how each of them inspired the works of their artistic counterpart. In a brilliant, wry, and provocative book, National Book Award finalist Francine Prose explores the complex relationship between the artist and his muse. In so doing, she illuminates with great sensitivity and intelligence the elusive emotional wellsprings of the creative process.

A teen boy becomes the babysitter for two very peculiar children on a haunted island in this modern retelling of The Turn of the Screw.

Presents a biography of late sixteenth-century Italian Renaissance painter Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, and chronicles his life, later years in exile in Naples, Malta, and Sicily, and his influence on later generations of artists.

Presents seventeen short stories chosen from hundreds of nominations submitted by writing programs such as the Iowa Writers' Workshop and John Hopkins.

Explains how a botched mission by two angels created the town of fools known as Chelm.

Leopold, who has told tales at Leipzig's zoo for many years, is surprised to find that he must explain the nature of storytelling after he is accused of lying by a scientist.

A young girl faces the consequences of sudden loss after the death of her sister. As her parents drift toward their own risky consolations, thirteen-year-old Nico is left alone to grope toward understanding and clarity, falling into a seductive, dangerous relationship with her sister's enigmatic boyfriend. Over one haunted summer, Nico must face that life-changing moment when children realize their parents can no longer help them. She learns about the power of art, of time and place, the mystery of loss and recovery. But for all the darkness at the novel's heart, the narrative itself is radiant with the lightness of summer and charged by the restless sexual tension of teenage life.