fiction / literary

In Washington, D.C., after an earthquake in the Middle East which sets in motion a quickly escalating conflict, Jacob and Julia Bloch and their three sons are force to look at the distances between the lives they think they want and the lives they are living.

"...Ruth and Nat are orphans, packed into a house full of abandoned children run by a religious fanatic. To entertain their siblings, they channel the dead. Decades later, Ruth's niece, Cora, finds herself accidentally pregnant. After years of absence, Aunt Ruth appears, mute and full of intention. She is on a mysterious mission, leading Cora on an odyssey across the entire state of New York on foot. Where is Ruth taking them? Where has she been? And who-- or what--has she hidden in the woods at the end of the road?"--Provided by publisher.

"A sweeping, funny, and poignant novel about a tight-knit group of twentysomethings in New York whose lives are forever altered by an unexpected tragedy from the widely acclaimed author of The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards Five years after their college graduation, the devoted friends once known as "the Murphys" remain as inseparable as ever. There's Sara Sherman, an editor and social butterfly; George Murphy, her caring, if troubled, astronomer boyfriend; Jacob Blaumann, a poet manque and their loudmouth third wheel; William Cho, an awkward but well-meaning investment banker; and Irene Richmond, an enigmatic, immensely talented artist. As this absorbing novel opens in December 2008, they are making their way through heavy snowfall to gather at a lavish art world holiday party. But for all the glitz and glamor, the festivities mark a more momentous evening than any of them realize. Irene will first notice a curious lump under her eye. William will fall desperately in love with her. And George will, at long last, ask Sara to marry him. Over the years that follow, this cast of rich, warmly drawn characters scrape by chasing their dreams in Great Recession New York. They watch acquaintances drop like flies and cling ever tighter to one another. When a devastating blow threatens to tear them irreparably apart, they must struggle to carry on together. A powerful and transfixing follow-up to Kristopher Jansma's celebrated debut, Why We Came to the City paints a portrait of a generation and tells an unforgettable story of hope, love, and friendship"--.

"... The last painting of Sara de Vos, ... bridges the historical and the contemporary, tracking a collision course between a rare landscape by a female Dutch painter of the golden age, an inheritor of the work in 1950s Manhattan, and a celebrated art historian who painted a forgery of it in her youth. In 1631, Sara de Vos is admitted as a master painter to the Guild of St. Luke's in Holland, the first woman to be so recognized. Three hundred years later, only one work attributed to de Vos is known to remain--a haunting winter scene, At the Edge of a Wood, which hangs over the bed of a wealthy descendant of the original owner. An Australian grad student, Ellie Shipley, struggling to stay afloat in New York, agrees to paint a forgery of the landscape, a decision that will haunt her. Because now, half a century later, she's curating an exhibit of female Dutch painters, and both versions threaten to arrive. As the three threads intersect, The Last Painting of Sara de Vos mesmerizes while it grapples with the demands of the artistic life, showing how the deceits of the past can forge the present"--Provided by publisher.

"The Turners have lived on Yarrow Street for over fifty years. Their house has seen thirteen children grown and gone--and some returned; it has seen the arrival of grandchildren, the fall of Detroit's East Side, and the loss of a father. The house still stands despite abandoned lots, an embattled city, and the inevitable shift outward to the suburbs. But now, as ailing matriarch Viola finds herself forced to leave her home and move in with her eldest son, the family discovers that the house is worth just a tenth of its mortgage. The Turner children are called home to decide its fate and to reckon with how each of their pasts haunts--and shapes--their family's future"--Provided by publisher.

"Tells the stories of four women living in New York's Chelsea neighborhood, more or less now. Two, Marie and Simone, friends for decades, are widows in their seventies, yet robust, engaged, appetiteful, even ready to find love again. They were immigrants, survivors of World War II in Europe, and now are living alone in the houses where they raised their children. Elizabeth is Marie's tenant, the mother of a 13 year old boy, a woman convinced that others have some secret way of being, of contending with the world, some confidence and certainty she lacks. ...The Art Historian, who takes a painting class with Marie and Simone and works on a series of paintings of the city underwater, is a witness of sorts, a woman who watches the neighborhood, the weather (it is post-Sandy or some cataclysmic event like it)."--Provided by publisher.

"It is 1483, and Sir Thomas Lemuel Hawke, a Cornish knight, is about to ride into battle. On the eve of his departure, he composes a letter to his four young children, consisting of twenty virtues that provide instruction on how to live a noble life, and on all the lessons, large and small, that he might have imparted to them himself were he not expecting to die on the battlefield. "Why am I alive? Where was I before I was born? What will happen to me when I die? Whatever well our lives are drawn from, it is deep, wild, mysterious, and unknowable..."Rules for a Knight is many things: a code of ethics; an intimate record of a lifelong quest; a careful recounting of a knight's hardest won lessons, deepest aspirations, and most richly instructive failures; and an artifact, a relic of a father's exquisite love. Drawing on the ancient teachings of Eastern and Western philosophy and religion, on literature, and poetry, and on the great spiritual and political writings of our time, Ethan Hawke has written a parable that--in the story of a young man's journey toward a life of authenticity and meaning--captures the instinctive movement of the heart toward truth and beauty. Rules for a Knight has the appeal of Arthurian legend; the economy of Aesop; and the vitality, intelligence, and risk-taking that could only emanate from Ethan Hawke"--.

"Meet Mazie Phillips: big-hearted and bawdy, she's the truth-telling proprietress of The Venice, the famed New York City movie theater. It's the Jazz Age, with romance and booze aplenty--even when Prohibition kicks in--and Mazie never turns down a night on the town. But her high spirits mask a childhood rooted in poverty, and her diary, always close at hand, holds her dearest secrets. When the Great Depression hits, Mazie's life is on the brink of transformation. Addicts and bums roam the Bowery; homelessness is rampant. If Mazie won't help them, then who? When she opens the doors of The Venice to those in need, this ticket-taking, fun-time girl becomes the beating heart of the Lower East Side, and in defining one neighborhood helps define the city. Then, more than ninety years after Mazie began her diary, it's discovered by a documentarian in search of a good story. Who was Mazie Phillips, really? A chorus of voices from the past and present fill in some of the mysterious blanks of her adventurous life. Inspired by the life of a woman who was profiled in Joseph Mitchell's classic Up in the Old Hotel, SAINT MAZIE is infused with Jami Attenberg's signature wit, bravery, and heart. Mazie's rise to "sainthood"--and her irrepressible spirit--is unforgettable"--.

"Simon Watson, a young librarian on the verge of losing his job, lives alone on the Long Island Sound in his family home, a house perched on the edge of a bluff, that is slowly crumbling toward the sea ... On a day in late June, Simon receives a mysterious package from an antiquarian bookseller. The book tells the story of Amos and Evangeline, doomed lovers who lived and worked in a traveling circus more than two hundred years ago ... Why does his grandmother's name, Verona Bonn, appear in this book? ... Could there possibly be some kind of curse on his family--and could Enola (his sister), who has suddenly turned up at home for the first time in six years, risk the same fate in just a few weeks?"--Provided by publisher.