BONUS: This edition contains a Where the God of Love Hangs Out discussion guide. Love, in its many forms and complexities, weaves through this collection by Amy Bloom, theNew York Times bestselling author of Away. Bloom’s astonishing and astute stories illuminate the mysteries of passion, family, and friendship. A young woman is haunted by her roommate’s murder; a man and his daughter-in-law confess their sins in the unlikeliest of places; two middle-aged, married friends find themselves surprisingly drawn to each other, risking all for their love but never underestimating the cost. Propelled by Bloom’s dazzling prose, unmistakable voice, and generous wit, Where the God of Love Hangs Out takes us to the margins and the centers of people’s emotional lives, exploring the changes that come with love and loss.
Nominated for a National Book Award, this fresh and stunning collection of stories takes the reader deep into the heart of the most alarming and joyful human relationships.
Panoramic in scope, Away is the epic and intimate story of young Lillian Leyb, a dangerous innocent, an accidental heroine. When her family is destroyed in a Russian pogrom, Lillian comes to America alone, determined to make her way in a new land. When word comes that her daughter, Sophie, might still be alive, Lillian embarks on an odyssey that takes her from the world of the Yiddish theater on New York’s Lower East Side, to Seattle’s Jazz District, and up to Alaska, along the fabled Telegraph Trail toward Siberia. All of the qualities readers love in Amy Bloom’s work–her humor and wit, her elegant and irreverent language, her unflinching understanding of passion and the human heart–come together in the embrace of this brilliant novel, which is at once heartbreaking, romantic, and completely unforgettable.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A powerful memoir of a love that leads two people to find a courageous way to part—and a woman’s struggle to go forward in the face of loss—that “enriches the reader’s life with urgency and gratitude” (The Washington Post) “A pleasure to read . . . Rarely has a memoir about death been so full of life. . . . Bloom has a talent for mixing the prosaic and profound, the slapstick and the serious.”—USA Today ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Publishers Weekly ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, Time, Entertainment Weekly, NPR, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, USA Today, Real Simple, Prospect (UK), She Reads, Kirkus Reviews Amy Bloom began to notice changes in her husband, Brian: He retired early from a new job he loved; he withdrew from close friendships; he talked mostly about the past. Suddenly, it seemed there was a glass wall between them, and their long walks and talks stopped. Their world was altered forever when an MRI confirmed what they could no longer ignore: Brian had Alzheimer’s disease. Forced to confront the truth of the diagnosis and its impact on the future he had envisioned, Brian was determined to die on his feet, not live on his knees. Supporting each other in their last journey together, Brian and Amy made the unimaginably difficult and painful decision to go to Dignitas, an organization based in Switzerland that empowers a person to end their own life with dignity and peace. In this heartbreaking and surprising memoir, Bloom sheds light on a part of life we so often shy away from discussing—its ending. Written in Bloom’s captivating, insightful voice and with her trademark wit and candor, In Love is an unforgettable portrait of a beautiful marriage, and a boundary-defying love.
A sharp and funny, rueful, and uncompromisingly real tale of growing up—from National Book Award finalist Amy Bloom A chubby girl with smudged pink harlequin glasses and a habit of stealing Heath Bars from the local five-and-dime, Elizabeth Taube is the only child of parents whose indifference to her is the one sure thing in her life. When her search for love and attention leads her into the arms of her junior-high-school English teacher, things begin to get complicated. And even her friend Mrs. Hill, a nearly blind, elderly black woman, can't protect her when real love—exhilarating, passionate, heartbreaking—enters her life in the gorgeous shape of Huddie Lester. With her finely honed style and her unflinching sensibility, Bloom shows us how profoundly the forces of love and desire can shape a life.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST AND O: THE OPRAH MAGAZINE • Look for special features inside. Join the Random House Reader’s Circle for author chats and more. “My father’s wife died. My mother said we should drive down to his place and see what might be in it for us.” So begins this remarkable novel by Amy Bloom, whose critically acclaimed Away was called “a literary triumph” (The New York Times). Lucky Us is a brilliantly written, deeply moving, fantastically funny novel of love, heartbreak, and luck. Disappointed by their families, Iris, the hopeful star and Eva the sidekick, journey through 1940s America in search of fame and fortune. Iris’s ambitions take the pair across the America of Reinvention in a stolen station wagon, from small-town Ohio to an unexpected and sensuous Hollywood, and to the jazz clubs and golden mansions of Long Island. With their friends in high and low places, Iris and Eva stumble and shine though a landscape of big dreams, scandals, betrayals, and war. Filled with gorgeous writing, memorable characters, and surprising events, Lucky Us is a thrilling and resonant novel about success and failure, good luck and bad, the creation of a family, and the pleasures and inevitable perils of family life, conventional and otherwise. From Brooklyn’s beauty parlors to London’s West End, a group of unforgettable people love, lie, cheat and survive in this story of our fragile, absurd, heroic species. Praise for Lucky Us “Lucky Us is a remarkable accomplishment. One waits a long time for a novel of this scope and dimension, replete with surgically drawn characters, a mix of comedy and tragedy that borders on the miraculous, and sentences that should be in a sentence museum. Amy Bloom is a treasure.”—Michael Cunningham “Exquisite . . . a short, vibrant book about all kinds of people creating all kinds of serial, improvisatory lives.”—The New York Times “Bighearted, rambunctious . . . a bustling tale of American reinvention . . . If America has a Victor Hugo, it is Amy Bloom, whose picaresque novels roam the world, plumb the human heart and send characters into wild roulettes of kismet and calamity.”—The Washington Post “Bloom’s crisp, delicious prose gives [Lucky Us] the feel of sprawling, brawling life itself. . . . Lucky Us is a sister act, which means a double dose of sauce and naughtiness from the brilliant Amy Bloom.”—The Oregonian “A tasty summer read that will leave you smiling . . . Broken hearts [are] held together by lipstick, wisecracks and the enduring love of sisters.”—USA Today “Exquisitely imagined . . . [a] grand adventure.”—O: The Oprah Magazine “Marvelous picaresque entertainment . . . a festival of joy and terror and lust and amazement that resolves itself here, warts and all, in a kind of crystalline Mozartean clarity of vision.”—Elle
From celebrated and best-selling author Amy Bloom comes a jubilant story of self-love, individuality, and gender expression. Nicki’s favorite aunt is getting married, and Nicki is excited to be the Flower Girl: she is all in for love and pretty petals. But when the family goes shopping to find outfits for the wedding, Nicki doesn’t feel like herself in any of the dresses her mom and aunt pick out for her, and all her happiness and excitement for the wedding evaporates. Nicki must find her voice—and her own style of expression to match it—to make Aunt Carmela’s big day absolutely perfect. Infused with intelligence and charm and complemented by art by Jameela Wahlgren that’s as warm and tender as a hug, Flower Girl celebrates the magic of finding the clothes that help us shine.
A unique offer for fans of Amy Bloom, bestselling author of Away...sample just one piece from her stunning new collection of interconnected short stories. Available at this special price for a limited time only. Love, in its many forms and complexities, weaves through New York Times bestselling author Amy Bloom’s astonishing and astute new work. Insightful, sensuous, and heartbreakingly funny, Where the God of Love Hangs Out illuminates the mysteries of love, family, and friendship. In the haunting story Between Here and Here, a daughter reluctantly steps in to take care of the infirm father she hated for so many years. As a tribute to her late mother, and to show that she is a better person than her father, she gives everything she has to this terrible old man and revises history. Between Here and Here and the eleven other stories that comprise Where the God of Love Hangs Out showcase stories of passion and disappointment, life and death, that beautifully capture deep human truths.
For readers of The Paris Wife and The Swans of Fifth Avenue comes a “sensuous, captivating account of a forbidden affair between two women” (People)—Eleanor Roosevelt and “first friend” Lorena Hickok. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Financial Times • San Francisco Chronicle • New York Public Library • Refinery29 • Real Simple Lorena Hickok meets Eleanor Roosevelt in 1932 while reporting on Franklin Roosevelt’s first presidential campaign. Having grown up worse than poor in South Dakota and reinvented herself as the most prominent woman reporter in America, “Hick,” as she’s known to her friends and admirers, is not quite instantly charmed by the idealistic, patrician Eleanor. But then, as her connection with the future first lady deepens into intimacy, what begins as a powerful passion matures into a lasting love, and a life that Hick never expected to have. She moves into the White House, where her status as “first friend” is an open secret, as are FDR’s own lovers. After she takes a job in the Roosevelt administration, promoting and protecting both Roosevelts, she comes to know Franklin not only as a great president but as a complicated rival and an irresistible friend, capable of changing lives even after his death. Through it all, even as Hick’s bond with Eleanor is tested by forces both extraordinary and common, and as she grows as a woman and a writer, she never loses sight of the love of her life. From Washington, D.C. to Hyde Park, from a little white house on Long Island to an apartment on Manhattan’s Washington Square, Amy Bloom’s new novel moves elegantly through fascinating places and times, written in compelling prose and with emotional depth, wit, and acuity. Praise for White Houses “Amy Bloom brings an untold slice of history so dazzlingly and devastatingly to life, it took my breath away.”—Paula McLain, author of The Paris Wife “Vivid and tender . . . Bloom—interweaving fact and fancy—lavishes attention on [Hickok], bringing Hick, the novel’s narrator and true subject, to radiant life.”—O: The Oprah Magazine “Radiant . . . an indelible love story, one propelled not by unlined youth and beauty but by the kind of soul-mate connection even distance, age, and impossible circumstances couldn’t dim . . . Bloom’s goal is less to relitigate history than to portray the blandly sexless figurehead of First Lady as something the job rarely allows those women to be—a loving, breathing human being. And she does it brilliantly.”—Entertainment Weekly
Amy Bloom was nominated for a National Book Award for her first collection, Come to Me, and her fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Story, Antaeus, and other magazines, and in The Best American Short Stories and Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards. In her new collection, she enhances her reputation as a true artist of the form. Here are characters confronted with tragedy, perplexed by emotions, and challenged to endure whatever modern life may have in store. A loving mother accompanies her daughter in her journey to become a man, and discovers a new, hopeful love. A stepmother and stepson meet again after fifteen years and a devastating mistake, and rediscover their familial affection for each other. And in "The Story," a widow bent on seducing another woman's husband constructs and deconstructs her story until she has "made the best and happiest ending" possible "in this world.
With the humour, empathy and fine writing that grace her prize-winning fiction, Amy Bloom takes us into the world of the intersexed - transsexuals, crossdressers, hermaphrodites - a group of people larger and more 'normal' than most of us would imagine. There are men like Hale Hawbecker, a 'regular, middle-of-the-road, white-bread guy' with a medical condition, the standard treatment for which would have changed his life and his gender. Mothers like Jessie, who recognised that her little girl Lyle was in fact a boy and used her life savings to help him make the transgender transition. And couples like Peggy Rudd and her husband, 'Melanie', who holiday on cruise ships along with fellow heterosexual crossdressers. Pulling apart our assumptions, Bloom brilliantly stitches together a revised, contemporary view of happiness, human nature, identity, self, and above all - what is normal.
Starting from the botanical crazes inspired by Linnaeus in the 18th century and exploring the variations it spawned, this study offers a fresh, detailed reading of the courtship novel from Jane Austen to George Eliot and Henry James.
The debut of a sparkling and reassuring memoirist -- an inspiration to late bloomers everywhere "I like to consider myself a late bloomer, meaning someone who will eventually, however late, come into bloom. Although when and if I will bloom remains a mystery. I wish I knew how to speak a foreign language fluently. I wish I knew how to cook a simple roast chicken, or that I had read The Idiot, whose main character sounds like someone I can relate to." In quick succession, Amy Cohen lost her job writing sitcoms, her boyfriend (with whom she'd been talking marriage), and her mom, after a long bout with cancer. Not exactly the stuff humor thrives on, is it? But filtered through Amy's worldview, there's comedy in the most unexpected places. In this unforgettable, engaging memoir, she recounts her (seemingly) never-ending search for love, her evolving relationship with her widowed dad, and her own almost unintentional growth as she stumbles through life. Filled with observations sweet, bittersweet, and laugh-out-loud funny, The Late Bloomer's Revolution will be irresistible to anyone who believes her greatest moment is yet to come.
After alliteratively establishing her 'normalcy' in the prologue, the protagonist proceeds to tell of her most irregular inner being in a series of poetic vignettes. -- Provided by the publisher.
Arguably Toni Morrison's best novel, Beloved addresses the powerful legacy of slavery and those whose voices have been historically silenced by it. Awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1988, Morrison's novel confronts the past in order to heal the present
Read Amy Boesky's blogs and view other content on the Penguin Community. The stirring true story of a woman who chose fearlessness in the face of a fatal family legacy and discovered the pleasure of living each moment to its fullest At thirty-two, Amy Boesky thought she had it all figured out: a wonderful new man in her life, a great job, and the (nearly) perfect home. For once, she was almost able to shake the terrible fear that had gripped her for as long as she could remember. Women in her family had always died young-from cancer-and she and her sisters had grown up in time's shadow. It colored every choice they made and was beginning to come to a head now that each of them approached thirty-five-the deadline their doctors prescribed for having preventive surgery with the hope they could thwart their family's medical curse. But Amy didn't want to dwell on that now. She wanted to plan for a new baby, live her life. And with the appreciation for life's smallest pleasures, she did just that. In What We Have, Amy shares a deeply transformative year in her family's life and invites readers to join in their joy, laughter, and grief. In a true story as compelling as the best in women's fiction, written with the sagacity of Joan Didion and the elegance of Amy Bloom, Amy Boesky's journey celebrates the promise of a full life, even in the face of uncertainty.
A story of hope, helping children navigate change and understand the important stages of growth. Human beings, like nature, must be patient through each season, knowing that brighter days do come and the beauty in bloom is inevitable.
Katie Bloom decides to finally share her true feelings with her childhood crush Ryan Ford, now that he has returned to Peach Leaf, Texas after leaving years ago.
Elsewhere is a four-book collaboration between Cargo Publishing, McSweeney’s, and the Edinburgh International Book Festival featuring brand new work from 50 of the world’s leading authors. The Book Festival commissioned 50 authors to write short stories, poems, or essays, all on the theme of "Elsewhere." Leading writers, including Michel Faber, Alasdair Gray, Ali Smith, A L Kennedy, Alan Warner, Roddy Doyle, and Amy Bloom, together with authors best known for their writing for children and young adults—such as Michael Morpurgo, Andy Stanton, David Almond, and Margo Lanagan—produced work that comprise the four themed anthologies collected in this slipcased boxed set: Somewhere, Here, There, and Everywhere.
Few writers have captured the essence of 19th-century London the way Charles Dickens has. A master of extreme situations, Dickens is known for his colorful and often seedy characters and the elaborate settings of his works. ""How to Write about Charles Dickens"" offers valuable suggestions for paper topics, clearly outlined strategies on how to write a strong essay, and an insightful introduction by Harold Bloom on writing about Dickens. This new volume is designed to help students develop their analytical writing skills and critical comprehension of the author and his major works.
A posthumous and definitive collection of new and selected stories by "virtuoso of the short story" (Esquire) and National Book Award finalist Thom Jones "Jones was an oracle ... It's impossible not to marvel at the urgency of these stories." --Wall Street Journal This scorching collection from award-winning author Thom Jones features his best new short fiction alongside a selection of outstanding stories from three previous books. Jones's stories are full of high-octane, prose-drunk entertainment. His characters are grifters and drifters, rogues and ne'er-do-wells, would-be do-gooders whose human frailties usually get the better of them. Some are lovable, others are not, but each has an indelible and irresistible voice. They include Vietnam soldiers, amateur boxers, devoted doctors, strung-out advertising writers, pill poppers and veterans of the psych ward, and an unforgettable adolescent DJ radio host, among others. The stories here are excursions into a unique world that veers between abject desperation and fleeting transcendence. Perhaps no other writer in recent memory could encapsulate in such short spaces the profound and the devastating, the poignant and the hallucinatory, with such an exquisite balance of darkness and light. Jones's fiction reveals again and again the resilience and grace of characters who refuse to succumb. In stories that can at once delight us with their wicked humor and sting us with their affecting pathos, Night Train perfectly captures the essence of this iconic American master, showcasing in a single collection the breadth of power of his inimitable fiction.
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