Richard Russo

William Henry Devereaux, Jr., spiritually suited to playing left field but forced by a bad hamstring to try first base, is the unlikely chairman of the English department at West Central Pennsylvania University. Over the course of a single convoluted week, he threatens to execute a duck, has his nose slashed by a feminist poet, discovers that his secretary writes better fiction than he does, suspects his wife of having an affair with his dean, and...

In this “admirable…wry, idiosyncratic, vulnerably bighearted” collection (The New York Times Book Review), the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Empire Falls powerfully considers the unexpected turns of the creative life and reveals the inner workings of one of America’s most beloved authors.

“I’ve written a lot about destiny in my fiction,” admits Richard Russo, “not because...

The lives of Jack and Joy Griffin always seem to come back to Cape Cod, where they honeymooned, as they experience the ups and downs of life, including the deaths of Jack's parents, the marriage of their daughter, and Jack and Joy's divorce.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • The bestselling author of Nobody's Fool and Straight Man delves deep into the blue-collar heart of America in a work that overflows with hilarity, heartache, and grace.
“Rich, humorous ... Mr. Russo’s most seductive book thus far.” —The New York Times
Welcome to Empire Falls, a blue-collar town full of abandoned...

"From the Pulitzer Prize-winning Richard Russo--in his first stand-alone novel in a decade--comes a new revelation: a gripping story about the abiding yet complex power of friendship. One beautiful September day, three sixty-six-year old men convene on Martha's Vineyard, friends ever since meeting in college circa the sixties. They couldn't have been more different then, or even today--Lincoln's a commercial real estate broker, Teddy a tiny-press...

In his first collection, a master storyteller focuses on a fresh and fascinating range of human behavior. A jaded Hollywood movie-maker uncovers a decades-old flame he never knew he'd harbored; a precocious fifth grader puzzles over life, love, and baseball as he watches his parents' marriage dissolve; another child is forced into a harrowing cross-country escape; an elderly couple rediscovers the power of their relationship; and in the title story,

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To everyone's surprise, fifty-five years after the publication of To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee has published another novel. Go Set a Watchman was written before Lee's beloved masterpiece, as director Mary McDonagh Murphy explains in this update of her 2011 documentary Hey, Boo: Harper Lee & To Kill a Mockingbird. Murphy's film, Harper Lee: From Mockingbird to Watchman, sifts through the facts and speculation surrounding Lee and both her novels,...

"A collection of essays by top literary talents and food writers, Breaking Bread celebrates local foods, family, and community, while exploring how what's on our plates engages with what's off: grief, pleasure, love, ethics, race, and class"--