A thief vacuums the church before stealing the chalice....A lonely woman paints her toenails in a drafty farmhouse....A sleepless man watches his restless bride scatter their bills beneath the stars....Welcome to Grouse County...."Tom Drury's loving, wryly intelligent take on Grouse County is at once sophisticated and compassionate. Drury's prose i...more

It is an April day in the year 2000 and an era is about to end -- those booming times of market optimism when the culture boiled with money and corporations seemed more vital and influential than governments. Eric Packer, a billionaire asset manager at age twenty-eight, emerges from his penthouse triplex and settles into his lavishly customized wh...more

Charles Blakey is a young black man whose life is slowly crumbling.His parents are dead, he can't find a job, he drinks too much, and his friends have begun to desert him. Worst of all, he's fallen behind on the mortgage payments for the beautiful home that's belonged to his family for generations. When a stranger offers him $50,000 in cash to rent...more

After recounting almost every detail of Rabbit Angstrom's mental, spiritual, and (especially) erotic life for almost four decades, John Updike laid his brilliant creation to rest in 1990. Another of his ongoing characters, however, has remained at large--Henry Bech. In Bech at Bay, Updike revives his philandering Jewish American novelist for on...more

Fiction can often tell the truth better than nonfiction. And there is a lot of truth that needs to be told. -Richard A. Clarke From the noted counterterrorism expert and #1 bestselling author comes an astonishing fiction debut-a novel of terrorism, warring nations, and political treachery... that could happen tomorrow. For three decades, Ri...more

Eating the Cheshire Cat is a stunning debut from a young writer whose expert literary craftsmanship rivals that of the most seasoned novelists. With humor both clever and macabre, Helen Ellis lures us into a world of perfectly planned parties and steep social ladders. Soon, traditional rites of passage take unpredictable and horrifying turns as thr...more

Each week the editors of Slate, one of the best-loved online magazines, invite a different person to keep a journal to be published in real time on the site. The Slate Diaries is a selection of some of the finest installments. Contributors include distinguished writers such as Cynthia Ozick, Amy Bloom, David Sedaris, Malcolm Gladwell, Dave Egg...more