In a novel that possesses the immediacy and power of a memoir, Francisco Goldman recounts the story of his passionate, if improbable, love affair with a woman two decades his junior and of the nearly insurmountable grief that stalked him after its tragic conclusion.

On the eve of her ninth birthday, unassuming Rose Edelstein bites into her mother's homemade lemon-chocolate cake and discovers she has a magical gift: she can taste her mother's emotions in the slice.

Maxwell Sim can’t seem to make a single meaningful connection. In an attempt to get out of his rut, Max accepts a strange offer to drive a Prius full of toothbrushes from London to the remote Shetland Islands. But he’s unable to resist making a series of impromptu visits to important figures from his past.

At 8:17 on a Friday night, the Illumination begins. Every wound begins to shine, every bruise to glow and shimmer. And in the aftermath of a fatal car accident, a journal of love notes, written by a husband to his wife, passes into the keeping of Carol Ann Page. 

On April 15, 1990, Jill Bialosky’s 21-year-old sister Kim climbed into a car in the garage, turned on the ignition, and fell asleep. Now, Jill recreates her sister’s inner life, and the events and emotions that led her to take her life on this particular night.

For the first time, Michael Frayn, the "master of what is seriously funny,” turns his humor and narrative talent on his own family's story, to re-create the world that made him who he is. 

From a master of modern American letters comes a collection of short fiction about people who, as E. L. Doctorow notes in his Preface, are somehow “distinct from their surroundings --- people in some sort of contest with the prevailing world.”