In this compelling tale, two characters yearn for family. One is Arthur Opp, an obese recluse living in his family home in Brooklyn. The other is Yonkers teen baseball star Kel Keller, who has a remote connection to Arthur. Can these strangers triumph over loneliness?

In this compelling tale, two characters yearn for family. One is Arthur Opp, an obese recluse living in his family home in Brooklyn. The other is Yonkers teen baseball star Kel Keller, who has a remote connection to Arthur. Can these strangers triumph over loneliness?

Former academic Arthur Opp weighs 550 pounds and hasn't left his rambling Brooklyn home in a decade. Twenty miles away, in Yonkers, 17-year-old Kel Keller navigates life as the poor kid in a rich school and pins his hopes on what seems like a promising baseball career --- if he can untangle himself from his family drama. The link between this unlikely pair is Kel’s mother, Charlene, a former student of Arthur’s. After nearly two decades of silence, it is Charlene’s unexpected phone call to Arthur --- a plea for help --- that jostles them into action.

Through Arthur and Kel’s own quirky and lovable voices, HEFT tells the winning story of two improbable heroes whose sudden connection transforms both their lives. Like Elizabeth McCracken’s THE GIANT'S HOUSE, HEFT is a novel about love and family found in the most unexpected places.

Tracing the full arc of the Venetian imperial saga for the first time, CITY OF FORTUNE is framed around two of the great collisions of world history: the ill-fated Fourth Crusade in 1202 and the Ottoman-Venetian War of 1499–1503.

The rise and fall of the Venetian empire stands unrivaled for drama, intrigue, and sheer opulent majesty. In CITY OF FORTUNE, Roger Crowley, acclaimed historian and New York Times bestselling author of EMPIRES OF THE SEA, applies his narrative skill to chronicling the astounding 500-year voyage of Venice to the pinnacle of power. 
 
Tracing the full arc of the Venetian imperial saga for the first time, CITY OF FORTUNE is framed around two of the great collisions of world history: the ill-fated Fourth Crusade, which culminated in the sacking of Constantinople and the carve-up of the Byzantine Empire in 1204, and the Ottoman-Venetian War of 1499–1503, which saw the Ottoman Turks supplant the Venetians as the preeminent naval power in the Mediterranean. In between were three centuries of Venetian maritime dominance --- years of plunder and plague, conquest and piracy --- during which a tiny city of “lagoon dwellers” grew into the richest place on earth. 
 
Drawing on firsthand accounts of pitched sea battles, skillful negotiations, and diplomatic maneuvers, Crowley paints a vivid picture of this avaricious, enterprising people and the bountiful lands that came under their dominion. Defiant of emperors, indifferent to popes, the Venetians saw themselves as reluctant freebooters, compelled to take to the open seas “because we cannot live otherwise and know not how except by trade.” From the opening of the spice routes to the clash between Christianity and Islam, Venice played a leading role in the defining conflicts of its time --- the reverberations of which are still being felt today. Only an author with Roger Crowley’s deep knowledge of post-Crusade history could put these iconic events into their proper context.