Elizabeth McCracken

"A sweeping and enchanting new novel from the widely beloved, award-winning author Elizabeth McCracken about three generations of an unconventional New England family who own and operate a candlepin bowling alley"-- Bertha Truitt has always been an enigma to people in Salford, Massachusetts. She was discovered unconscious in a cemetery at the turn of the twentieth century-- nothing but a bowling ball, a candlepin, and fifteen pounds of gold on her...

"Ten months after her mother's death, the narrator of The Hero of This Book takes a trip to London. The city was a favorite of her mother's, and as the narrator wanders the streets, she finds herself reflecting on her mother's life and their relationship. Thoughts of the past meld with questions of the future: Back in New England, the family home is now up for sale, its considerable contents already winnowed. The narrator, a writer, recalls all that...

"The year is 1950, and in a small town on Cape Cod twenty-six-year-old librarian Peggy Cort feels like love and life have stood her up. Until the day James Carlson Sweatt--the 'over-tall' eleven-year-old boy who's the talk of the town--walks into her library and changes her life forever. Two misfits whose lonely paths cross at the circulation desk, Peggy and James are odd candidates for friendship, but nevertheless they soon find their lives entwined...

A collection of stories navigates the fragile space between love and loneliness, including the title story in which a family finds their lives irrevocably changed by their teenage daughter's risky behavior.

The author traces her marriage and relocation to France at the height of her writing career, her devastation over her stillborn son in her ninth month of pregnancy, and her heart-wrenching grieving process.

An unusual love story about a little librarian on Cape Cod and the tallest boy in the world, The Giant's House is the magical first novel from the author of the 1994 ALA Notable collection Here's Your Hat, What's Your Hurry. The year is 1950, and in a small town on Cape Cod twenty-six-year-old librarian Peggy Cort feels like love and life have stood her up. Until the day James Carlson Sweatt--the "over tall" eleven-year-old boy who's the talk of...

From the author of the beloved novel The Giant's House comes a collection of nine new stories. In Property, a scholar refurbishes a rental house by removing his landlord's possessions. In Peter Elroy: A Documentary by Ian Casey, a filmmaker is visited years later by his famous first subject. In The Lost & Found Department of Greater Boston, a grocery store manager becomes fixated on the case of a missing woman. In Thunderstruck, a family flees Paris...

Featuring guest editor contributions by the author of "Less," the latest edition of the respected literary annual collects twenty top-selected short stories from the previous year.