Arthur Morey

Owner of a struggling art gallery and newly separated from her boyfriend, Francesca Thayer does the math and then the unimaginable. She puts out an advertisement for boarders, and soon her Greenwich Village house becomes a whole new world.

This collection of stories illuminates moments that shape a life, from a dream or a sexual act to simple twists of fate that turn a person out of his or her accustomed path and into another way of being. Set in the countryside and towns of Lake Huron, these stories about departures and beginnings, accidents, dangers, and homecomings both virtual and real, paint a portrait of how strange, dangerous, and extraordinary the ordinary life can be.

Is the world really falling apart? Is the ideal of progress obsolete? Cognitive scientist Steven Pinker urges us to step back from the gory headlines and prophecies of doom, which play to our psychological biases. Instead, follow the data. In seventy-five graphs, Pinker shows that life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the rise, not just in the West, but worldwide. This progress is not the result of some cosmic force....

Liam Pennywell, who set out to be a philosopher and ended up teaching fifth grade, never much liked the job at that run-down private school, so early retirement doesn't bother him. But he is troubled by his inability to remember anything about the first night that he moved into his new, spare, and efficient condominium on the outskirts of Baltimore. All he knows when he wakes up the next day in the hospital is that his head is sore and bandaged.

Lucy and his mother are taking a trip to Italy, where Lucy's oldest friend now lives. The exact nature of their friendship is one of the many mysteries Lucy hopes to untangle in the history he's writing of his hometown and family.

"1242. On a dark night, travelers from across France cross paths at an inn and begin to tell stories of three children. Their adventures take them on a chase through France: they are taken captive by knights, sit alongside a king, and save the land from a farting dragon. On the run to escape prejudice and persecution and save precious and holy texts from being burned, their quest drives them forward to a final showdown at Mont Saint-Michel, where...

Davis has brought his groundbreaking work up to the present, including the history of an "Era of Broken Trust, " from the end of the Clinton administration through the recent Great Recession. This additional material covers the horrific events of 9/11 and the rise of conspiracy theorists, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Hurricane Katrina and the failure of the New Orleans levees, the global financial meltdown, the election of Barack Obama, and the...

Hailed for its uproarious sense of humor, big-hearted portrait of an imperfect family, and keen observations about our current American moment, here is "not just the first big novel of the post-Obama era, but the first truly great novel of it" (Salon), from critically acclaimed, bestselling author Gary Shteyngart. Narcissistic, hilariously self-deluded, and divorced from the real world as most of us know it, hedge-fund manager Barry Cohen oversees...

Tackling a variety of themes, such as love, loss, and redemption, author Alice Munro delivers a masterfully crafted collection of short stories. In the title story, Too Much Love, Sonia Kovalevsky, a Russian bohemian, embarks on a winter-long journey across Europe with her love, discovering that love and monogamy are exactly the perfect match.

Explore the Hero's Journey in stories as old as humanity and as new as last night's dream

The latest incarnation of Oedipus, the continued romance of Beauty and the Beast, stand this afternoon on the corner of 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue, waiting for the traffic light to change. — Joseph Campbell

Since its release in 1949, The Hero with a Thousand Faceshas influenced millions of readers by combining the insights

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