Alison Lurie

Vinnie Miller, a professor of children's literature, and Fred Turner, an assistant professor at the same American university, pursue their separate affairs in London during the same six-month period. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize. Reader's Guide available. Reprint. 20,000 first printing.

Foreign Affairs

Two social researchers find themselves seduced by a small-town cult and the teenaged psychic priestess they have come to study

Imaginary Friends

'THE WAR BETWEEN THE TATES gently dissects the marriage between Brian Tate, a 46-year-old professor of political science, and his wife Erica. The Tates appear to have every advanatage- a stable, loving relationship, two attractive children, good friends, enough money. Then Brian begins an ill-advised affair with a female student, and the seams in the marriage come alarmingly apart. Lurie miraculously seems to understand men as well as she understands women; she has an astonishing rapport with the fragmented world of the teenager; she constructs her American academic backdrops with the craftsmanlike skill; she evinces rare wisdom, wit, and compassion; and she writes like an angel' Sunday Times

The War Between the Tates

Gathers stories by Walter de la Mare, Philip K. Dick, Charles Dickens, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Tanith Lee, Ursula Le Guin, Bernard Malamud, E. Nesbit, Robert Louis Stevenson, H.G. Wells, and Oscar Wilde

The Oxford Book of Modern Fairy Tales

In sixteen spirited essays, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Alison Lurie, who is also one of our wittiest and most astute cultural commentators, explores the world of children's literature--from Lewis Carroll to Dr. Seuss, Mark Twain to Beatrix Potter--and shows that the best-loved children's books tend to challenge rather than uphold respectable adult values.

The Subversive Power of Children's Literature

Don't Tell the Grown-Ups

Offers a meditation on architecture and how it speaks to human experience, looking at what buildings and the spaces they contain say about the people who inhabit them, as well as the effects that those spaces have on them.

how buildings speak to us

The language of houses

The classic book about the clothes we wear and what they say about us. Even before we speak to someone in a meeting, at a party, or on the street, our clothes often express important information (or misinformation) about our occupation, origin, personality, opinions, and tastes. And we pay close attention to how others dress as well; though we may not be able to put what we observe into words, we unconsciously register the information, so that when we meet and converse we have already spoken to one another in a universal tongue. Alison Lurie, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, is our savvy guide and interpreter on this tour through the history of fashion. She provides fascinating insights into how changing sex roles, political upheavals, and class structure have influenced costume. Whether she is describing the enormous amount of clothing worn by early Victorian women or illuminating the significance of the long robes worn by aging men throughout history to connote eminence, her analysis is playful, clever, and always on target.

The Language of Clothes

Explores the darker underside of higher education, the problems of seduction and adultery, and the consequences of scandal on a small New England campus

Love and Friendship

Frances Hodgson Burnett

The Secret Garden (Penguin Classics)

Janet Belle Smith visits Illyria, a New England artists' colony, in hopes of improving her writing, and discovers an unexpected chance for a love affair

Real People

PAARE

'Vinnie Miner, 54-year-old Anglophile professor, is in London on a six-month foundation grant. So is her young colleague, Fred Turner. Vinnie is plain and resignedly self-reliant; Fred is arrestingly handsome and moping after a breakup with his wife. Vinnie and Fred have love affairs in London. Fred's is a fraught liaison with a waitress while Vinnie drifts into a relationship with an engineer from Oklahoma she met on the plane, a brash uneducated stereotypical American who finally beguiles her (and the reader) with his uncomplicated goodness... I devoured the book at a sitting and then went back for a second dip at once' Penelope Lively, Sunday Telegraph

Nine ghost stories whose central characters are women. They include one who, about to marry, is haunted by the depressed spirit of her fiance's first wife; a secretary on a diet who begins to see fat people everywhere; and a woman whose dead fiance appears to her whenever she kisses another man.

Women and Ghosts

The Truth About Lorin Jones

Roman

Die Wahrheit über Lorin Jones

Poignant remembrances and sharp observations from the “most able and witty” Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Foreign Affairs (The New York Times). This engaging new collection of essays from the New York Times–bestselling novelist gathers together her reflections on the writing life; fond recollections of inspiring friends; and perceptive, playful commentary on preoccupations ranging from children’s literature to fashion and feminism. Citing her husband’s comment to her that “Nobody asked you to write a novel,” Lurie goes on to eloquently explain why there was never another choice for her. She looks back on attending Radcliffe in the 1940s—an era of wartime rations and a wall of sexism where it was understood that Harvard was only for the men. From offering a gleeful glimpse into Jonathan Miller’s production of Hamlet to memorializing mentors and intimate friends such as poet James Merrill, illustrator Edward Gorey, and New York Times Book Review coeditor Barbara Epstein, Lurie celebrates the creative artists who encouraged and inspired her. A lifelong devotee of children’s literature, she suggests saying no to Narnia, revisits the phenomenon of Harry Potter, and tells the truth about the ultimate good bad boy, Pinocchio. Returning to a favorite subject, fashion, Lurie explores the symbolic meaning of aprons, enthuses on how the zipper made dressing and undressing faster—and sexier—and tells how, feeling abandoned by Vogue at age sixty, she finally found herself freed from fashion’s restrictions on women. Always spirited no matter the subject, Lurie ultimately conveys a joie de vivre that comes from a lifetime of never abandoning her “childish impulse to play with words, to reimagine the world.”

From Autobiography to Zippers

Words and Worlds

A Pulitzer Prize–winning author’s “sparkling, smart” tale of an aging writer and his younger wife looking for new life—or a way to end it—in Key West (The New York Times). Every schoolboy in America knows the work of author Wilkie Walker, who won fame and fortune with his accessible nature books. But as he turns seventy, his renown is nearly gone. Now he sits up at night torturing himself with fears that his career was a waste, his talent is gone, and his body destroyed by cancer. His wife, Jenny, twenty-five years younger, can tell only that he is out of sorts. She has no idea her husband is on the verge of giving up on life. When Jenny suggests spending the winter in Key West, Wilkie goes along with it. After all, if you need to plan a fatal “accident,” Florida is a perfectly good place to do so. And when they touch down in the sunshine state, the Walkers find it’s not too late to live life—or end it—however they damn well please. The National Book Award–shortlisted author of Foreign Affairs Affairs, The War Between the Tates, and The Last Resort writes a “sparkling, smart . . . highly volatile” novel (The New York Times). This ebook features an illustrated biography of Alison Lurie including rare images from the author’s collection.

A Novel

The Last Resort

In this “excellent” novel of “rare understanding” from a Pulitzer Prize–winning author, culture shock consumes a young Harvard couple in Los Angeles (The New York Times). When his mentor at Harvard University suddenly leaves for Washington, Paul Cattleman finds himself adrift in the wilds of academia. After losing his fellowship, he is out of work and one thesis short of a PhD. Rather than doom his career by taking what he considers to be an unsuitable job, he finds a temporary position at the Nutting Research and Development Corporation in Los Angeles, a city whose superficial charms signal an adventure. He is ready to make the best of his year out west among the beatniks and Hollywood hippies. The only thing holding him back is his wife. Katherine is a New Englander through and through, and as soon as she steps into the LA smog, she knows this transition will be a struggle. What Paul sees as fun, she considers vulgar. Bogged down by her allergies and crumbling marriage, she seeks out a shrink, who surprises and transforms her. While Los Angeles may be a cultural wasteland, this East Coast girl will find that West Coast pleasures can be quite a lot of fun. The National Book Award–shortlisted author of Foreign Affairs “writes coolly and wickedly” of freedom and self-discovery in this witty novel (The New Yorker). This ebook features an illustrated biography of Alison Lurie including rare images from the author’s collection.

The Nowhere City

Among the results of this intense preoccupation with the occult were a book-length poem, which some critics have called a masterpiece, and the possible destruction of several lives.".

Alison Lurie

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