Ann Patchett

Ann Patchett, the New York Times bestselling author of Commonwealth and State of Wonder, returns with her most powerful novel to date: a richly moving story that explores the indelible bond between two siblings, the house of their childhood, and a past that will not let them go. "'Do you think it's possible to ever see the past as it actually was?' I asked my sister. We were sitting in her car, parked in front of the Dutch House in the broad daylight of early summer." At the end of the Second World War, Cyril Conroy combines luck and a single canny investment to begin an enormous real estate empire, propelling his family from poverty to enormous wealth. His first order of business is to buy the Dutch House, a lavish estate in the suburbs outside of Philadelphia. Meant as a surprise for his wife, the house sets in motion the undoing of everyone he loves. The story is told by Cyril's son Danny, as he and his older sister, the brilliantly acerbic and self-assured Maeve, are exiled from the house where they grew up by their stepmother. The two wealthy siblings are thrown back into the poverty their parents had escaped from and find that all they have to count on is one another. It is this unshakeable bond between them that both saves their lives and thwarts their futures. Set over the course of five decades, The Dutch House is a dark fairy tale about two smart people who cannot overcome their past. Despite every outward sign of success, Danny and Maeve are only truly comfortable when they're together. Throughout their lives they return to the well-worn story of what they've lost with humor and rage. But when at last they're forced to confront the people who left them behind, the relationship between an indulged brother and his ever-protective sister is finally tested. The Dutch House is the story of a paradise lost, a tour de force that digs deeply into questions of inheritance, love and forgiveness, of how we want to see ourselves and of who we really are. Filled with suspense, you may read it quickly to find out what happens, but what happens to Danny and Maeve will stay with you for a very long time.

The Dutch House

Commonwealth

Somewhere in South America, at the home of the country's vice president, a lavish birthday party is being held in honor of the powerful businessman Mr. Hosokawa. Roxanne Coss, opera's most revered soprano, has mesmerized the international guests with her singing. It is a perfect evening -- until a band of gunwielding terrorists takes the entire party hostage. But what begins as a panicked, life-threatening scenario slowly evolves into something quite different, a moment of great beauty, as terrorists and hostages forge unexpected bonds and people from different continents become compatriots, intimate friends, and lovers.

Bel Canto

In the spring of 2020, Lara's three daughters return to the family's orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew.

Tom Lake is a meditation on youthful love, married love, and the lives parents have led before their children were born. Both hopeful and elegiac, it explores what it means to be happy even when the world is falling apart. As in all of her novels, Ann Patchett combines compelling narrative artistry with piercing insights into family dynamics. The result is a rich and luminous story, told with profound intelligence and emotional subtlety, that demonstrates once again why she is one of the most revered and acclaimed literary talents working today.

Tom Lake

a novel

State of Wonder

The beloved New York Times bestselling author reflects on home, family, friendships and writing in this deeply personal collection of essays. "Any story that starts will also end." As a writer, Ann Patchett knows what the outcome of her fiction will be. Life, however, often takes turns we do not see coming. Patchett ponders this truth in these wise essays that afford a fresh and intimate look into her mind and heart. At the center of These Precious Days is the title essay, a surprising and moving meditation on an unexpected friendship that explores "what it means to be seen, to find someone with whom you can be your best and most complete self." When Patchett chose an early galley of actor and producer Tom Hanks' short story collection to read one night before bed, she had no idea that this single choice would be life changing. It would introduce her to a remarkable woman--Tom's brilliant assistant Sooki--with whom she would form a profound bond that held monumental consequences for them both. A literary alchemist, Patchett plumbs the depths of her experiences to create gold: engaging and moving pieces that are both self-portrait and landscape, each vibrant with emotion and rich in insight. Turning her writer's eye on her own experiences, she transforms the private into the universal, providing us all a way to look at our own worlds anew, and reminds how fleeting and enigmatic life can be. From the enchantments of Kate DiCamillo's children's books (author of the upcoming The Beatryce Prophecy) to youthful memories of Paris; the cherished life gifts given by her three fathers to the unexpected influence of Charles Schultz's Snoopy; the expansive vision of Eudora Welty to the importance of knitting, Patchett connects life and art as she illuminates what matters most. Infused with the author's grace, wit, and warmth, the pieces in These Precious Days resonate deep in the soul, leaving an indelible mark--and demonstrate why Ann Patchett is one of the most celebrated writers of our time.

Essays

These Precious Days

Offering an invitation into her personal life, the noted author shares the stories of the people, places, ideals, and art to which she has remained indelibly committed.

This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage

Meg Wolitzer

Jonathan Lethem

Dave Eggers

William Finnegan

Neil Gaiman

Anthony Doerr

Salman Rushdie

Lauren Groff

Marlon James

Andrew Sean Greer

Brit Bennett

Yaa Gyasi

Sergio De La Pava

Aleksandar Hemon

George Saunders

Rabih Alameddine

Jesmyn Ward

Michael Cunningham

Jennifer Egan

Louise Erdrich

Morgan Parker

Jacqueline Woodson

Steven Okazaki

Geraldine Brooks

Viet Thanh Nguyen

Scott Turow

Timothy Egan

Victor Lavalle

Moses Sumney

Moriel Rothman-Zecher

Adrian Nicole LeBlanc

Hector Tobar

Li Yiyun

Elizabeth Strout

C.J. Anders

Brenda J. Childs

David Handler

To mark its 100-year anniversary, the American Civil Liberties Union partners with award-winning authors Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman to bring together many of our greatest living writers, each contributing an original piece inspired by a historic ACLU case. On January 19, 1920, a small group of idealists and visionaries, including Helen Keller, Jane Addams, Roger Baldwin, and Crystal Eastman, founded the American Civil Liberties Union. A century after its creation, the ACLU remains the nation’s premier defender of the rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution. In collaboration with the ACLU, authors Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman have curated an anthology of essays about landmark cases in the organization’s one-hundred-year history. Fight of the Century takes you inside the trials and the stories that have shaped modern life. Some of the most prominent cases that the ACLU has been involved in—Brown v. Board of Education, Roe v. Wade, Miranda v. Arizona—need little introduction. Others you may never even have heard of, yet their outcomes quietly defined the world we live in now. Familiar or little-known, each case springs to vivid life in the hands of the acclaimed writers who dive into the history, narrate their personal experiences, and debate the questions at the heart of each issue. Hector Tobar introduces us to Ernesto Miranda, the felon whose wrongful conviction inspired the now-iconic Miranda rights—which the police would later read to the man suspected of killing him. Yaa Gyasi confronts the legacy of Brown v. Board of Education, in which the ACLU submitted a friend of- the-court brief questioning why a nation that has sent men to the moon still has public schools so unequal that they may as well be on different planets. True to the ACLU’s spirit of principled dissent, Scott Turow offers a blistering critique of the ACLU’s stance on campaign finance. These powerful stories, along with essays from Neil Gaiman, Meg Wolitzer, Salman Rushdie, Ann Patchett, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Louise Erdrich, George Saunders, and many more, remind us that the issues the ACLU has engaged over the past one hundred years remain as vital as ever today, and that we can never take our liberties for granted. Chabon and Waldman are donating their advance to the ACLU and the contributors are forgoing payment.

Writers Reflect on 100 Years of Landmark ACLU Cases

Fight of the Century

A Friendship

Truth & Beauty

Since their mother's death, Tip and Teddy Doyle have been raised by their loving, possessive, and ambitious father. As the former mayor of Boston, Bernard Doyle wants to see his sons in politics, a dream the boys have never shared. But when an argument in a blinding New England snowstorm inadvertently causes an accident that involves a stranger and her child, all Bernard Doyle cares about is his ability to keep his children—all his children—safe. Set over a period of twenty-four hours, Run takes us from the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard to a home for retired Catholic priests in downtown Boston. It shows us how worlds of privilege and poverty can coexist only blocks apart from each other, and how family can include people you've never even met. As in her bestselling novel Bel Canto, Ann Patchett illustrates the humanity that connects disparate lives, weaving several stories into one surprising and endlessly moving narrative. Suspenseful and stunningly executed, Run is ultimately a novel about secrets, duty, responsibility, and the lengths we will go to protect our children.

Sabine—twenty years a magician's assistant to her handsome, charming husband—is suddenly a widow. In the wake of his death, she finds he has left a final trick; a false identity and a family allegedly lost in a tragic accident but now revealed as very much alive and well. Named as heirs in his will, they enter Sabine's life and set her on an adventure of unraveling his secrets, from sunny Los Angeles to the windswept plains of Nebraska, that will work its own sort of magic on her.

The Magician's Assistant

Patron Saint of Liars

"The journey from the head to the hand is perilous and lined with bodies. It is the road on which nearly everyone who wants to write-and many of the people who do write-get lost."So writes Ann Patchett in "The Getaway Car", a wry, wisdom-packed memoir of her life as a writer. Here, for the first time, one of America's most celebrated authors ("State of Wonder", "Bel Canto", "Truth and Beauty"), talks at length about her literary career-the highs and the lows-and shares advice on the craft and art of writing. In this fascinating look at the development of a novelist, we meet Patchett's mentors (Allan Gurganas, Grace Paley, Russell Banks), see where she made wrong turns (poetry), and learn how she gets the pages written (an unromantic process of pure hard work). Woven through engaging anecdotes from Patchett's life are lessons about writing that offer an inside peek into the storytelling process and provide a blueprint for anyone wanting to give writing a serious try. The bestselling author gives pointers on everything from finding ideas to constructing a plot to combating writer's block. More than that, she conveys the joys and rewards of a life spent reading and writing. "What I like about the job of being a novelist, and at the same time what I find so exhausting about it, is that it's the closest thing to being God that you're ever going to get," she writes. "All of the decisions are yours. You decide when the sun comes up. You decide who gets to fall in love..."In this Byliner Original by the new digital publisher Byliner, "The Getaway Car" is a delightful autobiography-cum-user's guide that appeals to both inspiring writers and anyone who loves a great story.

A Practical Memoir about Writing and Life

The Getaway Car

An inspirational primer based on the author's 2006 commencement address at Sarah Lawrence College discusses how to manage life's crossroads, recounts times of struggle from her own life, and celebrates the benefits of not knowing what is to come.

What now?

John Nickel, an African American blues musician managing a Memphis bar, hires a white brother and sister even though he knows they mean trouble, as he pines to be reunited with his son.

A Novel

Taft

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Romance finalista do Pulitzer emociona ao narrar o desmoronamento de uma família Após a Segunda Guerra Mundial, gra­ças à conjugação de sorte e um investimento fortuito, Cyril Conroy entra no ramo imo­biliário, criando um negócio que logo se tor­nará um império e levará sua família da pobre­za a uma vida de opulência. Uma de suas primeiras aquisições é a Casa Holandesa, uma extravagante propriedade no subúrbio da Fi­ladélfia. Mas o que seria apenas uma adorável surpresa para a esposa acaba desencadeando o esfacelamento de toda a estrutura familiar. Quem narra essa história é o filho de Cyril, Danny, a partir do momento em que ele e a irmã mais velha — a autoconfiante e franca Maeve — são expulsos pela madrasta da casa onde cresceram. Os dois irmãos se veem jo­gados de volta à pobreza e logo descobrem que só podem contar um com o outro. E esse vínculo inabalável, ao mesmo tempo que os salva, é o que bloqueia seu futuro. Apesar de suas conquistas ao longo da vida, Danny e Maeve só se sentem verdadeiramen­te confortáveis quando estão juntos. Narrada ao longo de cinco décadas, A Casa Holandesa é uma história sobre a dificuldade de superar o passado. Com bom humor e raiva, os dois re­memoram inúmeras vezes seu relato de perda e humilhação e a relação entre o irmão indulgen­te e a irmã superprotetora enfim será colocada à prova quando os Conroy se virem forçados a confrontar quem os abandonou. Uma saga sobre o paraíso perdido, A Casa Holandesa se debruça sobre questões de he­rança, amor e perdão, uma narrativa sobre como gostaríamos de ser vistos e quem de fato somos. E, embora seja um livro repleto de reviravoltas que farão o leitor devorar a história, seus personagens ficarão marcados por muito tempo na memória.

A Casa Holandesa

An uplifting inspirational primer based on the author's 2006 commencement address at Sarah Lawrence College counsels readers on how to manage life's crossroads, recounts times of struggle from her own life, and celebrates the benefits of not knowing what is to come. 150,000 first printing.

What Now?

* THE SUNDAY TIMES AND NO. 1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * * SHORTLISTED FOR WATERSTONES BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2023 * * A REESE WITHERSPOON AND BBC RADIO 2 BOOK CLUB PICK * 'Filled with the moments I live for in a story' BONNIE GARMUS, author of Lessons in Chemistry 'This comforting summer read has it all ... Young love, sibling rivalry and deep mother-daughter relationships' REESE WITHERSPOON 'One of the most beloved authors of her generation' SUNDAY TIMES ----------------------------- This is a story about Peter Duke who went on to be a famous actor. This is a story about falling in love with Peter Duke who wasn't famous at all. It's about falling so wildly in love with him – the way one will at twenty-four – that it felt like jumping off a roof at midnight. There was no way to foresee the mess it would come to in the end. It's spring and Lara's three grown daughters have returned to the family orchard. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the one story they've always longed to hear – of the film star with whom she shared a stage, and a romance, years before. Tom Lake is a meditation on youthful love, married love, and the lives parents lead before their children are born. Both hopeful and elegiac, it explores what it means to be happy even when the world is falling apart. 'One of our greatest living chroniclers of love and marriage ... Expect wonder; Patchett always delivers' ELLE ----------------------------- Praise for The Dutch House: 'Patchett leads us to a truth that feels like life rather than literature' Guardian 'The best book I've read in years' Rosamund Lupton 'Her finest novel yet' Sunday Times 'The buzz around The Dutch House is totally justified. Her best yet, which is saying something' John Boyne 'A masterpiece' Cathy Rentzenbrink 'Bliss' Nigella Lawson The Dutch House was a Sunday Times top 10 bestseller w/e 28.09.19

The Sunday Times bestseller - a BBC Radio 2 and Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick

The Bookshop Strikes Back

Ann Patchett

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