Avi Steinberg

A journalist's rollicking ride through the romance industry and a heartfelt and hilarious memoir of restoring faith in romantic love When his own romantic life was on the rocks, Avi Steinberg wondered if classical ideas about love still applied. As a compulsive reader, literary giants would be his guide. He went to Richardson and Austen, Tolstoy and Flaubert. But novels about relationships didn't go out of fashion after the nineteenth century, and Steinberg quickly realized he had to investigate the booming romance industry of today. As a writer as well as a reader, what better way to do that than to try his hand at writing romance himself? The Happily Ever After chronicles Steinberg's travels in a brave new world of books. He offers a grand tour of romance, from major industry conferences to writing groups at the local bar, as he works and reworks his own idea for a romance novel. He gives the inside scoop from a major romance publishing house, follows a fan fiction writer on her quest to meet megastar Sylvia Day, and analyzes the epic rivalry between cover hunks Fabio and CJ Hollenbach. And along the way he meets many romance readers, each of whom sheds light on why we are so fascinated by romance fiction and what the vitality of this genre has to say about us. With quirky wit and disarming honesty, Steinberg captures and elevates a literary culture often relegated to the margins, while also coming to better understand himself and realizing the possibility of loving again.

A Memoir of an Unlikely Romance Novelist

The Happily Ever After

A witty and probing travelogue through the landscapes associated with The Book of Mormon, it argues for taking The Book of Mormon seriously as work of American storytelling.

a journey through the mythic lands of Nephi, Zarahemla, and Kansas City, Missouri

The lost Book of Mormon

Is the Book of Mormon the Great American Novel? Decades before Melville and Twain composed their great works, a farmhand and child seer named Joseph Smith unearthed a long-buried book from a haunted hill in western New York State that told of an epic history of ancient America, a story about a family that fled biblical Jerusalem and took a boat to the New World. Using his prophetic gift, Joseph translated the mysterious book into English and published it under the title The Book of Mormon. The book caused an immediate sensation, sparking anger and violence, boycotts and jealousy, curiosity and wonder, and launched Joseph on a wild, decades-long adventure across the American West. Today The Book of Mormon, one of the most widely circulating works of American literature, continues to cause controversy—which is why most of us know very little about the story it tells. Avi Steinberg wants to change that. A fascinated nonbeliever, Steinberg spent a year and a half on a personal quest, traveling the path laid out by Joseph’s epic. Starting in Jerusalem, where The Book of Mormon opens with a bloody murder, Steinberg continued to the ruined Maya cities of Central America—the setting for most of the The Book of Mormon’s ancient story—where he gallivanted with a boisterous bus tour of believers exploring Maya archaeological sites for evidence. From there the journey took him to upstate New York, where he participated in the true Book of Mormon musical, the annual Hill Cumorah Pageant. And finally Steinberg arrived at the center of the American continent, Jackson County, Missouri, the spot Smith identified as none other than the site of the Garden of Eden. Threaded through this quirky travelogue is an argument for taking The Book of Mormon seriously as a work of American imagination. Literate and funny, personal and provocative, the genre-bending The Lost Book of Mormon boldly explores our deeply human impulse to write bibles and discovers the abiding power of story.

A Journey Through the Mythic Lands of Nephi, Zarahemla, and Kansas City, Missouri

The Lost Book of Mormon

An engaging history of the controversial text at the center of the Mormon faith traces the author's experiences at the sides of Mormon pilgrims, during a production of the Book of Mormon and at the Jackson County site identified by Joseph Smith as the Garden of Eden. 25,000 first printing.

A Quest for the Book That Just Might Be the Great American Novel

Avi Steinberg is stumped. After defecting from yeshiva to attend Harvard, he has nothing but a senior thesis on Bugs Bunny to show for himself. While his friends and classmates advance in the world, Steinberg remains stuck at a crossroads, his “romantic” existence as a freelance obituary writer no longer cutting it. Seeking direction (and dental insurance) Steinberg takes a job running the library counter at a Boston prison. He is quickly drawn into the community of outcasts that forms among his bookshelves—an assortment of quirky regulars, including con men, pimps, minor prophets, even ghosts—all searching for the perfect book and a connection to the outside world. Steinberg recounts their daily dramas with heartbreak and humor in this one-of-a-kind memoir—a piercing exploration of prison culture and an entertaining tale of one young man's earnest attempt to find his place in the world.

Avi Steinberg

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