Dani Shapiro

"The ... author of Hourglass now gives us a new memoir about identity, paternity, and family secrets--a real-time exploration of the ... discovery she made last year about her father, and her struggle to piece together the hidden the story of her own life"--

A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love

Inheritance

"Late on a summer night in 1985, three teenagers are in a tragic car crash on the quiet, suburban Division Avenue. A girl is killed, and Theo and Sarah Wilf are left with a devastating secret that will haunt their family forever. By the time the Shenkmans move in across the street, the accident has faded into the past, but secrets haunt both families and cause them to become intimately intertwined. When Waldo Shenkman, a brilliant but lonely child, befriends Ben Wilf, who is struggling with his wife's decline from Alzheimer's, he once again entangles the families' fates and sets in motion the spellbinding, unforgettable climax"--

Signal Fires

Examines the process of creative writing and storytelling through the author's personal stories and experiences of living a writer's life and offers lessons and insights to aspiring authors.

The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life

Still Writing

"Hourglass is an inquiry into how marriage is transformed by time--abraded, strengthened, shaped in miraculous and sometimes terrifying ways by accident and experience. With courage and relentless honesty, Dani Shapiro opens the door to her house, her marriage, and her heart, and invites us to witness her own marital reckoning--a reckoning in which she confronts both the life she dreamed of and the life she made, and struggles to reconcile the girl she was with the woman she has become."

Time, Memory, Marriage

Hourglass

NATIONAL BEST SELLER • From the beloved author of Inheritance: "a haunting, moving, and propulsive exploration of family secrets” (Meg Wolitzer, author of The Interestings) Two families. One night. A constellation of lives changed forever. A TIME Best Fiction Book of the Year • A Washington Post Notable Work of Fiction • A Real Simple Best Book of the Year An ancient majestic oak stands beneath the stars on Division Street. And under the tree sits Ben Wilf, a retired doctor, and ten-year-old Waldo Shenkman, a brilliant, lonely boy who is pointing out his favorite constellations. Waldo doesn’t realize it but he and Ben have met before. And they will again, and again. Across time and space, and shared destiny. Division Street is full of secrets. An impulsive lie begets a secret—one which will forever haunt the Wilf family. And the Shenkmans, who move into the neighborhood many years later, bring secrets of their own.. Spanning fifty kaleidoscopic years, on a street—and in a galaxy—where stars collapse and stories collide, these two families become bound in ways they never could have imagined. Urgent and compassionate, Signal Fires is a magical story for our times, a literary tour de force by a masterful storyteller at the height of her powers. A luminous meditation on family, memory, and the healing power of interconnectedness.

A novel

In her midforties and settled into the responsibilities and routines of adulthood, Dani Shapiro found herself with more questions than answers. Was this all life was—a hodgepodge of errands, dinner dates, e-mails, meetings, to-do lists? What did it all mean? Having grown up in a deeply religious and traditional family, Shapiro had no personal sense of faith, despite repeated attempts to create a connection to something greater. Feeling as if she was plunging headlong into what Carl Jung termed "the afternoon of life," she wrestled with self-doubt and a searing disquietude that would awaken her in the middle of the night. Set adrift by loss—her father's early death; the life-threatening illness of her infant son; her troubled relationship with her mother—she had become edgy and uncertain. At the heart of this anxiety, she realized, was a challenge: What did she believe? Spurred on by the big questions her young son began to raise, Shapiro embarked upon a surprisingly joyful quest to find meaning in a constantly changing world. The result is Devotion: a literary excavation to the core of a life. In this spiritual detective story, Shapiro explores the varieties of experience she has pursued—from the rituals of her black hat Orthodox Jewish relatives to yoga shalas and meditation retreats. A reckoning of the choices she has made and the knowledge she has gained, Devotion is the story of a woman whose search for meaning ultimately leads her home. Her journey is at once poignant and funny, intensely personal—and completely universal.

A Memoir

Devotion

Enjoying her loving family and her work as an art restorer, Rachel Jensen finds her world unraveling after a terrible accident that leads to Rachel's discovery that her teenage daughter is threatening to destroy them all. Reprint. 40,000 first printing.

A Novel

Family History

NATIONAL BEST SELLER • A “gripping” new novel (People) from the best-selling author of Inheritance • "A haunting, moving, and propulsive exploration of family secrets.” —Meg Wolitzer, best-selling author of The Interestings • On a summer night in 1985, three teenagers have been drinking. One of them gets behind the wheel of a car, and, in an instant, everything changes. A TIME Must-Read Book of the Year • A Washington Post Notable Work of Fiction • A Real Simple Best Book of the Year Signal Fires opens on a summer night in 1985. Three teenagers have been drinking. One of them gets behind the wheel of a car, and, in an instant, everything on Division Street changes. Each of their lives, and that of Ben Wilf, a young doctor who arrives on the scene, is shattered. For the Wilf family, the circumstances of that fatal accident will become the deepest kind of secret, one so dangerous it can never be spoken. On Division Street, time has moved on. When the Shenkmans arrive—a young couple expecting a baby boy—it is as if the accident never happened. But when Waldo, the Shenkmans’ brilliant, lonely son who marvels at the beauty of the world and has a native ability to find connections in everything, befriends Dr. Wilf, now retired and struggling with his wife’s decline, past events come hurtling back in ways no one could ever have foreseen. In Dani Shapiro’s first work of fiction in fifteen years, she returns to the form that launched her career, with a riveting, deeply felt novel that examines the ties that bind families together—and the secrets that can break them apart. Signal Fires is a work of haunting beauty by a masterly storyteller.

The only child of Orthodox Jews in an anti-Semitic suburb, the author tells how she was forced to confront her alcoholism, her destructive relationship with a married man, and her past when her parents were seriously injured. Reprint. 35,000 first printing.

A True Story

Slow Motion

After years of estrangement from her famous photographer mother, Ruth Dunne, Clara Brodeur returns to New York City when her mother falls ill and is forced to reconcile the challenges of the past and the new life in Maine she has built for herself.

Black & White

Clessidra. Tempo, memoria, matrimonio

At 23, Dani Shapiro had drifted far from her New Jersey roots and family. Then an accident on snowy roads left both her parents critically ill in hospital. This memoir traces Shapiro's journey back to the world she left behind, where she was faced with the task of taking care of two people who needed her desperately.

Une histoire de famille poignante qui nous parle des fragilités insoupçonnées de l'existence. Rachel Jensen se considérait comme une femme comblée : elle venait d'avoir un bébé, avait un mari qu'elle adorait, une fille adolescente aux innombrables qualités, un tableau de maître à restaurer. Pourtant, un jour, tout bascule. Rachel se retrouve seule avec son dernier-né, après le départ subit de son mari et l'internement de sa fille, suite à un terrible accident qui a précipité les Jensen dans une spirale infernale. Plus jamais comme avant parle d'une famille unie qui se désagrège, de la force terrible de la culpabilité chez les enfants, et de la douloureuse prise de conscience d'une mère qui se découvre incapable de protéger les siens.

Plus jamais comme avant

"Still Writing offers up a cornucopia of wisdom, insights, and practical lessons gleaned from Dani Shapiro's long experience as a celebrated writer and teacher of writing. The beneficiaries are beginning writers, veteran writers and everyone in between."--Jennifer Egan From Dani Shapiro, bestselling author of Devotion and Slow Motion, comes a witty, heartfelt, and practical look at the exhilarating and challenging process of storytelling. At once a memoir, a meditation on the artistic process, and advice on craft, Still Writing is an intimate companion to living a creative life. Writers--and anyone with an artistic temperament--will find inspiration and comfort in these pages. Offering lessons learned over twenty years of teaching and writing, Shapiro shares her own revealing insights to weave an indispensable almanac for modern writers.

The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life (10th Anniversary Edition)

Jonathan Dee

Thirty years after his family and career are destroyed by an affair with one of his patients, psychoanalyst Solomon Grossman finds a chance for redemption when he learns where his grown son is living. Tour.

Picturing the Wreck

After years of estrangement from her famous photographer mother, Clara Brodeur returns to New York City when her mother falls ill and is forced to reconcile the challenges of the past and the new life she has built for herself.

Natalie Danford

John Kulka

The best-selling author of Back & White and Family History gathers together the best fiction from the newest authors, many fresh out of writing school. Original.

Best New American Voices 2010

Two women--Lucy, daughter of a traditional Jewish family, and Carolyn, wealthy and reckless--come to share a rare love together, until Lucy succumbs to the charms of Carolyn's stepfather. Reprint. NYT.

Playing with Fire

Fugitive Blue

Thirty years after his family and career are destroyed by an affair with one of his patients, psychoanalyst and Holocaust survivor Solomon Grossman finds a chance for redemption when he discovers where his grown son is working. Reprint. Tour.

Dani Shapiro

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