Jennifer Egan

Bennie Salazar, an aging former punk rocker and record executive, and Sasha, the passionate, troubled young woman he employs, confront their pasts in this story about how rebellion ages, influence corrupts, habits turn to addictions, lifelong friendships fluctuate and turn, and how art and music have the power to redeem. -- Publisher description

"The Candy House opens with the staggeringly brilliant Bix Bouton, whose company, Mandala, is so successful that he is "one of those tech demi-gods with whom we're all on a first name basis." Bix is 40, with four kids, restless, desperate for a new idea, when he stumbles into a conversation group, mostly Columbia professors, one of whom is experimenting with downloading or "externalizing" memory. It's 2010. Within a decade, Bix's new technology, "Own...

Model Charlotte Swenson returns to Manhattan after recovering from a devastating car accident in her Illinois hometown. She finds that she can't restart her career and floats invisibly through the New York fashion world.

New York in den 40er Jahren - von den schillernden Nachtclubs in Manhattan zu der dröhnenden Marinewerft in Brooklyn. Krieg liegt in der ölgetränkten, rauchigen Luft. Die Männer sind an der Front, nun stehen die Frauen in der Fabrik. Doch die junge Anna verfolgt beharrlich ihren Traum: Sie will Marinetaucherin werden. Mutig schwimmt sie gegen den Strom und taucht unter die gigantischen Kriegsschiffe an den Docks. Allein die Gedanken an ihren verschwundenen...

Jennifer Egan, Siri Hustvedt, and Margot Livesey once again convene to discuss Leo Tolstoy's classic Anna Karenina.

In San Francisco, a conventional woman who has always been fascinated by her hippie sister, retraces the sister's European trip which ended in her death. In the process of learning more about her, the idol loses some of the glitter. A first novel.

Eleven stories on the vagaries of life. In Why China? a successful stockbroker yearns for the days when he was poor, in Passing the Hat, a wife observing a woman sleep around with men, is shocked to discover her own husband was one of them, while The Watch Trick compares the lives of two army friends, one who settled down, the other who didn't. By the author of The Invisible Circus.

This tragic love story reveals the destructive effects of wealth and social hypocrisy on Lily Bart, a ravishing beauty. Impoverished but well-born, Lily realizes a secure future depends on her acquiring a wealthy husband. Her downfall begins with a romantic indiscretion, intensifies with an accumulation of gambling debts, and climaxes in a maelstrom of social disasters.

Presents twenty of the best works of short fiction of the past year from a variety of acclaimed sources.