Sale on Stories Featuring the Big Apple
Experience NYC through books that explore the city in all its glory and grit. These titles are on sale for $1.99 each during November.
Something Blueby Ann Hood
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College friends reunite as adults, and tackle the complicated challenge of being young, lost, and in search of life in New York City. A novel that addresses friendship, ambition, and love head on, Something Blue and its three heroines head in surprising directions in their search for meaning.
Experiencing the City: “Julia measures time by the apartments she sublets. The year she lived on Horatio Street, her six months on Avenue A, the time she spent in a twelve-room apartment on Riverside Drive. These apartments give order to her life. She will say, ‘That happened when I lived on John Street.’ Or, ‘When I lived in Chelsea I designed these great earrings from old tires.” Her sublets are the framework of her life.’ ”
Boys and Girls Togetherby William Goldman
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In New York, five young people sacrifice everything for a life in the theater: Aaron, Walt, Rudy, Jenny, and Branch—a writer, a director, two actors, and one iron-willed producer. They grew up as creative, ambitious loners, and they all believe that their destiny lies in New York City. They are all determined to realize their potential even if it means destroying their friends—or themselves.
Experiencing the City: “Angie ran the stationery store nearest Walt’s apartment. He was a fat Italian, probably old and he made the best egg creams, if he liked you, south of 23rd Street. Walt picked up a News and a Times and walked inside the store, fishing in his pocket for change.”
Bread Upon the Watersby Irwin Shaw
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With one act of kindness, the fate of a New York City family is forever altered—not, perhaps, for the better. The Strands are a happy family, save for the occasional financial struggle. Allen, the father, is a schoolteacher, and has a lovely wife and smart, compassionate children. When Allen’s daughter witnesses a mugging, she takes the victim back to the Strand home for help and a warm meal. The Strands have no clue that the man they are helping is a powerful and wealthy Wall Street lawyer. In his gratitude, he offers gifts, vacations, networking opportunities—even plastic surgery. But with each reward comes baggage, and soon the Strands begin to lose sight of what matters most in life.
Experiencing the City:“He had once had drinks in the bar of the hotel with Leslie on an afternoon when they had been at the Whitney Museum nearby. It had been too luxurious for him. The other people at the bar were the same sort as the guests at the parties Hazen had taken them to in the Hamptons.”
The Old Neighborhoodby Avery Corman
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Growing up in the Bronx in the 1940s, Steven Robbins was raised on egg creams, baseball stats, and the camaraderie that kept his melting-pot Bronx neighborhood humming during World War II. Robbins aspired to escape his humble roots, and eventually worked his way to Madison Avenue, where he became a hotshot ad man with an enviable wife. But as he pushes fifty and his marriage falls apart, Robbins begins yearning for a deeper happiness. Returning to his old neighborhood in the Bronx, Robbins seeks the simplicity of the life he once fled in the one place where he may ultimately find contentment.
Experiencing the City: “We lived in the Kingsbridge Road-Grand Concourse section of the Bronx in a red brick building on Morris Avenue. Flamingos caroused on the wallpaper in the lobby and art deco nymphs were painted on the elevator door of ‘Beatrice Arms,’ named for the landlord’s wife, Beatrice. The building’s most distinguished citizen was The Dentist, who had an office on the ground floor, the smell of ether lingered in the lobby.”
Hold Tightby Christopher Bram
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A World War II sailor works in a New York City brothel—for his country. After being arrested in a gay brothel in New York during a raid, Seaman Second Class Hank Fayette doesn’t understand why his homosexual activities are grounds for imprisonment. The brothel is rumored to be a hangout for Nazi spies and the Navy forces Hank to go undercover as a prostitute. They hope to use clandestine sexuality to retrieve clandestine intelligence. However, after Hank becomes friendly with a black teenager named Juke, nothing seems to go as planned. Hold Tight is a World War II thriller set in the Big Band era, a world where sexuality and race can be equally dangerous.
Experiencing the City: “The town had filled up with servicemen this past month and one couldn’t go anywhere without falling over groping couples. New York was one big barnyard.”
Where the Boys Areby William J. Mann
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Where the Boys Are opens in Manhattan on New Year’s Eve, 1999: a high-octane trek through the gay party-circuit scene from Provincetown to San Francisco, Montreal to Palm Springs. With equal parts humor and pathos, it addresses universal issues of commitment, family, friendship, and the never-ending search for love that everyone can relate to, whether gay or straight, male or female.
Experiencing the City: “For here on the dance floor, nothing quite makes sense in the way it does in the world beyond. Here the ludicrous becomes the sublime. Dress in spandex and sequins and funny little hats. Ingest substances not intended for human consumption. Stick your tongue down the throat of a beautiful stranger.”
My Summer with Georgeby Marilyn French
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An unapologetically romantic novel about a woman who finds love in middle age. After four marriages and numerous affairs, famed author Hermione Beldame doesn’t expect real life to play out like her bestselling romance novels. So she’s stunned when she meets George Johnson at a party and the Louisville journalist sweeps her off her feet.
Experiencing the City: “In the city, I work mornings and give my afternoons over to pleasure. After all, why else live in Manhattan? After lunch at home or out with a business associate or a friend, I go to a gallery, a museum, or an art exhibition. If I’m with a friend who loves window-shopping, we might walk down Lex or Madison, gazing in shop windows and occasionally buying something. Most nights, I meet friends to attend a concert or ballet or play or movie or lecture. I almost always have dinner out. My New York life is exactly as I had pictured it, dreamed it, back when I was seventeen and imagining a life not dominated by misery. It was packed with social and cultural stimuli, wonderfully rich if a little exhausting.”
Leap Yearby Peter Cameron
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As the curtain falls on the vibrant, gritty New York of the 1980s, just-divorced David and Loren Parish watch their lives come apart—but not before one last year of self-absorbed fun. Even with their daughter Kate kidnapped, an absurd murder in a SoHo gallery, and friends suffering from yuppie maladies, David and Loren are determined to make sense of their messy and complicated lives. Leap Year is at once a rapier-sharp satire of a turbulent decade and an infectious celebration of a city brimming with infinite possibilities.
Experiencing the City: “They were silent for a moment, as the subway crawled across the 59th Street Bridge, awed by the view of Manhattan. ‘It’s so beautiful,’ Judith said. And Henry, who had never thought the city particularly beautiful, was surprised to find himself nodding in agreement, for he suddenly felt the beauty—it was a palpable, pulsating thing. He kept his eyes on it but moved his hand for Judith’s and was not surprised, when he touched it, to feel it open and clasp his own. At 59th Street he came through the turnstile behind her, ignoring her orders to cross the platform. He would not leave her, he said, until she was safe in a taxicab.”
Place in the Cityby Howard Fast
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Neighbors on one New York City street struggle to achieve their dreams during the Great Depression.
Experiencing the City:“At the west end, there is a cul-de-sac. By the east end, the traffic flows, north and south: If it flows for two days, you will see the world go by. That’s the way it is in New York. At the east end, Shutzey stands picking his teeth, with one, or two, or three whores behind him. Shutzey is a pimp; all day long he stands in front of Meyer’s cigar store, picking his teeth, and if Meyer had not more fear of Shutzey in his soul than fear of God, he might do something about it.”
Come Pour the Wineby Cynthia Freeman
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Nineteen-year-old Janet Stevens leaves Wichita, Kansas, for New York—and a glamorous career as a model. Manhattan in the 1950s is a heady place for a sheltered Midwesterner. A new friend helps her discover her forefathers’ faith, but from the moment she sees Bill McNeil at a party, Janet senses she’s found her future. When they marry, she believes she’s finally gotten what she always wanted—not fame or fortune, but the love that will fulfill and sustain her as nothing else ever could.
Experiencing the City:“ ‘Lovely, sunny furnished apartment on West 53rd Street.’ It sounded promising, but her heart sank when she arrived at the building that afternoon and the super showed her the apartment. It was dark and looked out to a faded brick wall. The sofa and matching velour chairs were a bilious green and the carpet, once rosy red, was now orange and threadbare. The kitchenette was barely large enough to accommodate a midget, but worst of all, in a way, was the grease that clung to the walls. The porcelain washbasin was worn down to the gray metal. The only redeeming feature was the rent: $65 a month without utilities.”
Stage Door Canteenby Maggie Davis
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New York City, the capital of the free world, is dark, its lights turned off as enemy submarines lurk offshore, as close as Coney Island. Three men—a gunner from a B-17 bomber who is a national hero, a magazine editor uprooted from civilian life and attached to the Allied High Command, and the violence-stalked captain of a Royal Merchant Navy freighter—find their destinies linked with three volunteer hostesses from New York’s famous Stage Door Canteen.
Experiencing the City: “From the corner on Broadway she could view 44th Street as far as the sidewalk in front of the Canteen. The line of soldiers stretched from the front door in the basement of the 44th Street Theater Building, and up the stairs, even though the service club wasn’t due to open for nearly two more hours. She recognized the stubby figure of a Canteen regular, Sgt. Struhbeck, and sighed.”
The Good Lifeby Gordon Merrick
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Perry Langham grew up an outsider looking in. He finally gets the opportunity he has always wanted—to join Manhattan high society—when he is swept into the world of millionaire Billy Vernon. In order to keep the fun going, Perry marries Billy’s beautiful young daughter Bettina, but Billy can’t reconcile his attraction to young men with his new marriage, and he goes down a dark path from which there may be no return. Based on the true story of a high-society murder case that drew international attention to its story of shocking crime and outrageous sex, The Good Life is Gordon Merrick’s posthumous final novel.
Experiencing the City: “After tonight Perry knew he was on his way. Nothing was going to stop him. He looked at his long legs stretched out in well-cut trousers and resolved that his transformation into Perry Langham, familiar face at El Morocco and man-about-town, was going to be permanent.”
The Washington Square Ensembleby Madison Smartt Bell
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A story of drifters, outcasts, junkies, and dealers surviving in the heart of 1980s New York City. Over one busy weekend, small-time heroin dealer Johnny B. Goode and his alliance of fellow pushers work their trade amidst students, businessmen, and assorted sewer rats while avoiding the law.
Experiencing the City:“It’s Saturday night and I’m coming into the park from the foot of Fifth and what do I see? Alex the fuzzbox guitar player has taken the prime spot under the arch, the Washington Square arch so newly purged of ugly graffiti by the good people in this world, and Alex the fuzzbox guitar player is actually singing in public, for the first time ever, to my knowledge. It would seem that Alex has raked enough quarters out of his scummy guitar case to spring for a Mighty Mouse amp with matching microphone for his voice.”
The Writing on the Wallby Lynne Sharon Schwartz
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The emotionally realistic and elegant portrait of mourning in the days and months following 9/11. As Renata, a linguist for the New York City Public Library, crosses the Brooklyn Bridge on her way to work one morning, she looks up to see a flash of orange and blue. Two planes have hit the World Trade Center, and with that, her world changes entirely. Renata’s connection to the tragedy grows deeper as her boyfriend, an overzealous social worker, begins to take care of a baby orphaned by the attacks. And then she meets a mute teenage girl in the rubble of the Twin Towers who may or may not be her long lost niece—a family connection as tenuous as it is painful.
Experiencing the City:“After the pillar of smoke came a hurricane of paper. The sky rained paper, and later some of the papers would be picked up as relics and sorted out—office memos, bills, jottings, computer printouts, resumes, stock reports, the daily menu of corporate life mingling with private scrawled hieroglyphics—while other papers would be left lying in the ash to devolve back to pulp under trampling feet and the wheels of sanitation trucks.”
World Without End, Amenby Jimmy Breslin
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Adrift in New York, an alcoholic cop searches for meaning in his life by revisiting his past.
Experiencing the City:“He walked down to Jamaica Avenue and over to 111th Street for the bus. It took ten minutes to get up to Queens Boulevard. You get off by the subway entrances at Kew Gardens, where people take the subway to the city. At the top of one of the subway staircases at Kew Gardens there is a big white statue of a naked warrior standing with a sword in his hand and his foot on a naked woman’s neck. The statue used to be over in the city. Right by City Hall. When LaGuardia was the Mayor, he had to look out his window every day and see the statue. One day LaGuardia said, ‘I have enough big pricks right in this office without having to look out the window.’ The statue was sent out to Queens.”
Other People’s Livesby Johanna Kaplan
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A collection of five stories and one novella from Johanna Kaplan exploring the private worlds of Jewish families in New York in the middle of the 20th century.
Experiencing the City:“Once, in one of his terrible-English times, Amnon said, ‘Ninety-Twoth Street Y,’ and Miriam, thinking suddenly of a giant tooth-building with elevators full of a thousand dentists, could not stop herself from laughing.”
The Sound of Heavenby Joseph Olshan
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A powerful novel of family secrets, doomed passion, and the fragile love between a bisexual man and an emotionally damaged woman. A talented musician, James arrives in Italy in 1983, just ahead of the panic in New York City caused by the burgeoning AIDS epidemic. In Rome, he meets Diana. Their attraction is intense and immediate. But storm clouds hang over their union, and back in New York, their relationship falls apart. For James and Diana, it is time to move on, but James has received news that will impact both of their lives in devastating ways: He is HIV positive.
Experiencing the City: “He awakens as doors of the subway car open up at 125th Street, allowing a mass of people to exit. Disoriented, James watches them leave. As he looks around the half-empty car, the realization slams into him that something is terribly wrong, and then he remembers that there has been no test result to contradict the grim proof that he is HIV positive.”
Hide Fox, and All Afterby Rafael Yglesias
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A novel of youth, privilege, and rebellion. Rafael Yglesias completed this novel, his first, at the age of 16. The largely autobiographical story follows a New York prep school dropout yearning for freedom and authenticity. On its release the book was hailed as a next-generation Catcher in the Rye. But protagonist Raul Sabas comes of age in a very different New York than Holden Caulfield—a tumultuous and radicalized city following the student takeover of Columbia University and assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr.
Experiencing the City:“The end of the IRT line is 242nd Street at Van Cortlandt Park. At that point the ground is higher than most of New York. On the hill there are trees that suggest fertility. Compared to the sea of concrete thirty minutes away, it is an incredible degree of nature. Strung along the hill are four or five private schools. Consequently, by eight o’clock the swarms of people coming down the steps of the station are dominated by adolescents, most of whom empty into a luncheonette called Mike & Gino’s.”
The Christopher Park Regularsby Edward Swift
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A misfit collection of wannabes, has-beens, and never-weres, the Christopher Park Regulars gather frequently in the heart of New York’s Greenwich Village. Here they share their hopes, dreams, and memories (and in the case of the abnormally obsessed C.C. Wake, an irrational fear of earthquakes), as they wait to become famous. Edward Swift brings the sideshow from the dust of East Texas to the hustle and bustle of New York City, of his irrepressible Regulars in a story that is funny, sad, and totally outrageous.
Experiencing the City: “Christopher Park, a small triangle of benches and trees enclosed by an iron fence with three gates, is, oddly enough for Greenwich Village, bordered by four streets: West Fourth, along with a sliver of Seventh Avenue South, Christopher Street, and Grove Street. The gate at the main entrance is graced with a vine-covered arch, but the other two gates are unadorned, and sometimes all three are locked for an entire day. When that happens the police officer in charge of opening the park each morning is met with severe reprimands by a handful of regular benchsitters. These devoted few, the Christopher Park regulars, expect all three gates to be open when they arrive, usually by late morning or early afternoon, and to remain open until midnight.”
On the Strollby Alix Kates Shulman
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A teenage runaway from Maine gets an eye-opening introduction to life on the streets of New York City. On the Stroll is a moving, gritty picture of the people who find themselves on society’s margins and a heartrending look at the ultimate costs of homelessness and prostitution.
Experiencing the City: “The small circle of Midtown New York surrounding the Port Authority Bus Terminal for a radius of half a dozen blocks goes by many names. Tour guides call it the Crossroads of the World. The hookers who work it know it as the stroll. Pimps call it the fast track. Three-card monte players speak of Forty-Deuce. Maps show the neighborhood as Clinton. But to the stagestruck and starstruck it is still Broadway, to tourists it is Times Square, to the old people and derelicts who live off discards from the teeming Ninth Avenue food stalls of Paddy’s Market it is more aptly Hell’s Kitchen, and to the New York City Police, Vice Squad, and Mayor’s Special Task Force on Crime it is simply the Midtown Enforcement Area.”