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All books published by Godine and its imprints

Lieutenant

The acclaimed author’s controversial 1967 debut was a novel of men at war—with themselves.

Lieutenant Dan Tierney is a Marine aboard the vast but labyrinthine and claustrophobic USS Vanguard, an aircraft carrier on patrol in the Pacific in 1956. Forced by the illness of his commanding officer to assume control of the Marines on board, Tierney must make decisions that will alter the lives of his troops and the shape of own future.

When a minor infraction committed by a promising young Private named Ted Freeman leads to a major investigation, a secret culture of initiation rituals and homosexuality is exposed. Torn between protecting Freeman and safeguarding the Marines’ reputation, Lt. Tierney must come to terms with the tragic reality of a system he had once idealized.

The Lieutenant explores the culture and politics of the United States military at the start of the Vietnam War, and reveals the insecurities of the men whose lives were defined by it.

PRAISE

“The Lieutenant is a masterpiece of military fiction and character driven storytelling. Each page is a work of total control and wound up energy, a predator ready to pounce. The beauty and stupidity of military service are on full display, as well the yearnings and failings of young men practicing leadership and preparing warriors for the battle. Dubus’s nuanced interiority and patient pacing changed the art of American military storytelling. The Lieutenant has been a secret for far too long. Read it.”
—Anthony Swofford, author of Jarhead

“Dubus is a master, our American Chekhov, and this re-issue of his only novel, The Lieutenant, is a gift.”
—Elliot Ackerman, author of Red Dress in Black & White

“Andre Dubus was a genius. His tense, wholly absorbing first (and only) novel has the dramatic pacing of a thriller, but with tremendous psychological and moral insight. At first a local study of power and of characters desperate to place their faith in corrupted and corrupting human institutions, the notes struck by the novel’s end resonate out, leaving us questioning the structure of our own relationship to power, and what, precisely, it is we put our faith in.”
—Phil Klay, author of Missionaries

“A fine, tense, wholly absorbing novel.”
—Richard Yates, author of Revolutionary Road

The Lieutenant is part of Godine’s Nonpareil series: celebrating the joy of discover with books bound to be classics. See here for a complete list of Nonpareils.

Am I Pretty When I Fly?

An Album of Upside Down Drawings

Like a long, funny letter from an old friend, an album of drawings by the legendary singer and activist for social justice, Joan Baez.

Since retiring from active performing, Baez has focused her formidable talents on painting and drawing. This collection of drawings shows another side of Baez: lovingly loose and charming sketches on reoccurring themes such as politics, relationships, women, animals, and family. Each section, organized thematically, includes an introductory piece by the artist. Baez approaches her line drawings as exercises in freedom: she begins drawing upside down—often using her non-dominant hand—without any preconceived notion of where the lines might lead her.

Beginning with her seminal debut album in 1960, Baez has been a musical force of nature of incalculable influence whose earliest recordings fed a host of traditional ballads into the rock vernacular. In 1963, she introduced Bob Dylan to the world, beginning a tradition of mutual mentoring that continued across her many recordings. As a lifetime advocate for non-violent social change, she marched on the front line of the civil rights movement with Martin Luther King Jr., shined a spotlight on the Free Speech Movement, took to the fields with Cesar Chavez, organized resistance to the Vietnam War, and inspired Vaclav Havel in his fight for a Czech Republic.

Am I Pretty When I Fly? reveals yet another side of a beloved icon.

ADVANCE PRAISE

“A book exploding with spontaneity and humor, and a grand tour through the mind of one of the great artists of the twentieth century.”
—Steve Martin

“Am I Pretty When I Fly? is moving, subversive, and heartbreaking. Childlike but not childish, full of wonder as well as despair. I loved it. Just like life. Thank you, Joan.”
—Bette Midler

“Joan Baez is much more than a cultural icon and spiritual/creative godmother to multiple generations of people on this planet. She has repeatedly put herself on the line for peace and justice and for the downtrodden who have nowhere to go. And then there’s that voice—stunning, earth-shattering, loving, reaching in and piercing one’s soul to help us hang on for dear life. And now her artwork and drawings, along with her pointed wit, reach into us again. We know we live in an upside down world, but the human eye, in its every waking moment, is actually taking an upside down picture and turning it right side up on the way to the brain. This book insists we see the world the way it really is. I’ve never seen such a work as this. Wow. Just wow.”
—Michael Moore

“Am I Pretty When I Fly? shows me a side of Joan Baez I could not have imagined. It is entertaining, moving, ridiculously funny, insightful, and mysterious.”
—Lana Del Rey

“We always knew Joan Baez was funny and clever. We didn’t know she was that funny and clever. The real surprise, however, came to us in Joan’s new book, Am I Pretty When I Fly? These drawings elicit a stunning depth of feeling as they spin off from humor and romp through tenderness, cynicism, anger, heartbreak and—cloaked in silliness—a terrifying peek at current events. She has put down the guitar and reached for a pen and paper without missing a beat. This brilliant book is an example of an artist drawing the best of herself. These amazing ‘feelustrations’ are revelatory not only of Joan but humanity itself. She is a gift that keeps on giving.”
—Lily Tomlin and Jane Wagner

CRITICAL PRAISE

“The pages come alive, taking readers on a pictorial trip through Baez’s life . . . Baez brings readers into a wonderland of intriguing characters . . . fans and newcomers alike will appreciate this intimate look into Baez’s unique artistry.”
—Kirkus Reviews (Starred review)

Reaching Inside

50 Acclaimed Authors on 100 Unforgettable Short Stories

“Fiction authors weigh in on their favorite short stories in these soulful reflections . . . the pensive selections offer revealing insight into how they think about literature. Bookworms will want to dig into this.” —Publishers Weekly

A moving and inspiring anthology of masterful essays on stories that touch the hearts and minds of readers.

“A writer,” Nobel Prize winner Saul Bellow once said, “is a reader who is moved to emulation.” New York Times bestselling novelist and memoirist Andre Dubus III took that idea and invited acclaimed authors to write about short stories that altered their view of life and their place in it—short stories that, ultimately, made them want to write something substantial themselves.

Here is Richard Russo on “Builders” by Richard Yates and Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery.” Joyce Carol Oates on John Updike’s “A&P.” Tobias Wolff on Hawthorne’s “Wakefield.” Michael Cunningham on James Joyce’s “The Dead.” And much, much more. Readers will not only gain new insight into these masterfully written stories but also the impact each had on the contributors’ lives and work.

The fifty contributors are T.C. Boyle, Russell Banks, Richard Bausch, Robert Boswell, Charles Baxter, Ann Beattie, Madison Smartt Bell, Ron Carlson, Lan Samantha Chang, Michael Cunningham, Junot Diaz, Anthony Doerr, Emma Donoghue, Stuart Dybek, Dagoberto Gilb, Julia Glass, Mary Gordon, Lauren Groff, Jennifer Haigh, Jane Hamilton, Ron Hansen, Paul Harding, Ann Hood, Pam Houston, Gish Jen, Charles Johnson, Phil Klay, Dennis Lehane, Lois Lowry, Colum McCann, Sue Miller, Rick Moody, Antonya Nelson, Bich Nguyen, Joyce Carol Oates, Stewart O’Nan, Peter Orner, ZZ Packer, Ann Patchett, Edith Pearlman, Jayne Ann Phillips, Kirstin Valdez Quade, Anna Quindlen, Ron Rash, Richard Russo, Dani Shapiro, Mona Simpson, Jess Walter, Tobias Wolff, and Meg Wolitzer.

Reaching Inside will remind you why you fell in love with reading.

CONTENTS

Introduction: Andre Dubus III

Ann Patchett
“Sonny’s Blues,” James Baldwin
“The Long-Distance Runner,” Grace Paley

Mary Gordon
“I Stand Here Ironing,” Tillie Olsen
“Pale Horse, Pale Rider,” Katherine Anne Porter

Madison Smartt Bell
“King of the Mountain,” George Garrett
“Sredni Vashtar,” Saki

Meg Wolitzer
“Clay,” James Joyce
“Yours,” Mary Robison

Dani Shapiro
“Circular Ruins,” Jorge Luis Borges
“Getting Closer,” Steven Millhauser

ZZ Packer
“The Paper Lantern,” Stuart Dybek
“Solo Song: For Doc,” James Alan McPherson

Ann Beattie
“Bliss,” Katherine Mansfield
“The Prince,” Craig Nova

T.C. Boyle
“The Brother,” Robert Coover
“The Sorrows of the Flesh,” Isabel Huggan

Anthony Doerr
“The Garden of Forking Paths,” Jose Louis Borges
“Continuity of Parks,” Julio Cortazar

Gish Jen
“Barn Burning,” William Faulkner
“Bartleby, The Scrivener,” Herman Melville

Stewart O’Nan
“Winter Dreams,” F. Scott Fitzgerald
“Boys,” Rick Moody

Tobias Wolff
“Wakefield,” Nathaniel Hawthorne
“Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?,” Joyce Carol Oates

Jess Walter
“The School,” Donald Barthelme
“Bullet in the Brain,” Tobias Wolff

Kirstin Valdez Quade
“Love,” William Maxwell
“Dance of the Happy Shades,” Alice Munro

Mona Simpson
“The Lady with the Dog,” Anton Chekhov
“Good People,” David Foster Wallace

Richard Russo
“The Lottery,” Shirley Jackson
“The Builders,” Richard Yates

Ron Rash
“Where Will You Go When Your Skin Cannot Contain You,” William Gay
“A Worn Path,” Eudora Welty

Anna Quindlen
“The Gift of the Magi,” O. Henry
“Wants,” Grace Paley

Jayne Anne Phillips
“A Good Man is Hard to Find,” Flannery O’Connor
“In Dreams Begin Responsibilities,” Delmore Schwartz

Edith Pearlman
“A Love Match,” Sylvia Townsend Warner
“Roman Fever,” Edith Wharton

Peter Orner
“Guests of the Nation,” Frank O’Connor
“Welcome,” John Edgar Wideman

Joyce Carol Oates
“Battle Royal,” Ralph Ellison
“A&P,” John Updike

Bich Minh Nguyen
“Cathedral,” Raymond Carver
“In the American Society,” Gish Jen

Antonya Nelson
“Heart of Darkness,” Joseph Conrad
“The Girl Who Left Her Sock on the Floor,” Deborah Eisenberg

Rick Moody
“The Company of Wolves,” Angela Carter
“The Use of Force,” William Carlos Williams

Sue Miller
“Spanish in the Morning,” Edward P. Jones
“The Things They Carried,” Tim O’Brien

Colum McCann
“A Ball of Malt and Madame Butterfly,” Benedict Kiely
“The Love Object,” Edna O’Brien

Lois Lowry
“A Small, Good Thing,” Raymond Carver
“The Management of Grief,” Bharati Mukherjee

Dennis Lehane
“Why Don’t You Dance,” Raymond Carver
“The Second Tree from the Corner,” E.B. White

Phil Klay
“The Grand Inquisitor,” Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“The Harvest,” Amy Hempel

Charles Johnson
“An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” Ambrose Bierce
“Trumpeter,” John Gardner

Pam Houston
“Sara Cole: A Type of Love Story,” Russell Banks
“A Note on the Type,” Ron Carlson

Ann Hood
“Girl,” Jamaica Kincaid
“Home,” Jayne Anne Phillips

Paul Harding
“The Swimmer,” John Cheever
“The Jewels of the Cabots,” John Cheever

Ron Hansen
“To Build a Fire,” Jack London
“Master and Man,” Leo Tolstoy

Jane Hamilton
“Goodbye My Brother,” John Cheever
“White Angel,” Michael Cunningham

Jennifer Haigh
“The Ice Wagon Going Down the Street,” Mavis Gallant
“Family Furnishings,” Alice Munro

Lauren Groff
“The Overcoat,” Nikolai Gogol
“The Shawl,” Cynthia Ozick

Robert Boswell
“Madagascar,” Steven Schwartz
“The Death of Ivan Ilych,” Leo Tolstoy

Russell Banks
“The Artificial Nigger,” Flannery O’Connor
“No Place for You My Love,” Eudora Welty

Julia Glass
“A Father’s Story,” Andre Dubus
“Young Goodman Brown,” Nathaniel Hawthorne

Dagoberto Gilb
“La Noche Buena,” Tomas Rivera
“Paso del Norte,” Juan Rulfo

Stuart Dybek
“The Grasshopper and Bell Cricket,” Yasunari Kawabata
“Birds,” John O’Brien

Emma Donoghue
“An Attack of Hunger,” Maeve Brennan
“The Yellow Wallpaper,” Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Junot Diaz
“Bloodchild,” Octavia Butler
“Night Women,” Edwidge Danticat

Michael Cunningham
“Work,” Denis Johnson
“The Dead,” James Joyce

Lan Samantha Chang
“French Lesson I: Le Meurtre,” Lydia Davis
“The Cask of Amontillado,” Edgar Allan Poe

Ron Carlson
“Babylon Revisited,” F. Scott Fitzgerald
“The Tell-Tale Heart,” Edgar Allan Poe

Charles Baxter
“The Corn Planting,” Sherwood Anderson
“A Conversation with My Father,” Grace Paley

Richard Bausch
“Hills Like White Elephants,” Ernest Hemingway
“The Real Thing,” Henry James

Please Wait by the Coatroom

Reconsidering Race and Identity in American Art

Far-ranging and thought-provoking essays on the relation of art and ethnic identity.

This first collection by award-winning author John Yau, drawn from decades of work, includes essays about Black, Asian, Latinx, and Native American artists: sculptors Luis Jimenez and Ruth Asawa; “second generation Abstract Expressionists” such as the Black painter Ed Clark and the Japanese American painter Matsumi Kanemitsu; the performance artists James Luna and Patty Chang; the photographers Laurel Nakadate and Teju Cole; and a generation of Asian American artists that has emerged during the last decade.

While identity is at the fore in this collection, Yau’s essays also propose the need for an expansive view of identity, as in the essay “On Reconsidering Identity,” which explores the writings of Lydia Cabrera and Edouard Glissant, and the possibilities of creolisation versus the reductiveness of Aime Cesaire’s Negritude.

Please Wait by the Coatroom is for serious readers interested in the art and artists of color that many mainstream institutions and critics misrepresented or overlooked. It presents a view guided by the artists’ desire for autonomy and freedom in a culture that has deemed them undesirable or invisible.

CRITICAL PRAISE

“In this revelatory volume, John Yau challenges the art world’s omission and misrepresentation of Black, Asian, Latinx, and Native American artists. Yau’s passion energizes these reappraisals, and his writing captures the artworks’ physicality via striking observations and reverent attention to detail….This is a necessary corrective.”
—Publishers Weekly

“Yau makes a case for the role identity and cultural background can play in the formation of an artist’s aesthetic choices, and he interrogates standard art historical hierarchies and the supposed objective viewpoint of the avant-garde. While he acknowledges a number of strides in recent decades toward a more inclusive, open version of art history, he also shows how far there is to come, a gap he helps to close through thoughtful pieces on artists such as Ruth Asawa, Kerry James Marshall, Richard Hunt, Jiha Moon, Ed Clark, and many more.”
—Los Angeles Review of Books

“There certainly are many lively art critics right now. But if I had to name the one senior figure whose writing best reveals what’s happening, I would pick John Yau.”
—David Carrier, Counterpunch

“Please Wait by the Coatroom brings together decades of Yau’s expansive views on art by marginalized and underrepresented artists of color, most of whom, thanks in large part to his dedication, are celebrated widely today.”
—Christine Y. Kim, Britton Family Curator-at-Large, North America Art, Tate Modern

“Yau is a prescient critic who has set the stage for a more expansive view of art that the rest of us are only catching up to now.”
—Hrag Vartanian, editor-in-chief and co-founder of Hyperallergic

“John Yau sees what others have long ignored: the art world’s willful blindness to race, its exclusion of people of color, and the complexity of artists relegated to its coat rooms.”
—Marci Kwon, co-director, Asian American Art Initiative, Cantor Arts Center

“A generation has impatiently waited for this book. Yau undoes previously canonized histories with precision. Yau is a polymath, deeply schooled in the canyons of metaphor in poetry, but here he is as precise and real as it gets.”
—Kim Anno, painter, photographer, and film/video artist

“Yau’s sensitivity to words and their meanings and the gap between language and art is on display in this lively collection of essays that elevates the work of artists for whom the tangled knot of art and identity is central to their work.”
—Helen Molesworth, writer and curator

“John Yau’s art criticism is luscious and purposeful. He is generous with words, but not in an adulatory way. Rather, Yau aims at sounding the dimensions of an artist’s oeuvre and at unlocking its hermeneutic potential. This collection, which bears the name of his landmark 1988 essay on Wifredo Lam’s marginalization at MoMA, gathers his voluminous work on artists of a wide variety of ethnic and cultural backgrounds, recognizing the importance of personal identity as a defining element of artistic expression. The collection is restitutive of what the art mainstream and formalist frameworks have tried to erase. Yau illuminates a world of artists disregarded or omitted in the modern art canon. Giving them the attention they deserve, this book is a breath of fresh air, and evidence of Yau’s lifetime of swimming against the mainstream’s conventions and hierarchies.”
—Taína Caragol, curator of painting, sculpture & Latinx art and history, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian

“John Yau’s radiance of words and glistening observations about artists and the cultural sphere inspire and provoke. His peerless mode of describing and insights into the feeling of being cast aside compels all of us to reconsider makers and histories that have been waiting to be seen. Another brave, finely wrought collection that I will dip into time and time again.”
—Asma Naeem, director, Baltimore Museum of Art

My Man in Antibes

Getting to Know Graham Greene

“I savored Michael Mewshaw’s funny, gossipy, thoughtful account of his fractious friendship with Graham Greene.”
—Damon Galgut, Booker Prize-winning author of The Promise

Book of the Year 2023 — Times Literary Supplement  

When a writer tracks down his literary hero, Graham Greene, who is living quietly on the shores of the Mediterranean, the author finds his new friend is every bit as complex as the fiction he’s famous for.

While living in southern France in 1972, Michael Mewshaw engineered a meeting with Graham Greene. Mewshaw was an ambitious young journalist and novelist, Greene was an internationally revered elder statesman of letters. The pair became fast friends and corresponded for the next twenty years. My Man in Antibes is an intimate portrait of what it was like to eat, drink, and gossip with one of the most revered—and complicated—authors of the twentieth century.

Growing up Catholic with literary aspirations, Mewshaw believed Greene was the author to emulate. Not only did Greene demonstrate how religious belief and church dogma could be subjects for fiction, he also wrote murder mysteries and political thrillers where his characters’ inner conflicts played out dramatically in exotic settings. Under Greene’s sway, Mewshaw traveled through Mexico like the whiskey priest in Greene’s The Power and the Glory and honeymooned at the Hotel Oloffson in Haiti, the setting of The Comedians.

When Mewshaw tracked down Greene in Antibes, he found the author was far from a reclusive, close-mouthed figure: Greene garrulously recounted tales about the many women in his life—and husbands of those women—as well as his extraordinary interviews with political figures such as Fidel Castro and Ho Chi Minh. Over the next two decades, Mewshaw and Greene ate meals together, discussed their travels, and talked about writers they knew in common, such as Anthony Burgess, Shirley Hazzard, and Gore Vidal.

While young Mewshaw looked up to the world-weary Greene, their relationship was never simply that of mentor and mentee. My Man in Antibes bristles with misunderstandings, arguments, and one young writer’s desire to get to know a legendary older writer who, in many ways, actively sought to remain unknowable.

CRITICAL PRAISE

“By turns bold and lurid . . . irresistible . . . The ride’s like something out of Boccaccio: strange, wild, and memorable.”
—Washington Post

“Mewshaw draws on two decades of encounters and correspondence [with Graham Greene] for an intriguing analysis . . . about the tortured soul behind the writer’s persona of the global traveler, friend of rebels and priests, who found in beleaguered countries a church that nurtured hope.”
—Commonweal

“Poignant insights into a great writer.”
—The Tablet (UK)

“Mewshaw’s account, especially of Greene’s last years, is moving and perceptive.”
—Library Journal

“Mewshaw finds much in Greene’s life and work to admire and emulate, along with human frailty, and he conveys the ups and downs of their relationship with genuine intimacy. The humanity of a renowned literary figure is fascinatingly revealed through a long friendship.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“An up-close portrait of Greene, with many juicy details. A rare, firsthand look at the one of the 20th century’s greatest authors.”
—Shelf Awareness

ADVANCE PRAISE

“This is a fond but never less than candid memoir of a defining figure of his time. Graham Green was calculatedly elusive, but Michael Mewshaw has given us a glimpse behind the altar at the man divested of his vestments. Wonderfully entertaining.”
—John Banville, author of April in Spain

“Michael Mewshaw, surprisingly, is at least as fascinating as his famous subject. Personal and candid and full of great inside gossip, My Man in Antibes explores the complexity of being friends with a literary icon when you’re not nearly in the same reputational league.”
—Lionel Shriver, author of Should We Stay or Should We Go

“Michael Mewshaw has led a classic writer’s life: a brutal childhood, exotic travel, a feisty spirit and the bravado to accost and befriend the irascible and grand Graham Greene. This is a wonderful, old-fashioned Côte d’Azur memoir, entertaining, insightful and beautifully written.”
—Joe Klein, author of Primary Colors

“Graham Greene, top British novelist of the twentieth century, his writing by turns (and often all at once) political, romantic, thrilling, satiric, curt, hilarious, his life full of old-school adventure, possibly even espionage, plenty of danger in any case: what more fascinating friend could a person have? And what better chronicler than Graham Greene’s friend Michael Mewshaw, eager young novelist in the orbit of the master, more and more trusted as time went on, closer than almost anyone got. This elegant account of decades of often warm, sometimes prickly companionship offers fascination, revelation, laughter, and ultimately pathos. A beautiful memoir of parallel lives, My Man in Antibes kept me turning pages into the wee hours, crisp glass of gin at my side.”
—Bill Roorbach, author of Lucky Turtle

“Michael Mewshaw, an award-winning novelist, has already chronicled his fascinating friendships with Gore Vidal and Pat Conroy. Here he combines and contrasts the remarkable story of his deprived upbringing with that of an older and already established Catholic writer: Graham Greene. Mewshaw’s account of his long friendship with a notoriously private man joins Shirley Hazzard’s memorable account of Greene on Capri in providing an intriguing, entertaining and enlightening glimpse behind the mask of one of twentieth century literature’s most enigmatic authors. I found the book most fascinating.”
—Miranda Seymour, author of I Used to Live Here Once: The Haunted Life of Jean Rhys

“The novelist Michael Mewshaw’s infatuation with Graham Greene, with whom he had a long and rocky friendship, is riveting. By artfully interweaving his own story with that of Greene’s, he shows his literary idol in all his complexity, as combative, querulous, secretive, unreliable, yet possessed of remarkable strength and courage. In a prose at times as vivid and dramatic as that of its subject, and with a comparably economical sense of place, Mewshaw’s memoir offers valuable lessons about the limits of the life Greene chose to lead, a life he himself has long admired and emulated.”
—Zachary Leader, author of The Life of Saul Bellow: Love and Strife, 1965-2005

The Paper Man

“History’s inherited burden presses firmly on the characters in Billy O’Callaghan’s The Paper Man . . . O’Callaghan moves his narrative deftly.”—New York Times

A deeply moving interwar romance set between 1930s Austria and 1980s Ireland, based on a real-life unsolved mystery.

1930s Austria. Vienna is a bustling, cosmopolitan city on the brink of war. Matthias Sindelar is an internationally renowned soccer player known as “The Paper Man” because of his because of his effortless weave across the field. When Sindelar speaks out against Hitler, his fame can’t protect him from being placed under Gestapo surveillance. Meanwhile, Sindelar falls in love with a young Jewish girl named Rebekah. As the atmosphere in Vienna darkens under the Nazi regime, Rebekah flees to relatives in Cork, Ireland. Only after she arrives there does she realize she is pregnant with Sindelar’s child. The following year, at the age of 35, The Paper Man is found dead in his apartment.

1980s Ireland. In the Jewish Quarter of Cork, Rebekah’s son Jack Shine discovers a bundle of German letters and newspaper clippings tied with a ribbon while sorting his mother’s belongings. With the help of his German-speaking father-in-law, Jack translates the letters and attempts to piece together his family history and, hopefully, solve the mystery of his father’s identity.

Based on real people and true events, The Paper Man is the story of twentieth-century Europe, the Holocaust, the cost of fame, and love against the odds.

PRAISE

“History’s inherited burden presses firmly on the characters in Billy O’Callaghan’s The Paper Man in which the discovery of a hidden cache of love letters pries open the secret past of a long-dead Austrian immigrant….O’Callaghan moves his narrative deftly between the Vienna of the Anschluss, rural Austria before the Nazi takeover and early 1980s Ireland, where Jack is stunned to learn that his father was a bona fide hero, captain of the Austrian national soccer team, “the game’s maestro,” who retired rather than play for the conquering Germans.”
—The New York Times

“Billy O’Callaghan’s writing is powerfully emotional and wholly captivating from page one. The Paper Man is the best book yet by a truly gifted Irish writer who deserves to be better-known in the U.S.—and after this novel, I bet he will be.”
—Gabriel Byrne, author of Walking with Ghosts

“O’Callaghan’s storytelling is magnetic. He brings to life 1930s Austria and 1980s Ireland in this mesmerizing tale of love, soccer, and family secrets.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review

“The Paper Man is a haunting story gorgeously crafted with subtle themes of identity, nationalism, dislocation, lost love, and the price of fame. O’Callaghan’s sentences are sonorous and poetic; no detail is left unattended in his masterfully fluid prose.”
—New York Journal of Books

 “In O’Callaghan’s haunting historical novel, decades-old wartime secrets are revealed. The poignant and passionate The Paper Man covers lost love, anguished lives, and the discovery of an enduring heritage.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“Imaginative, beautifully told fiction . . . There are moments—escalating as we reach the end—when the reader will want to wipe away a tear.”
—The Spectator (Australia) 

Admirable Point

A Brief History of the Exclamation Mark!

“Splendid exploration.”—Wall Street Journal

Few punctuation marks elicit quite as much love or hate as the exclamation mark. It’s bubbly and exuberant, an emotional amplifier whose flamboyantly dramatic gesture lets the reader know: here be feelings! Scott Fitzgerald famously stated exclamation marks are like laughing at your own joke; Terry Pratchett had a character say that multiple !!! are a ‘sure sign of a diseased mind’. So what’s the deal with ! ?

Whether you think it’s over-used, or enthusiastically sprinkle your writing with it, ! is inescapable. An Admirable Point recuperates the exclamation mark from its much maligned place at the bottom of the punctuation hierarchy. It explores how ! came about in the first place some six hundred years ago, and uncovers the many ways in which ! has left its mark on art, literature, (pop) culture, and just about any sphere of human activity—from Beowulf to spam emails, ee cummings to neuroscience.

PRAISE!!!!!!!!!!!!

“In writing as in real life, many of us would be relieved to see fewer !!! moments, but Ms. Hazrat’s splendid exploration of ! is stimulating even in an excitement-weary moment.” —Wall Street Journal

“[An] entertaining debut . . . worth shouting about. Illuminating history . . . sharp analysis.” —Publishers Weekly

“The history of a much-maligned punctuation mark. As the author notes, it grabs our attention, whether we want it to or not, and it exists in nearly every language….‘Among all glyphs,’ she writes, the bold mark is ‘most available, and most versatile, the most recognisable and most ironic.’ In the end, its job is to ‘attend to admiration’ and ‘point out wonder.’ A delightfully sprightly and pun-laden history.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“Enjoyable mischievous . . . an invitation to shrug off the prescriptions of the language police and reawaken a sense of wonder.”
—The Times Literary Supplement (U.K.)

Washed Ashore

Family, Fatherhood, and Finding Home on Martha's Vineyard

The story of a man coming into his own by coming home.

Since he was a boy, Bill Eville knew he wanted two things in life: to be a writer and a father. Being a minister’s husband had not been on this list, having left the church as a teenager as soon as his parents stopped making him go each Sunday.

In Washed Ashore, Eville’s life changes when his wife Cathlin takes a job as the first female pastor of a 350-year-old church on Martha’s Vineyard, the island that was once home to generations of his ancestors. With their two small children in tow, the couple begins a new life eight miles out at sea.

Readers follow Eville’s journey from stay-at-home-dad to newspaper editor as he discovers what it means to be a writer, a father, and—after his wife’s devastating breast cancer diagnosis—what it truly means to be a minister’s husband. Washed Ashore, told in a series of linked essays, is poignant and funny, filled with faith, struggle, and light.

CRITICAL PRAISE

“In writing about the sweet and bitter particulars of his corner of the world , Eville has written a book about life itself.”
—Minneapolis Star Tribune 

“A genuine memoir of a family man who continues to evolve, whether by will or by force. Bill Eville’s forthrightness is refreshing and painfully funny, making this book a joy to read.”
—Booklist 

“A sensitive portrait of one family’s struggles with illness.”
—Kirkus

“Well-crafted . . . realistic and poignant . . . Eville’s journey will be a familiar one to many readers who struggle to find meaning in their day-to-day existence and their ability to conquer any threats against it.”
—Library Journal

“I love Bill Eville’s writing because he often leads us through time and place, so skillfully that we don’t realize how much area he covers.”
—Kathleen Burge, WBUR

ADVANCE PRAISE

“Here is life: rich, raw, glorious and complicated. Bill Eville’s experiences are at once singular—married to a minister, living on an island—but also universal. In this memoir, he writes about his ordinary, extraordinary existence with warmth, wit, elegance and heart.”
—Geraldine Brooks, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of March

“A touching and heartfelt memoir that explores parenting, love, illness and faith with buoyancy and hope. Like a visit to the Vineyard, it stays with you for a long time.”
—Gary Shteyngart, author of Our Country Friends

“There are few writers—people, in general—who can make us acutely aware that the very guts of our lives are constantly spilling out of us. It is the even rarer human-writer who can help us curate those hurts and joys and passions, to organize the unorganizable. Bill Eville is such a writer and Washed Ashore is a book I will never forget. It will make you appreciate your own life, and I’m not sure there is much more we can ask a book to do.”
—Lisa Taddeo, author of Three Women

“Storytelling takes creativity. But memoir requires courage. With creativity, courage, and vulnerability, Bill Eville holds up a mirror to himself—and in the process helps us all see a little piece of ourselves. He is still on the journey to home, still evolving. But through these pages shines the bright light of a great husband, a great father, and for me personally, a great friend!”
—U.S. Senator Raphael Warnock

Lioness of Boston—now in paperback!

“Brings Isabella Stewart Gardner fully, intimately alive—irrepressible and avid for life. In this richly compelling novel, Emily Franklin beautifully conjures this extraordinary woman and her world.”—Claire Messud, author of The Emperor’s Children

A deeply evocative and imaginative portrayal of the life of Isabella Stewart Gardner, a daring visionary who created an inimitable legacy in American art and transformed the city of Boston itself.

By the time Isabella Stewart Gardner opened her Italian palazzo-style home as a museum in 1903 to showcase her collection of old masters, antiques, and objects d’art, she was already well-known for scandalizing Boston’s polite society. But when Isabella first arrived in Boston in 1861, she was twenty years old, newly married to a wealthy trader, and unsure of herself. Puzzled by the frosty reception she received from stuffy bluebloods, she strived to fit in. After two devastating tragedies and rejection from upper-society, Isabella discovered her spirit and cast off expectations.

Freed by travel, Isabella explores the world of art, ideas, and letters, meeting such kindred spirits as Henry James and Oscar Wilde. From London and Paris to Egypt and Asia, she develops a keen eye for paintings and objects, and meets feminists ready to transform nineteenth century thinking in the twentieth century. Isabella becomes an eccentric trailblazer, painted by John Singer Sargent in a portrait of daring décolletage, and fond of such stunts as walking a pair of lions in the Boston Public Garden.

The Lioness of Boston is a portrait of what society expected a woman’s life to be, shattered by a courageous soul who rebelled and determined to live on her own terms.

PRAISE

“Gorgeous writing enhances this absorbing portrait of a fascinating woman ahead of her time.”
—Toronto Star, One of the Year’s Best

“…the remarkable story of Isabella Stewart Gardner, capturing all the nuances of her character with grace and feeling. Highly recommended.”
—Historical Novel Society

“Extraordinary….Vividly written in beautiful prose.”
—Provincetown Magazine

“…a rich, nuanced portrait of a woman hungry to find beauty, knowledge, and her own place in the world.”
—Shelf Awareness

“The life story of Isabella Stewart Gardner, from her marriage in 1861 to Jack Gardner, a member of Boston’s ‘High Society,’ through her death in 1924….Franklin’s lyrical, erudite style befits Belle and grabs readers’ attention.”
—Library Journal, starred review

“The Lioness of Boston looks at how the city’s reigning society tried to ice Gardner out but failed when she found that following her own vision—and aligning herself with likeminded rulebreakers—was more important than meeting the standards of brittle Brahmins. And whose name do we all remember now?”
—Town & Country, A Must-Read Book

“A vivid narrative…brims with pitch-perfect period details…cannily captures Isabella Stewart Gardner’s ambition, independence, and quirks. Fans of strong female protagonists and Gilded Age historicals will enjoy this.”
—Publishers Weekly

“The Lioness of Boston is a captivating story of a significant woman in Boston’s history who left that city a cultural legacy to last the ages. This beautiful novel will appeal to those who love masterful historical fiction, literary fiction, and stories of triumphant women who leave an indelible mark.”
—New York Journal of Books

“Emily Franklin takes us into the very heart and soul of Isabella Stewart Gardner in her engaging historical fiction novel….In Franklin’s writing, Gardner is headstrong, sensitive, and in a sense — given the blue-blooded circles in which she tried to live — cursed with a curious mind and a desperate desire to make a mark on the world. Of course, we know that Gardner does eventually do so, with the opening in 1903 of an Italian palazzo-style home as a museum to showcase her impressive collection of old masters, antiques, and objets d’art. But with a novelist’s freedom, Franklin builds the story of how this stunning art institution came to be by jumping off Gardner’s real-life tragedies, remarkable relationships with people of note, and extensive foreign travels, which provide solace to her troubled soul.”
—Martha’s Vineyard Times

“Franklin’s gorgeous, extraordinarily intimate and timely novel about Isabella Stewart Gardner showcases the life of a daring, brilliant woman who refused to be confined by the mores of her day, even as she searched for her truest self. So richly alive, I was running to Google to reacquaint myself with every mentioned painting, so moving, I wept over the tragedies and delighted in her bold success. How could any reader not be inspired by the cast of creatives including Oscar Wilde, Henry James, John Singer Sargent, and more? This book is just shatteringly good, with writing so artful, Isabella herself would surely approve.”
—Caroline Leavitt, author of Pictures of You

“An engaging portrait of a bold yet vulnerable woman….A perennial tale of a woman fighting for her place in a man’s world.”
—Kirkus

“This beautiful, sensitively written novel explores the fascinating life of Isabella Stewart Gardner—feminist before feminism, celebrity before celebrity. Captivating and evocative, The Lioness of Boston transported me to America’s Golden Age. I couldn’t put it down.”
—Jessica Shattuck, author of The Women in the Castle

“The Lioness of Boston shows the deft touch of Edith Wharton and the delightful pomp of The Gilded Age—it’s a book both elegant and entertaining, one to savor line by line even as it carries us forward on the spirit and audacity of the narrator. Emily Franklin has rendered Isabella Stewart Gardner a classic literary heroine, one who emerges from heartbreak and defiance to shape her own life and the culture of an entire city.”
—Timothy Schaffert, author of The Perfume Thief

“A novel of blazing insight, The Lioness of Boston captures the daring life and mind of the unforgettable woman who transformed American art and the city of Boston itself. This masterfully written work of historical fiction will remind some of Lily King’s Euphoria and others of Melanie Benjamin’s The Swans of Fifth Avenue. The Lioness of Boston is the best kind of novel—at once a deft page-turner and a thrilling love story about a woman’s passion for an independent life—that will sear your mind, break your heart, and leave you forever changed.”
—Dawn Tripp, author of Georgia: A Novel

“The Lioness of Boston is a treasure trove of art, sensuality, Boston history, and more. Emily Franklin has captured Isabella Stewart Gardner’s blazing life and the light it sheds on the lives of women then and now.”
—Rachel Kadish, author of The Weight of Ink

BOOK DISCUSSION

Here are some questions to consider:

• Isabella is rejected early in her Boston life. How does this rejection influence her character? Are there ways this rejection helps her?

• What draws Isabella to Jack? What traits does she have that he finds compelling do you think? How does their marriage change during the course of the book?

• What is Isabella looking for in a friend? Do you think she finds it? How would you describe her circle of friends by the end of the novel?

• How does the tragedy Isabella experiences influence her later life decisions?

• Scandal seems unavoidable for Isabella—do you think it finds her or she finds it?

• Isabella isn’t an artist, yet she does have an artistic vision. How do you see this vision throughout the book, prior to the opening of the museum?

• Though this novel starts in 1861 and closes in 1903 with the opening of the museum, there are many issues discussed that still are relevant today. Discuss these themes (misogyny, racism, cliquishness, etc.).

• Is there a scene that resonated for you personally? If so, why? Are you comfortable sharing this with the group?

• What did you learn about Boston history or world history that you did not know prior to reading this novel?

• Isabella says that we collect all that we are. Is there an object in your own home that tells a story about you? Or a collection?

• Who—or what—is Isabella’s greatest love?

• How does Isabella’s older voice looking back differ from the voice in book 1-4?

• What story elements surprised you?

• Isabella was the first woman to open a museum in the United States. She decided in her will to state that nothing be moved. Why?

• Were you compelled to look up any works of art or details from the novel? If so, which ones and why?

• Why do you think The Lioness of Boston is the title of this novel?

On Becoming an American Writer

Essays and Nonfiction

“Powerfully written and provocative, with subtle but pointed polemics often in play.”
—Kirkus Reviews

Discover the unique mind and humane vision of an under-recognized American author. Encompassing themes of race, education, fame, law, and America’s past and future, these essays are James Alan McPherson at his most prescient and invaluable.

Born in segregated 1940s Georgia, McPherson graduated from Harvard Law School only to give up law and become a writer. In 1978, he became the first Black author to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. But all the while, McPherson was also writing and publishing nonfiction that stand beside contemporaries such as James Baldwin and Joan Didion, as this collection amply proves.

These essays range from McPherson’s profile of comedian Richard Pryor on the cusp of his stardom; a moving tribute to his mentor, Ralph Ellison; a near fatal battle with viral meningitis; and the story of how McPherson became a reluctant landlord to an elderly Black woman and her family.

There are meditations on family as the author travels to Disneyland with his daughter, on the nuances of a neighborhood debate about naming a street after Malcolm X or Dr. Martin Luther King, and, throughout, those connections that make us most deeply human—including connections between writer and reader. McPherson writes of his early education, “The structure of white supremacy had been so successful that even some of our parents and teachers had been conscripted into policing the natural curiosity of young people. We were actively discouraged from reading. We were encouraged to accept our lot. We were not told that books just might contain extremely important keys which would enable us to break out of the mental jails that have been constructed to contain us.”

The collection’s curator, Anthony Walton, writes, “In his nonfiction, McPherson was often looking for a way ‘beyond’ the morasses in which Americans find themselves mired. His work is a model of humanistic imagining, an attempt to perform a healing that would, if successful, be the greatest magic trick in American history: to ‘get past’ race, to help create a singular American identity that was no longer marred by the existential tragedies of the nation’s first 400 years. He attempted this profound reimagining of America while simultaneously remaining completely immersed in African American history and culture. His achievement demonstrates that an abiding love for black folks and black life can rest alongside a mastery of ‘The King’s English’ and a sincere desire to be received as an American citizen and participant in democracy. It is time for that imaginative work to be fully comprehended and for this simultaneously American and African American genius to assume a fully recognized place beside the other constitutive voices in our national literature.”

This is a collection for any reader seeking a better understanding of our world and a connection to a wise and wickedly funny writer who speaks with forceful relevance and clarity across the decades.

On Becoming an American Writer is part of Godine’s Nonpareil series: celebrating the joy of discover with books bound to be classics. See here for a complete list of Nonpareils.

More to Say

Essays and Appreciations

“Personal, revelatory, and laser-precise. This is a book to savor.”
—Portland Press Herald

As deeply rewarding as her fiction, a selection of Ann Beattie’s essays, chosen and introduced by the author. From appreciations of writers, photographers, and other artists, to notes on the craft of writing itself, this is a wide-ranging, and always penetrating collection of writing never before published in book form.

Ann Beattie, a master storyteller, has been delighting readers since the publication of her short stories in the 1970s and her first novel, Chilly Scenes of Winter. But as her literary acclaim grew and she was hailed “the voice of her generation,” Ms. Beattie was also moonlighting as a nonfiction writer. As she writes in her introduction to this collection, “Nonfiction always gave me a thrill, even if it provided only an illusion of freedom. Freedom and flexibility—for me, those are the conditions under which imagination sparks.”

These penetrating essays are stories unto themselves, closely observed appreciations of life and art. The reader travels with Ms. Beattie to Cedar Rapids, Iowa to learn about the legacy of the painter, Grant Wood, and his iconic painting American Gothic; to the famed University of Virginia campus with her husband, the painter Lincoln Perry; to Key West, Florida for New Years with writer and translator, Harry Mathews; to a roadside near Boston in a broken-down car with the wheelchair-bound writer Andre Dubus.

There are explorations of novels, short stories, paintings, and photographs by artists ranging from Alice Munro to Elmore Leonard, from Sally Mann to John Loengard. Whatever the subject, Ms. Beattie brings penetrating insight into literature and art that’s both familiar and unfamiliar—as she writes, “This, I think, is what artists want to do: find a way to lure the reader or viewer into an alternate realm, to overcome the audience’s resistance to being taken away from their own lives and interests and priorities.”

Ann Beattie’s nonfiction (originally published in Life, The New Yorker, The New York Times, and The American Scholar, among others) is a new way to enjoy one of the great writers of her generation. Readers will find much to love in this journey with a curious and fascinating mind.

CRITICAL PRAISE

“Shimmering prose and critical acumen on display in an eclectic collection. Beattie is an accomplished essayist with an elegant, precise writing style.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“Earnest, amusing, and contemplative, More to Say suggests that though Beattie is known for her fiction, her nonfiction has just as much to offer.”
—Publishers Weekly

“Exhilarating and illuminating . . . Beattie is funny, inquisitive, ardently descriptive, brilliantly interpretative, drawn to paradox, and amusingly self-deprecating.”
—Booklist

“Readers of Beattie’s fiction will welcome this opportunity to experience her insights on the works of other creative individuals.”
—Library Journal

“A lesson in writing, looking, listening, and thinking from someone prodigiously talented at all of the above.”
—Portland Press Herald

ADVANCE PRAISE

“In prose as clean and clear as her fiction, Beattie’s nonfiction responds to writers and artists with real insightfulness and surprises—and humor. I ended up thinking: I needed this book. It is eye-opening and splendid. “
—ELIZABETH STROUT, author of Lucy by the Sea

“Ann Beattie’s essays on literature, photography, and art are a joy: reading them is like conversing with her brilliant mind—beautifully lucid, frank, nuanced, elegant and intimate.”
—CLAIRE MESSUD, author of The Burning Girl

“Exhilarating and enthralling, this is a collection of one brilliant essay after another. To hear Beattie’s nonfiction voice is a marvel: You come away feeling like you’ve had a passionate and indelible conversation about literature and art.”
—LILY KING, author of Euphoria

“These are dazzling essays, acute and subtle and very wise. Ann Beattie shows here that she is not only one of our finest fiction writers but a philosopher of the short story. I know of no one who has thought with such insider’s brilliance about the form (see especially her breathtaking analyses of Peter Taylor, Alice Munro, and John Updike, as well as her own processes). Then she goes ahead and sensitively yet playfully explores the art of painters, photographers, and sculptors.”
—PHILLIP LOPATE, editor of The Glorious American Essay

“It comes as a surprise, but shouldn’t, that Ann Beattie is also a master of nonfiction. These pieces enchant precisely because we see a mind building its particular, spirited intelligence by attention to others. These pieces “are illuminated by her simultaneously nonjudgmental, shrewd insight and the luminosity of her prose.” That’s Beattie on Alice Munro’s fiction, but it captures the quality of mind she brings to bear in this winning record of a reading life and a history of looking deeply, attentively at visual art. Read these essays to learn how to write—and to see.”
—PATRICIA HAMPL, author of The Art of the Wasted Day

“These remarkable essays have the verve and wit of Ann Beattie’s short stories, but a fiction writer recedes behind the story and these pieces are more personal. We are right there with her, watching her lively mind at play. What an extraordinary privilege! Her intellect is formidable but informal—at ease, confident. Rather than being stricken mute by her talents, we share her joy as she confides in us what she loves. These pieces are brilliant.”
—BOBBIE ANN MASON, author of Dear Ann

More to Say is part of Godine’s Nonpareil series: celebrating the joy of discover with books bound to be classics. See here for a complete list of Nonpareils.

Darkness

Stories

Twelve stories of immigrants who navigate the ancestral past of India as they remake their lives—and themselves—in North America. These are stories of fluid and broken identities, discarded languages and deities, and the attempt to create bonds with a new community against the ever-present fear of failure and betrayal.

“The narrative of immigration,” Bharati Mukherjee once wrote, “is the epic narrative of this millennium.” Her stories and novels brilliantly add to that ongoing saga. In the story “The Lady from Lucknow,” a woman is pushed to the limit while wanting nothing more than to fit in. In “Hindus,” characters discover that breaking away from a culture has deep and unexpected costs. In “A Father,” the clash of cultures leads a man to an act of terrible violence. “How could he tell these bright, mocking women,” Mukherjee writes, “that in the darkness, he sensed invisible presences: gods and snakes frolicked in the master bedroom, little white sparks of cosmic static crackled up the legs of his pajamas. Something was out there in the dark, something that could invent accidents and coincidences to remind mortals that even in Detroit they were no more than mortal.”

There is light in these stories as well. The collection’s closing story, “Courtly Vision,” brings to life the world within a Mughal miniature painting and describes a light charged with excitement to discover the immense intimacy of darkness. Readers will also discover that excitement, and the many gradations of darkness and light, throughout these pages from the mind of a master storyteller.

Darkness is part of Godine’s Nonpareil series: celebrating the joy of discover with books bound to be classics. See here for a complete list of Nonpareils.