'One of his generation's most gifted writers.' New York Times 'An amazingly perceptive novel.' San Francisco Chronicle 'Fascinating... lingers in the mind' New York Times Book Review Owen and Rose are facing serious challenges to their married life of routine and monotony as New York City grows and changes around them. They spend most Sundays apart; while Rose buries herself in crosswords and newspapers, Owen visits gay porn theaters. But when they discover they may lose their apartment and their son, prompted by his new relationship, reveals his homosexuality, their lives cannot continue as they were. Owen and Rose are forced to confront not only their son's revelation but also Owen's latent homosexuality. Poignant and lingering, this is a tale of love and relationships, secrets and unspoken desires.

Set against the rise of fascism in 1930s Europe, "While England Sleeps" tells the story of a love affair between Brian Botsford, an upper-class young English writer, and Edward Phelan, an idealistic employee of the London Underground and member of the Communist Party. Though far better educated than Edward, Brian is also far more callow, convinced that his homosexuality is something he will outgrow. Edward, on the other hand, possesses "an unproblematic capacity to accept" both Brian and the unorthodox nature of their love for each other--until one day, at the urging of his wealthy aunt Constance, Brian agrees to be set up with a "suitable" young woman named Philippa Archibald . . . Pushed to the point of crisis, Edward flees, volunteering to fight Franco in Spain, where he ends up in prison. And Brian, feeling responsible for Edward's plight, must pursue him across Europe, and into the chaos of war.

It's 1969 and Denny is on her way to the annual Thanksgiving dinner at the Wright's plush campus house. Denny is more nervous than usual because she has recently begun an affair with Dr Ernest Wright, a psychology professor who happens to be her boss. Needless to say, Ernest's wife Nancy doesn't suspect dowdy Denny of seducing her husband and continues to treat her more like a servant than a friend. To add to the tension, the Wright's only daughter is having a secret affair with Ernest's protege, and the youngest son, Ben, is as delicate and insufferable as only a poetry-writing fifteen-year-old can be. But this year the guests will include Nancy's best friend Anne and her new husband, the celebrated novelist Jonah Boyd, and this fateful holiday will turn out to be like no other.

Set against the rise of fascism in 1930s Europe, WHILE ENGLAND SLEEPS tells the story of the love affair between Brian Botsford, an upper-class young writer, and Edward Phelan, an idealistic, self-educated employee of the London Underground and a member of the Communist party. Though by far the better educated of the two Brian is also more callow, convinced that his homosexuality is something he will outgrow. Edward, on the other hand, possesses 'an unproblematic capacity to accept' both Brian and the unorthodox nature of their love for each other - until one day, at the urging of his wealthy aunt Constance, Brian agrees to be set up with a 'suitable' young woman…and soon enough Edward is pushed to the point of crisis. Fleeing, he volunteers to fight in Spain, where he ends up in prison. Brian, responsible for Edward's flight, must pursue him across Europe, into the violent chaos of war.
 

The story of Alan Turing, the persecuted genius who helped break the Enigma code and create the modern computer. To solve one of the great mathematical problems of his day, Alan Turing proposed an imaginary programmable calculating machine. But the idea of actually producing a 'thinking machine' did not crystallise until he and his brilliant Bletchley Park colleagues built devices to crack the Nazis' Enigma code, thus ensuring the Allied victory in the Second World War. In so doing, Turing became a champion of artificial intelligence, formulating the famous (and still unbeaten) Turing test that challenges our ideas of human consciousness. But Turing's work was cut short when, as an openly gay man in a time when homosexuality was illegal in Britain, he was apprehended by the authorities and sentenced to a 'treatment' that amounted to chemical castration. Ultimately, it lead to his suicide, and it wasn't until 2013, after many years of campaigning, that he received a posthumous royal pardon. With a novelist's sensitivity, David Leavitt portrays Turing in all his humanity - his eccentricities, his brilliance, his fatal candour - while elegantly explaining his work and its implications.

This is a complete collection of moving, elegant and often witty short stories from one of America's most respected writers. Here, David Leavitt covers a range of challenging themes such as illness, grief and betrayal with his inimitable graceful touch. He takes the reader from Switzerland to San Francisco, and from a young man's attempt to contract the HIV virus to American tourists being startled by the local conventions in Italy. Bringing together "Family Dancing" (a finalist for both the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Prize), "A Place I've Never Been" and "The Marble Quilt", this edition affirms David Leavitt's mastery of the short-story form.

Wit and intelligence are the hallmarks of this probing portrait of the English character. And in this story of extreme contrasts-in values, social class, and cultural perspectives-an unconventional romantic relationship leads to conventional happiness in a delightful social comedy. While touring Italy with her overbearing cousin, well-bred Lucy Honeychurch falls in love with the handsome but entirely unsuitable George Emerson, only to become engaged to the haughty Cecil Vyse. But Lucy is lured away from the conventions of upper-middle-class Edwardian society by her yearnings for the clerk she left behind. A Room with a View satirizes the English notion of respectability-and remains Forster's most beloved novel and a twentieth-century classic.

Thirty years ago, David Leavitt first appeared on the literary scene with a gutsy story collection that stunned readers and reviewers. Just twenty-three, he was hailed as a prodigy of sorts: "remarkably gifted" ("The""Washington Post"), with "a genius for empathy" ("The""New York Times Book Review") and "a knowledge of others' lives . . . that a writer twice his age might envy" ("USA Today"). "Regardless of age," wrote the "New York Times," "few writers so effortlessly achieve the sense of maturity and earned compassion so evident in these pages." In "Territory," a well-intentioned, liberal mother, presiding over her local Parents of Lesbians and Gays chapter, finds her acceptance of her son's sexuality shaken when he arrives home with a lover. In the title story, a family extended through divorce and remarriage dances together at the end of a summer party--in the recognition that they are still bound by the very forces that split them apart. Tender and funny, these stories reveal the intricacies and subtleties of the dances in which we all engage.

Set in the 1980s against the backdrop of a swiftly gentrifying Manhattan, "The Lost Language of Cranes "tells the story of twenty-five-year-old Philip Benjamin, who realizes he must come out to his parents after falling in love for the first time with a man. Philip's parents are facing their own problems: pressure from developers and the loss of their longtime home. But the real threat to the family is Philip's father's own struggle with his suppressed homosexuality, realized only in Sunday afternoon visits to gay porn theaters. Philip's revelation to his parents leads his father to a point of crisis and provokes changes that forever alter the landscape of the family's lives.

In David Leavitt's chilling science fiction epic, Future History: The Coming Past, three very different lives converge with shocking results. As a deadly creature is unleashed on the world and a mass murderer is at large, three people must somehow come together to lead the planet.

"Richly imagined [and] impressive" ("New York Times Book Review"), this critically acclaimed and emotionally charged novel about the strange and ultimately tragic relationship between an esteemed British mathematician and an unknown--and unschooled--mathematical genius is historical fiction at its best: ambitious, profound, and absorbing.

Based on the remarkable true story of G. H. Hardy and Srinivasa Ramanujan, and populated with such luminaries such as D. H. Lawrence, Bertrand Russell, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, "The Indian Clerk" takes this extraordinary slice of history and transforms it into an emotional and spellbinding story about the fragility of human connection and our need to find order in the world. A literary masterpiece, it appeared on four bestseller lists, including the "Los Angeles Times," and received dazzling reviews from every major publication in the country.

To solve one of the great mathematical problems of his day, Alan Turing proposed an imaginary computer. Then, attempting to break a Nazi code during World War II, he successfully designed and built one, thus ensuring the Allied victory. Turing became a champion of artificial intelligence, but his work was cut short. As an openly gay man at a time when homosexuality was illegal in England, he was convicted and forced to undergo a humiliating "treatment" that may have led to his suicide. With a novelist's sensitivity, David Leavitt portrays Turing in all his humanity his eccentricities, his brilliance, his fatal candor and elegantly explains his work and its implications."

David Leavitt’s deliciously sharp novel is a multilayered dissection of literary and sexual mores in the get-ahead eighties, when outrageous success lay seductively within reach of any young writer ambitious enough to grab it. Martin Bauman — nineteen, talented, and insecure — is enrolled at a prestigious college and wins a place under the tutelage of the legendary Stanley Flint, a man who makes or breaks careers with the flick of a weary hand. An irresistibly entertaining epic, erotic, honest, and funny, Martin Bauman “draws one character so masterfully that this character will stick in the reader’s mind as strongly as Magwitch or Harry Lime” (Philadelphia Inquirer).

'Very funny and unexpected, a material response to our times, plush as velvet' Rachel Cusk 'A wickedly funny and emotionally expansive novel' Jenny Offill It is the Saturday after the 2016 presidential election, and in a plush weekend house in Connecticut, a group of New Yorkers has gathered to recover from what they consider the greatest political catastrophe of their lives. Liberal and like-minded, the friends have come to the countryside in the hope of restoring the bubble in which they have grown used to living. Moving through her days accompanied by a carefully curated salon, Eva Lindquist is a generous hostess with an obsession for decorating. Yet when, in her avidity to secure shelter for herself, she persuades her husband to buy a grand if dilapidated apartment in Venice, she unwittingly sets off the chain of events that will propel him to venture outside the bubble and embark on an unexpected love affair. A slyly comic look at the shelter industry, Shelter in Place is a novel about house and home, safety and freedom and the insidious ways in which political upheaval can undermine even the most seemingly impregnable foundations.

At the age of eighteen Paul Porterfield dreams of playing piano at the world's great concert halls, yet the closest he's come has been to turn pages for his idol, Richard Kennington, a former prodigy who is entering middle age. The two begin a love affair that affects their lives in ways neither could have predicted. "Absorbing from start to finish" (The New Yorker), The Page Turner testifies to the tenacity of the human spirit and the resiliency of the human heart.

Beneath the surface in almost every family lie illness, infidelity, betrayals and anger. This is his first collection of stories and they make for an excellent collection.

It is the summer of 1940, and Lisbon, Portugal, is the only neutral port left in Europe--a city filled with spies, crowned heads, and refugees of every nationality, tipping back absinthe to while away the time until their escape. Awaiting safe passage to New York on the SS "Manhattan," two couples meet: Pete and Julia Winters, expatriate Americans fleeing their sedate life in Paris; and Edward and Iris Freleng, sophisticated, independently wealthy, bohemian, and beset by the social and sexual anxieties of their class. As Portugal's neutrality, and the world's future, hang in the balance, the hidden threads in the lives of these four characters--Julia's status as a Jew, Pete and Edward's improbable affair, Iris's increasingly desperate efforts to save her tenuous marriage--begin to come loose. Gorgeously written, sexually and politically charged, David Leavitt's long-awaited new novel is an extraordinary work.