Set in a historical moment of moral crisis, Crossroads - the first instalment of the trilogy A Key to All Mythologies - is the stunning foundation of a sweeping investigation of human mythologies, as the Hildebrandt family navigate the political and social crosscurrents of of the past fifty years.

It's December 23, 1971, and heavy weather is forecast for Chicago. Russ Hildebrandt, the associate pastor of a liberal suburban church, is on the brink of breaking free of a marriage he finds joyless - unless his wife, Marion, who has her own secret life, beats him to it. Their eldest child, Clem, is coming home from college on fire with moral absolutism, having taken an action that will shatter his father. Clem's sister, Becky, long the social queen of her high-school class, has sharply veered into the counterculture, while their brilliant younger brother Perry, who's been selling drugs to seventh-graders, has resolved to be a better person. Each of the Hildebrandts seeks a freedom that each of the others threatens to complicate.

Jonathan Franzen's novels are celebrated for their unforgettably vivid characters and their keen-eyed take on the complexities of contemporary America. Now, for the first time, in Crossroads, Franzen explores the history of a generation. With characteristic humour and complexity, and with even greater warmth, he conjures a world that feels no less immediate.

A tour de force of interwoven perspectives and sustained suspense, Crossroads is the story of a Midwestern family at a historical moment of moral crisis, spanning a whole century, casting light forward to our present day. Jonathan Franzen's gift for melding the small picture and the big picture has never been more dazzlingly evident.

Thomas Brussig's classic German satire, translated into English for the first time and introduced by Jonathan Franzen, is a comedic, moving account of life in East Berlin before the Fall of the Berlin Wall Thomas Brussig's slim novel, The Short End of the Sonnenallee, is a satire set, literally, on the Sonnenallee, the famed "boulevard of the sun" in East Berlin. Within this boulevard lives Michael, an adolescent who faces daily ridicule whenever he steps out of his apartment building and comes into view of the observation platform on the West side. "Look, a real Zonie. Can we take your picture?" Hopelessly in love with the most beautiful girl on the street, Michael is batted away in favour of the Western boys who are free to cross the border. What chance does Michael have, and how much trouble will he get into by pursuing her? Laugh-out-loud funny and unabashedly silly, Brussig's novel follows the bizarre, grotesque quotidian details of life in the German Democratic Republic. As this new translation shows, the ideas at its heart - freedom, democracy and life's fundamental hilarity - hold great relevance for today.

'His best novel yet ... A Middlemarch-like triumph' Telegraph 'A pleasure bomb of a novel' Vogue 'A true modern master' Independent It's 23 December 1971, and the Hildebrandts are at a crossroads. Fifteen-year-old Perry has resolved to be a better person and quit dealing drugs to seventh graders. His sister Becky, the once straight-laced high school social queen, has veered into counterculture, while at college, Clem is wrestling with a decision that might tear his family apart. As their parents - Russ, a suburban pastor, and Marion, his restless wife - tug against the bonds of a joyless marriage, Crossroads finds a family, and a nation, struggling to do the right thing. 'Funny, moving, crackling with life, it has what all great fiction should have' Financial Times 'Intoxicating - a luxuriant domestic drama' Guardian THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * A GUARDIAN BEST FICTION BOOK OF 2021 * AN INDEPENDENT BOOK OF THE YEAR * A WHITE REVIEW BOOK OF THE YEAR * A LIT HUB BOOK OF THE YEAR

Thomas Brussig's classic German novel, The Short End of the Sonnenallee, now appearing for the first time in English, is a moving and miraculously comic story of life in East Berlin before the fall of the Wall Young Micha Kuppisch lives on the nubbin of a street, the Sonnenallee, whose long end extends beyond the Berlin Wall outside his apartment building. Like his friends and family, who have their own quixotic dreams--to secure an original English pressing of Exile on Main St., to travel to Mongolia, to escape from East Germany by buying up cheap farmland and seceding from the country--Micha is desperate for one thing. It's not what his mother wants for him, which is to be an exemplary young Socialist and study in Moscow. What Micha wants is a love letter that may or may not have been meant for him, and may or may not have been written by the most beautiful girl on the Sonnenallee. Stolen by a gust of wind before he could open it, the letter now lies on the fortified "death strip" at the base of the Wall, as tantalizingly close as the freedoms of the West and seemingly no more attainable. The Short End of the Sonnenallee, finally available to an American audience in a pitch-perfect translation by Jonathan Franzen and Jenny Watson, confounds the stereotypes of life in totalitarian East Germany. Brussig's novel is a funny, charming tale of adolescents being adolescents, a portrait of a surprisingly warm community enduring in the shadow of the Iron Curtain. As Franzen writes in his foreword, the book is "a reminder that, even when the public realm becomes a nightmare, people can still privately manage to preserve their humanity, and be silly, and forgive."

Otto and Sophie Bentwood live in a changing neighborhood in Brooklyn. Their stainless-steel kitchen is newly installed, and their Mercedes is parked curbside. After Sophie is bitten on the hand while trying to feed a stray, perhaps rabies-infected cat, a series of small and ominous disasters begin to plague the Bentwoods' lives, revealing the fault lines and fractures in a marriage-and a society-wrenching itself apart. First published in 1970 to wide acclaim, Desperate Characters stands as one of the most dazzling and rigorous examples of the storyteller's craft in postwar American literature - a novel that, according to Irving Howe, ranks with "Billy Budd, The Great Gatsby, Miss Lonelyhearts, and Seize the Day."

"This fascinating, massive, wide-ranging collection that editors Christopher K. Coffman and Daniel Lukes have gathered together into William T. Vollmann: A Critical Companion will soon be recognized as one of those rare critical books for which that egregiously overused term 'groundbreaking' is fully justified." -Larry McCaffery, from the preface of William T. Vollmann: A Critical Companion The essays in this collection make a case for regarding William T. Vollmann as the most ambitious, productive, and important living author in the US. His oeuvre includes not only outstanding work in numerous literary genres, but also global reportage, ethical treatises, paintings, photographs, and many other productions. His reputation as a daring traveler and his fascination with life on the margins have earned him an extra-literary renown unequaled in our time. Perhaps most importantly, his work is exceptional in relation to the literary moment. Vollmann is a member of a group of authors who are responding to the skeptical ironies of postmodernism with a reinvigoration of fiction's affective possibilities and moral sensibilities, but he stands out even among this cohort for his prioritization of moral engagement, historical awareness, and geopolitical scope. Included in this book in addition to twelve scholarly critical essays are reflections on Vollmann by many of his peers, confidantes, and collaborators, including Jonathan Franzen, James Franco, and Michael Glawogger. With a preface by Larry McCaffery and an afterword by Michael Hemmingson, this book offers readings of most of Vollmann's works, includes the first critical engagements with several key titles, and introduces a range of voices from international Vollmann scholarship.

THE NUMBER ONE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER 'A genuine masterpiece, the first great American novel of the twenty-first century' Elle 'Funny, moving, generous, brutal and intelligent' Guardian A brilliantly perceptive and moving novel that announced Jonathan Franzen as one of our greatest living writers. The Lamberts - Enid, Alfred and their three grown-up children - are a troubled family living in a troubled age. After fifty years as a wife and mother, Enid is ready to have some fun, but her husband Alfred is losing his mind to Parkinson's. As his condition worsens, and the Lamberts are forced to face the long-buried secrets and failures that haunt them, Enid sets her heart on gathering everyone together for one last family Christmas. 'Compellingly readable, funny and above all generous spirited' Daily Mail 'A novel of outstanding sympathy, wit, moral intelligence and pathos, a family saga told with stylistic brio and psychological and political insight' Financial Times 'A big-hearted, panoramic American epic, intelligent and wise but also wildly, stonkingly funny' Independent

The climate crisis is here. Our chance to stop it has come and gone, but this doesn't have to mean the world is ending. 'If you care about the planet, and about the people and animals who live on it, there are two ways to think about this. You can keep on hoping that catastrophe is preventable, and feel ever more frustrated or enraged by the world's inaction. Or you can accept that disaster is coming, and begin to rethink what it means to have hope.' The honesty and realism of Jonathan Franzen's writings on climate have been widely denounced and just as widely celebrated. Here, in his definitive statement on the subject, Franzen confronts the world's failure to avert destabilising climate change and takes up the question: Now what?

Thomas Brussig's classic German satire, translated into English for the first time and introduced by Jonathan Franzen, is a comedic, moving account of life in East Berlin before the Fall of the Berlin Wall Thomas Brussig's slim novel, The Short End of the Sonnenallee, is a satire set, literally, on the Sonnenallee, the famed "boulevard of the sun" in East Berlin. Within this boulevard lives Michael, an adolescent who faces daily ridicule whenever he steps out of his apartment building and comes into view of the observation platform on the West side. "Look, a real Zonie. Can we take your picture?" Hopelessly in love with the most beautiful girl on the street, Michael is batted away in favour of the Western boys who are free to cross the border. What chance does Michael have, and how much trouble will he get into by pursuing her? Laugh-out-loud funny and unabashedly silly, Brussig's novel follows the bizarre, grotesque quotidian details of life in the German Democratic Republic. As this new translation shows, the ideas at its heart - freedom, democracy and life's fundamental hilarity - hold great relevance for today.

The Sunday Times bestseller from the author of Freedom and The Corrections Pip Tyler doesn't know who she is. She knows that her real name is Purity, that she's saddled with student debt and a reclusive mother, but there are few clues as to who her father is or how she'll ever have a normal life. Then she meets Andreas Wolf - internet outlaw, charismatic provocateur, a man who deals in secrets and might just be able to help her solve the mystery of her origins.

THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER 'A masterpiece' New York Times 'Stupendous, magnificent, unforgettable, witty and rich. A great American novel' Spectator From the National Book Award-winning author of The Corrections comes a darkly comedic novel about family, now hailed as an American classic. They had been the perfect family: liberal gentrifiers, the avant-garde of the Whole Foods generation. But the Berglunds are struggling to live in an ever more confusing world. Walter, an environmental lawyer and commuter cyclist, has taken a job with Big Coal. Patty, the ideal hands-on mother and wife, is growing unhinged in front of the neighbours' attentive eyes. Their son has moved in with the Republican family next door, and Richard Katz, outre rocker and Walter's best friend and rival, has re-entered their lives. 'Writing in prose that dazzles, Franzen has now written the two novels that best define modern America' Independent 'A masterpiece. Franzen skewers the particularity of modern life and love like no one else' Daily Telegraph

As the 1950s close, Peanuts enters its golden age. Linus, who had just learned to speak in the previous volume, becomes downright eloquent. Charlie Brown cascades further down the hill to loserdom. But the rising star is undoubtedly Snoopy. He's at the centre of the most action-packed episodes. Jonathan Franzen, author of The Corrections and life-long Peanuts fan, introduces the collection.

"This fascinating, massive, wide-ranging collection that editors Christopher K. Coffman and Daniel Lukes have gathered together into William T. Vollmann: A Critical Companion will soon be recognized as one of those rare critical books for which that egregiously overused term 'groundbreaking' is fully justified." -Larry McCaffery, from the preface of William T. Vollmann: A Critical Companion The essays in this collection make a case for regarding William T. Vollmann as the most ambitious, productive, and important living author in the US. His oeuvre includes not only outstanding work in numerous literary genres, but also global reportage, ethical treatises, paintings, photographs, and many other productions. His reputation as a daring traveler and his fascination with life on the margins have earned him an extra-literary renown unequaled in our time. Perhaps most importantly, his work is exceptional in relation to the literary moment. Vollmann is a member of a group of authors who are responding to the skeptical ironies of postmodernism with a reinvigoration of fiction's affective possibilities and moral sensibilities, but he stands out even among this cohort for his prioritization of moral engagement, historical awareness, and geopolitical scope. Included in this book in addition to twelve scholarly critical essays are reflections on Vollmann by many of his peers, confidantes, and collaborators, including Jonathan Franzen, James Franco, and Michael Glawogger. With a preface by Larry McCaffery and an afterword by Michael Hemmingson, this book offers readings of most of Vollmann's works, includes the first critical engagements with several key titles, and introduces the work of several foreign Vollmann scholars to American audiences.

A brilliant personal history from the award-winning author of 'The Corrections'. Jonathan Franzen, bestselling author of 'Freedom' and the highly acclaimed 'The Corrections', arrived late, and last, in a family of boys in Webster Groves, Missouri. 'The Discomfort Zone' is his intimate memoir of his growth from a 'small and fundamentally ridiculous person,' through an adolescence both excruciating and strangely happy, into an adult with embarrassing and unexpected passions. It's also a portrait of a middle-class family weathering the turbulence of the 1970s, and a vivid personal insight into the decades in which America took an angry turn away from its mid-century ideals. He tells of the effects of Kafka's fiction on Franzen's protracted quest to lose his virginity, the elaborate pranks that he and his friends orchestrated from the roof of his high school, his self-inflicted travails in selling his mother's house after her death, the web of connections between his all-consuming marriage, the problem of global warming, and the life lessons to be learned in watching birds. Sparkling, daring and arrestingly honest, 'The Discomfort Zone' is warmed by the same combination of comic scrutiny and unqualified affection that characterize Franzen's fiction. It narrates the formation of a unique mind and heart in the crucible of an everyday American family.

Louis Holland arrives in Boston in a spring of strange happenings – earthquakes strike the city, and the first one kills his grandmother. During a bitter feud over the inheritance Louis falls in love with Renée Seitchek, a passionate and brilliant seismologist, whose discoveries about the origin of the earthquakes complicate everything.

St. Louis, Missouri, is a quietly dying river city. But that all changes when it hires a new police chief: a charismatic young woman from Bombay, S.Jammu. No sooner has Jammu been installed, though, than the city's leading citizens become embroiled in an all-pervasive political conspiracy. A classic of contemporary fiction, 'The Twenty-Seventh City' shows us an ordinary metropolis turned inside out, and the American Dream unravelling into terror and dark comedy.

'A huge and masterly drama…gripping and surreal and overwhelmingly convincing.'
'Newsweek'

'Franzen has managed to put together a suspense story with all the elements of a complex, multi-layered psychological novel…A riveting piece of fiction that lingers in the mind long after more conventional pot-boilers have bubbled away.'
'The New York Times Book Review'

'Unsettling and visionary. 'The Twenty-Seventh City' is not a novel that can be quickly dismissed or easily forgotten: it has elements of both 'Great' and 'American'. A book of memorable characters, surprising situations, and provocative ideas.'
'Washington Post'

'Franzen goes for broke here – he's out to expose the soul of a city and all the bloody details of the way we live. A book of range, pith and intelligence.'
'Vogue'