"The Secret Lives of People in Love" is the first short story collection by award-winning writer Simon Van Booy. These stories, set in Kentucky, New York, Paris, Rome, and Greece, are a perfect synthesis of intensity and atmosphere. Love, loss, human contact, and isolation are Van Booy's themes. In radiant prose he writes about the difficult choices we make in order to retain our humanity and about the redemptive power of love in a violent world.

Included in this updated P.S. edition is the new story "The Mute Ventriloquist."

Vital insights and wisdom on the perennial question of why we fight

This book explores how some of the greatest minds of civilization have tackled a question that continues to play a vital part in our lives today. In "Why We Fight," Simon Van Booy curates an enlightening collection of excerpts, passages, and paintings, presenting works by Sophocles, Tacitus, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, William Shakespeare, Emily BrontE, Abraham Lincoln, Charles Dickens, Victor Hugo, Walt Whitman, Friedrich Nietzsche, Oscar Wilde, James Tissot, James Joyce, General George Patton, and others.

"Why We Fight" will engage both the serious philosopher and the eternally curious.

On the verge of giving up--anchored to dreams that never came true and to people who have long since disappeared from their lives--Van Booy's characters walk the streets of these stark and beautiful stories until chance meetings with strangers force them to face responsibility for lives they thought had continued on without them.

Vital insights and wisdom on the perennial question of why our decisions don't matter

This book explores how some of the greatest minds of civilization have tackled a question that continues to play a vital part in our lives today. In "Why Our Decisions Don't Matter," Simon Van Booy curates an enlightening collection of excerpts, passages, and paintings, presenting works by Homer, Sophocles, Horace, Shakespeare, Rembrandt, Voltaire, Blake, Dickinson, Twain, Rilke, Camus, Kerouac, Sartre, Borges, Beckett, and others.

"Why Our Decisions Don't Matter" will engage both the serious philosopher and the eternally curious.

American photographer Wendy Paton allows herself to disappear in order to let her subjects emerge from the night. In "Visages de Nuit" ("Faces Of Night"), Paton's eye is that of the celebrant as well as a voyeur, and in graphic compositions of black and white that mesmerize us, she offers personal and intimate glimpses of our human, ineffable presence. Her nocturnal portraits are both intimate and familiar, compelling and mysterious. Paton's work has been exhibited in gallery and museum venues internationally, and is in private and public collections in the United States and Europe.

The characters in Simon Van Booy's The Illusion of Separateness discover at their darkest moments of fear and isolation that they are not alone, that they were never alone, that every human being is a link in a chain we cannot see. This gripping novel--inspired by true events--tells the interwoven stories of a deformed German infantryman; a lonely British film director; a young, blind museum curator; two Jewish American newlyweds separated by war; and a caretaker at a retirement home for actors in Santa Monica. They move through the same world but fail to perceive their connections until, through seemingly random acts of selflessness, a veil is lifted to reveal the vital parts they have played in one another's lives, and the illusion of their separateness.

Rebecca is young, lost, and beautiful. A gifted artist, she seeks solace and inspiration in the Mediterranean heat of Athens--trying to understand who she is and how she can love without fear.

George has come to Athens to learn ancient languages after growing up in New England boarding schools and Ivy League colleges. He has no close relationships with anyone and spends his days hunched over books or wandering the city in a drunken stupor.

Henry is in Athens to dig. An accomplished young archaeologist, he devotedly uncovers the city's past as a way to escape his own, which holds a secret that not even his doting parents can talk about.

...And then, with a series of chance meetings, Rebecca, George, and Henry are suddenly in flight, their lives brighter and clearer than ever, as they fall headlong into a summer that will forever define them in the decades to come.

"It is a heartbreaking book, a gorgeous book...In Night Came with Many Stars, Van Booy finds the weakness, grace and beauty of common lives fully lived." -NPR, "Books We Love" "Not to miss!" -USA Today In Kentucky, back in 1933, Carol's daddy lost his 13-year-old daughter in a game of cards. Award-winning author Simon Van Booy's spellbinding novel spans decades as he tells the story of Carol and the people in her life. Incidents intersect and lives unexpectedly change course in this masterfully interwoven story of chance and choice that leads home again to a night blessed with light. "What you give in this world," an old man tells his grandson, "will be given back to you." Those words illuminate the actions within this unforgettable novel and its connected characters. A young man survives two nearly fatal accidents. A Black family saves an orphaned white boy. A pregnant teenager is rescued by the side of the road. A teenager with developmental disabilities is given his first job. Each incident grows in meaning and power over many decades as we see connections sometimes felt but not always apparent to the people themselves. "Everything was moving," observes Samuel (Carol's grandson) in the Kentucky woods. "An invisible force that was everywhere, and made everything touch." Told by a master storyteller, Night Came with Many Stars is a rare novel that reveals how wondrous, mysterious, and magically connected life can be-the light Simon Van Booy creates illuminates our own lives.

"It is a heartbreaking book, a gorgeous book...In Night Came with Many Stars, Van Booy finds the weakness, grace and beauty of common lives fully lived." -NPR, "Books We Love" "Not to miss!" -USA Today In Kentucky, back in 1933, Carol's daddy lost his 13-year-old daughter in a game of cards. Award-winning author Simon Van Booy's spellbinding novel spans decades as he tells the story of Carol and the people in her life. Incidents intersect and lives unexpectedly change course in this masterfully interwoven story of chance and choice that leads home again to a night blessed with light. "What you give in this world," an old man tells his grandson, "will be given back to you." Those words illuminate the actions within this unforgettable novel and its connected characters. A young man survives two nearly fatal accidents. A Black family saves an orphaned white boy. A pregnant teenager is rescued by the side of the road. A teenager with developmental disabilities is given his first job. Each incident grows in meaning and power over many decades as we see connections sometimes felt but not always apparent to the people themselves. "Everything was moving," observes Samuel (Carol's grandson) in the Kentucky woods. "An invisible force that was everywhere, and made everything touch." Told by a master storyteller, Night Came with Many Stars is a rare novel that reveals how wondrous, mysterious, and magically connected life can be-the light Simon Van Booy creates illuminates our own lives.

A deluxe Harper Perennial Legacy Edition, with an introduction from Simon Van Booy, nationally best-selling author of Father's Day and The Illusion of Separateness A compelling historical novel of a young man's rise from poverty to wealth in a small provincial town during the Industrial Revolution, now available in a Legacy Edition from Harper Perennial Modern Classics. Like Charles Dickens's beloved David Copperfield, John Halifax is an orphan, determined to make his success through honest hard work. He becomes an apprentice to Abel Flecher, a tanner and a Quaker, and is soon befriended by Abel's invalid son, Phineas, who chronicles John's success in business and love, rising from the humblest of origins to the pinnacle of wealth made possible by England's Industrial Revolution. Dinah Maria Mulock Craik explores the sweeping transformation wrought by this revolutionary technological age, including the rise of the middle class and its impact on the social, economic, and political makeup of the nation as it moved from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century. This Legacy Edition features a lush design and French flaps.

"Flows with depth and power....wide-open wonder."-Washington Post As a writer lies dying, he has one last story to tell: a tale of faith and devotion, a meditation on what lies beyond this life, and a prayer of gratitude that may lead to rebirth. This is Simon Van Booy at his visionary best. "Language is a map leading to a place not on the map," announces a young writer lying in a hospital bed at the beginning of The Presence of Absence. As he contemplates his impending physical disappearance and the impact on his beloved wife, he realizes, "Life doesn't start when you're born . . . it begins when you commit yourself to the eventual devastating loss that results from connecting to another person." Infused with poetic clarity and graced with humor, Simon Van Booy's innovative novella asks the reader to find beauty-even gratitude-in the cycle of birth and death. Stripped of artifice, The Presence of Absence is a meditation between the writer and the reader, an imaginative work that challenges the deceit of written words and explores our strongest emotions. Simon Van Booy is not only a master storyteller but a writer whose fiction is rich with philosophical insights into things both mapped and undiscovered. The Presence of Absence parts the darkness to reveal what has been just out of sight all along.

A master storyteller's vision reawakens us to the human experience in this diverse, haunting, and unexpectedly humorous new collection of short fiction from Simon Van Booy-his first since Love Begins in Winter, winner of the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award. "She believed it was a gift to never truly know the self. We are not who we think we are, nor how others see us. Long before death, we die a thousand times at the hands of a definition." In his first book of short stories since Love Begins in Winter, for which he won the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award), bestselling author Simon Van Booy offers a collection of stories highlighting how human genius can emerge through acts of compassion. Through characters including an eccentric film director, an aging Cockney bodyguard, the teenage child of Nigerian immigrants, a divorced amateur magician from New Jersey, and a Beijing street vendor who becomes an overnight billionaire, Tales of Accidental Genius contemplates individuals from different cultures, races-rich and poor, young and old-and reveals how faith and yearning for connection helps us all transcend darkness of fear and misfortune.

Simon Van Booy, winner of the prestigious Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, brings his gift for poetic dialogue and sumptuous imagery to thisdebut novel of longing and discovery amidst the ruins of Ancient Greece. Rebecca is young, lost and beautiful. A gifted artist, she seeks solace and inspiration in the Mediterranean heat of Athens - trying to understand who she is and how she can love without fear. George has come to Athens to learn ancient languages after growing up in New England boarding schools and Ivy League colleges. He has no close relationships with anyone and spends his days hunched over books or in a drunken stupor. And then there is Henry, an accomplished young Welsh archaeologist who spends his days devotedly uncovering the city's past as a way to escape his own - a past that holds a secret that not even his doting parents can talk about. As these three lost and lonely souls wander the city, a series of chance encounters sets off events that will forever define them, in this powerful portrait of friendship and young love.

Vital insights and wisdom on the perennial question of why we need love

This book explores how some of the greatest minds of civilization have tackled a question that continues to play a vital part in our lives today. In "Why We Need Love," Simon Van Booy curates an enlightening collection of excerpts, passages, and paintings, presenting works by Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, John Donne, William Blake, George Eliot, Emily Dickinson, O. Henry, W. B. Yeats, James Joyce, E. E. Cummings, AnaIs Nin, Marc Chagall, J. Krishnamurti, and others.

"Why We Need Love" will engage both the serious philosopher and the eternally curious.