In the tradition of classic short stories by John Cheever and Tobias Wolff, those in Tom Barbash's evocative collection explore the myriad ways we try to connect to one another and to the sometimes cruel world around us. The newly single mother in "The Break" interferes with her son's love life over his Christmas vacation from college. The anxious young man in "Balloon Night" persists in hosting an annual watch-the-Macy's-Thanksgiving-Day-Parade-floats-be-inflated party, while trying to keep the myth of his marriage equally afloat. Barbash laces his narratives with sharp humor, psychological acuity, and pathos, creating deeply resonant and engaging stories that pierce the heart and linger in the imagination.

By turns hilarious and poignant, The Dakota Winters is a family drama, a page-turning social novel, and a tale of a critical moment in the history of New York City in the year leading up to John Lennon's assassination. 'Conjures a gritty, populous, affectionate portrait of 1979 New York City' Jennifer Egan, author of Manhattan Beach It's the fall of 1979 when 23-year-old Anton Winter, back from the Peace Corps and on the mend from a nasty bout of malaria, returns to his childhood home in the Dakota in New York City. Anton's father, the famous late-night host Buddy Winter is there to greet him, himself recovering from a breakdown. Before long Anton is swept up in an effort to reignite Buddy's stalled career, a mission that takes him from the gritty streets of New York, to the slopes of the Lake Placid Olympics, to the Hollywood Hills, to the blue waters of the Bermuda Triangle, and brings him into close quarters with the likes of Johnny Carson, Ted and Joan Kennedy, and a seagoing John Lennon. But the more Anton finds himself enmeshed in his father's professional and spiritual reinvention, the more he questions his own path, and fissures in the Winter family begin to threaten their close bond. 'Deft, funny, touching, and sharply observed, a marvel of tone, and a skillful evocation of a dark passage in the history of New York City, when all the fearful ironies of the world we live in now first came stalking into view' Michael Chabon, author of Moonglow 'This is a crazily charming novel ... I wanted to begin a new life in these pages, with these characters. I wanted to trade worlds with them. This is a wise and seductive story that feels truer than true, as only the very finest fiction does' Walter Kirn, author of Up in the Air 'A thought-provoking time capsule... if you were a fan of TV's Mad Men, you might very well love this novel as much as I did' Wally Lamb, author of She's Come Undone

A new edition of a classic novel with a strong female lead. Howard Frank Mosher is one of the best-loved writers of northern New England. One of his most vivid and memorable characters is Marie Blythe. At the dawn of the twentieth century, a young girl with a felicitous name immigrates to Vermont from French Canada. She grows up confronting the grim realities of life with an indomitable spirit-nursing victims of a tuberculosis epidemic, enduring a miscarriage alone in the wilderness, and coping with the uncertainties of love. In Marie Blythe, Mosher has created a strong-minded, passionate, and truly memorable heroine. This edition features a new introduction by novelist Tom Barbash.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, nearly 700 of Cantor Fitzgerald's 1,000 New York employees were at their desks on the top floors of One World Trade Center when a hijacked passenger plane struck eight floors below. None survived.

On Top of the World tells the story not only of that tragic day but also of the complicated and emotionally charged events that followed. It is an intimate, often harrowing look at how private families processed a public atrocity, how corporate war-room strategy sessions saved the company from liquidation and the efforts of opportunistic competitors.

This book examines the media scrutiny that followed Howard Lutnick, who struggled to be at once the compassionate leader the grieving families needed and the tough-minded CEO his decimated company required. It also tells the story of the men and women of Cantor whose lost coworkers were relatives and friends, and brothers and sisters. That Cantor's business has survived and even flourished -- and that an initially uneasy but ultimately significant covenant has been formed between those who lived and the families of their lost friends -- is a powerful testament to the ability of a community to endure.