The story is about four teenagers, lost souls, whose friendship creates a bond so powerful that it changes a complete stranger’s life twenty-five years later. At its center is a transcendent work of art. Heartwarming and poignant, My Friends is filled with hope, humor, wisdom and love. It is a tale of lifelong friendship, human connection, the power of art, and the ways that childhood—good and bad—stays with you for a lifetime.
A Most Anticipated Book of 2025: Goodreads •USA TODAY • Marie Claire • BookPage • Literary Lifestyle •Book Riot •Sunset Magazine • Totally Booked with Zibby Owens * A Fallon Book Club Pick
The #1 New York Times bestselling author of Anxious People returns with an unforgettably funny, deeply moving tale of four teenagers whose friendship creates a bond so powerful that it changes a complete stranger's life twenty-five years later.
Most people don't even notice them—three tiny figures sitting at the end of a long pier in the corner of one of the most…
Stoner lived a passive life with the sparks of his agency arriving late in his life against Holly Lomax, his boss who undermines him and tries to destroy Stoner’s career. The entirety of Stoner’s life was defined by what he did: he was a college professor. As a student he attends University of Missouri, gets his degree there and spends the rest of his life there, teaching. His affair with Katherine Driscoll brought a change to his life, a bright light, and when she was forced to leave, it was extinguished, although much later when he was almost sixty, he received news of the publication of her book. He got a copy, found the dedication “to W.S.,” and in reading her book, the force of his passion rose from the surface of numbness and indifference in which he led his life. To all outward appearances, he is a failure—not a popular teacher, one of the less distinguished members of his department, his personal life in shambles. He dies of cancer. But while this is a man who finds no meaning in the world or in himself, he does find meaning, and a sort of victory, in the honest and dogged pursuit of his profession. His steadfast teaching and hard scholarly work sustained him, his energies and dedication concentrated on the hard work throughout his life. In that, he was a kind of hero.
'It's the most marvellous discovery for everyone who loves literature' Ian McEwan, BBC Radio 4
Colum McCann once called Stoner one of the great forgotten novels of the past century, but it seems it is forgotten no longer - in 2013 translations of Stoner began appearing on bestseller lists across Europe. Forty-eight years after its first, quiet publication in the US, Stoner is finally finding the wide and devoted readership it deserves. Have you read it yet?
William Stoner enters the University of Missouri at nineteen to study agriculture. A seminar on English literature…
This is Lee Martin’s follow up to his Pultizer Prize for Fiction finalist The Bright Forever. From the very first page, I knew I was in the hands of a master storyteller. The prose spare and evocative, this novel once again reveals the often-forgotten voices of the heartland and brings Harry Dees, the enigmatic math teacher featured in The Bright Forever, in full focus as he leaves the tiny Indiana town of Tower Hill, filled with tragedy and grief, and settles in Mount Gilead, Illinois, another little town where everyone’s business is an open book, except that visitor who comes to town. With spinster Edith Green, Henry finds love in middle age, the joy it promises but not without the serious complications it encounters. Haunting and poignant.
The highly anticipated follow-up to Pulitzer Prize finalist The Bright Forever, The Evening Shades tells the story of two lonely people in a small Midwestern town and the dark secrets tormenting them . . .
One afternoon in the autumn of 1972, a lonely widow in Mt. Gilead, Illinois, makes the impromptu decision to rent out a room in her house to a stranger who has come to town. It is risky—she doesn't know anything about him. But Edith Green can no longer bear a life lived alone. And Henry Dees is haunted by the past he carries with him…
1938. Eli Stoff, age 15, and his parents, Austrian Jews, escape to America just after Germany takes over their homeland. Within five years, Eli joins the U.S. Army, and like all those who became known as Ritchie boys, he works undercover in Intelligence on the European front to help the Allies win World War II. Interrelated stories, each told by different characters, form a cohesive narrative that follows Eli from Vienna to New York, from Ohio to Maryland, and then to war-torn Europe before he returns to the heartland of his new country to set down his roots.
