Best Selling Books by E. L. Doctorow

One of America’s premier writers, the bestselling author of Ragtime, Billy Bathgate, The Book of Daniel, and World’s Fair turns his astonishing narrative powers to the short story in five dazzling explorations of who we are as a people and how we live. Ranging over the American continent from Alaska to Washington, D.C., these superb short works are crafted with all the weight and resonance of the novels for which E. L. Doctorow is famous. You will find yourself set down in a mysterious redbrick townhouse in rural Illinois (“A House on the Plains”), working things out with a baby-kidnapping couple in California (“Baby Wilson”), living on a religious-cult commune in Kansas (“Walter John Harmon”), and sharing the heartrending cross-country journey of a young woman navigating her way through three bad marriages to a kind of bruised but resolute independence (“Jolene: A Life”). And in the stunning “Child, Dead, in the Rose Garden,” you will witness a special agent of the FBI finding himself at a personal crossroads while investigating a grave breach of White House security. Two of these stories have already won awards as the best fiction of the year published in American periodicals, and two have been chosen for annual best-story anthologies. Composed in a variety of moods and voices, these remarkable portrayals of the American spiritual landscape show a modern master at the height of his powers.

Set in America in the early years of this century, this novel interweaves the stories of three representative families -- those of an upper middle-class manufacturer, a poor immigrant, and a black ragtime musician -- with historical personages such as J.P. Morgan, Emma Goldman, Houdini, et al who supposedly become involved with fictional characters.

Doctorow's novels imagine the great moments of American history - the Old West, the Depression - as backdrops for tales of moral pain and injustice. In these interviews, Doctorow explores the themes of his work.

At the peak of his literary fame and fortune, Jonathan walks out on his wife, moves into a Manhattan loft, and goes back through his life, reinventing his world through his writer's imagination.

During the Great Depression of the '30s, a passionate, young New Jersey man leaves home to find his fortune. What he finds is a life so different from his own that it changes his destiny. A haunting story of dreams and desires, repackaged to match Doctorow's other bestsellers. Reprint from Bantam. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.