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Best Selling Books by Francine Prose

Francine Prose is the author of You Never Know: A Legend of the Lamed-vavniks, Goldengrove, Helga's Diary: A Young Girl's Account of Life in a Concentration Camp: A Young Girl's Account of Life in a Concentration Camp, A Changed Man (2009), Stories from Our Living Past (1974).

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You Never Know: A Legend of the Lamed-vavniks

by: Francine Prose, Mark Podwal
You Never Know: A Legend of the Lamed-vavniks
The town of Plotchnik hasn't had a drop of rain in forty days. But the town's humble shoemaker, Poor Schmuel, has the power to command rain and much more. What makes him so extraordinary? Nobody, including the town elders, can explain it until one nightthe Rabbi has a very strange dream.... Francine Prose and Mark Podwal bring to life with wit and flavor another Jewish legend in this tale of Schmuel and the holy Lamed-vavniks.

Goldengrove

by: Francine Prose
Goldengrove

At the center of Francine Prose's profoundly moving new novel is a young girl facing the consequences of sudden loss after the death of her sister. As her parents drift toward their own risky consolations, thirteen-year-old Nico is left alone to grope toward understanding and clarity, falling into a seductive, dangerous relationship with her sister's enigmatic boyfriend.

Over one haunted summer, Nico must face that life-changing moment when children realize their parents can no longer help them. She learns about the power of art, of time and place, the mystery of loss and recovery. But for all the darkness at the novel's heart, the narrative itself is radiant with the lightness of summer and charged by the restless sexual tension of teenage life.

Goldengrove takes its place among the great novels of adolescence, beside Henry James's The Awkward Age and L. P. Hartley's The Go-Between.

Helga's Diary: A Young Girl's Account of Life in a Concentration Camp: A Young Girl's Account of Life in a Concentration Camp

by: Helga Weiss, Francine Prose, Francine Prose
Helga's Diary: A Young Girl's Account of Life in a Concentration Camp: A Young Girl's Account of Life in a Concentration Camp

"A sacred reminder of what so many millions suffered, and only a few survived." —Adam Kirsch, New Republic


In 1939, Helga Weiss was a young Jewish schoolgirl in Prague. As she endured the first waves of the Nazi invasion, she began to document her experiences in a diary. During her internment at the concentration camp of Terezín, Helga's uncle hid her diary in a brick wall. Of the 15,000 children brought to Terezín and deported to Auschwitz, there were only one hundred survivors. Helga was one of them. Miraculously, she was able to recover her diary from its hiding place after the war. These pages reveal Helga's powerful story through her own words and illustrations. Includes a special interview with Helga by translator Neil Bermel.

A Changed Man

by: Francine Prose
release date: Oct 13, 2009
A Changed Man
"Francine Prose has a knack for getting to the heart of human nature. . . . We are allowed to enter the moral dilemmas of fascinating characters whose emotional lives are strung out by the same human frailties, secrets and insecurities we all share." — USA Today One spring afternoon, Vincent Nolan, a young neo-Nazi walks into the office of a human rights foundation headed by Meyer Maslow, a charismatic Holocaust survivor. Vincent announces that he wants to make a radical change. But what is Maslow to make of this rough-looking stranger with Waffen SS tattoos who says that his mission is to save guys like him from becoming guys like him? As Vincent gradually turns into the sort of person who might actually be able to do that, he also begins to transform everyone around him, including Maslow himself. Masterfully plotted, darkly comic, A Changed Man poses essential questions about human nature, morality, and the capacity for change, illuminating the everyday transactions, both political and personal, in our lives.

Stories from Our Living Past

by: Francine Prose
Stories from Our Living Past
Twenty-eight Jewish tales with morals, including "Daniel in the Lion''s Den", "The King''s Garden", and "The Goat that Made the Stars Sing".

Hunters and Gatherers

by: Francine Prose
release date: Nov 13, 2008
Hunters and Gatherers
With her trademark acerbic wit and compassion, Francine Prose offers a sharp-eyed consideration of how men and women differ in their pursuit - and avoidance - of power, sex, and competition. A satire of the pieties of New Age religion and knee-jerk feminism, Hunters and Gatherers nevertheless radiates sympathy for our efforts to reconcile spiritual longings with our earthbound, all-too-human nature.

Women and Children First

by: Francine Prose
release date: Jan 01, 1988
Women and Children First
"Presents the story of Dinah Rappoport, star of the Yiddish stage, and her three weddings - to the same man. The novel tells of her eventful performance in Anski''s classic play of thwarted love and demonic possession, The Dybbuk, its galvanizing effect on the hungry hearts of players and audience alike, and the unexpected ways in which the play''s themes resonate in Dinah''s own life"--Goodreads website, viewed May 30, 2024.

Guided Tours of Hell

by: Francine Prose
release date: Sep 24, 2013
Guided Tours of Hell
An "irresistibly readable" pair of novellas skewering Americans abroad—by the New York Times–bestselling author and National Book Award finalist ( The New York Times Book Review). "In a style that is bold, witty, richly detailed, and suffused with a wry subtlety," Francine Prose offers penetrating portraits of Americans in Europe who have brought all their baggage—ego, ambition, sexual desire—with them ( Elle). Guided Tours of Hell When the insecure (and rightfully so) playwright Landau travels from New York to Prague to read at the first annual Kafka conference, he''s certain this is his chance to prove himself—and his work. But he quickly finds himself upstaged by Jiri Krakauer, a charismatic Holocaust survivor whose claim to fame is a long-ago death-camp love affair with Kafka''s sister. On a group tour to the camp-turned-tourist-attraction, Landau sets out to prove that Krakauer is lying—with unexpected results. Three Pigs in Five Days Ambitious young journalist Nina has been stranded in Paris by her editor and sometimes boyfriend, Leo. When he finally shows up, playfully suggesting a romantic tour of the catacombs, prisons, and shadows of the City of Light, the bloom begins to come off the rose for the infatuated Nina—who must ask herself how much of herself she is willing to sacrifice for love.

Reading Like a Writer

by: Francine Prose
release date: Apr 01, 2012
Reading Like a Writer
In her entertaining and edifying New York Times bestseller, acclaimed author Francine Prose invites you to sit by her side and take a guided tour of the tools and tricks of the masters to discover why their work has endured. Written with passion, humor and wisdom, Reading Like a Writer will inspire readers to return to literature with a fresh eye and an eager heart – to take pleasure in the long and magnificent sentences of Philip Roth and the breathtaking paragraphs of Isaac Babel; to look to John le Carré for a lesson in how to advance plot through dialogue and to Flannery O’Connor for the cunning use of the telling detail; to be inspired by Emily Brontë’s structural nuance and Charles Dickens’s deceptively simple narrative techniques. Most importantly, Prose cautions readers to slow down and pay attention to words, the raw material out of which all literature is crafted, and reminds us that good writing comes out of good reading.

Household Saints

by: Francine Prose
release date: Sep 24, 2013
Household Saints
This tale of a family in Little Italy is "a minor miracle . . . documenting the madness and the grace of God in everyday life" ( Newsweek). On a 1950s September night so hot that the devout Catholics of Little Italy wonder if New York City has slipped into hell, the butcher Joseph Santangelo invites his friends to play pinochle. At the end of a long, sweaty, boozy evening, his friend Lino Falconetti, addled by wine and heat, bets the hand of his daughter, Catherine—and Santangelo wins. Santangelo''s modern new wife clashes immediately with his superstitious, fiercely protective mother. But years later, it is Catherine who is horrified when the daughter they raise turns out to have more in common with the old world than the new. From a New York Times–bestselling author, this story of two generations of an Italian-American family is imaginative, evocative, funny, and warm—and was made into an acclaimed film directed by Nancy Savoca, starring Tracey Ullman, Vincent D''Onofrio, and Lili Taylor.

The Peaceable Kingdom

by: Francine Prose
release date: Sep 24, 2013
The Peaceable Kingdom
Eleven "impeccably crafted, painfully hilarious" tales of innocence lost and families in search of connection from the New York Times–bestselling author ( San Francisco Chronicle). A reluctant trophy wife on her Italian honeymoon; a young woman in love with her sister''s dead boyfriend; a lonely puppeteer flirting with the hostess of a children''s party; a teenage girl traveling to Paris with her father and, unexpectedly, his young girlfriend. Francine Prose''s characters inhabit a world of rich emotion and startling clarity, searching for connection in a world full of surprise and humor; they travel, love, break up, and start again. Even their animal companions—a gecko rescued from a wild party, a dog who bites a bride, a hamster who dies unexpectedly and sends a family on a journey to give it a proper funeral—shine with the emotional complexity and sly satire that make Prose''s work such a joy to experience. In this collection, the New York Times–bestselling author and National Book Award finalist demonstrates the craft, humor, and piercing human insight that make her, in the words of Gary Shteyngart "one of a handful of truly indispensable American writers."

The Glorious Ones

by: Francine Prose
release date: Sep 24, 2013
The Glorious Ones
The story of a troupe of actors in seventeenth- century Italy, from "one of a handful of truly indispensable American writers" (Gary Shteyngart). The Glorious Ones are an unlikely troupe of actors, traveling up and down the seventeenth-century Italian countryside performing commedia dell''arte for kings, for peasants, for anyone with coin. There is Armanda, the cheerful dwarf and ex-nun; chattering Columbina; Pantalone the miser; and the wicked Brighella—all led by Flaminio Scala, the self-proclaimed most courageous man in Christendom. But for all their wild differences, not one of them is prepared for the arrival of Isabella, their mysterious new director, who is about to turn their whole world upside down. Dramatic and imaginative, this tale of adventure, love, and theater is a historical romp from the award-winning, New York Times–bestselling author of novels, including Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932, and Household Saints, as well as the literary guide book Reading Like a Writer.

Anne Frank

by: Francine Prose
release date: Oct 05, 2010
Anne Frank
In June 1942, Anne Frank received a red-and-white-checked diary for her thirteenth birthday, just weeks before she and her family went into hiding in an Amsterdam attic to escape the Nazis. For two years, with ever-increasing maturity, Anne crafted a memoir that has become one of the most compelling documents of modern history. But Anne Frank''s diary, argues Francine Prose, is as much a work of art as it is a historical record. Through close reading, she marvels at the teenage Frank''s skillfully natural narrative voice, at her finely tuned dialogue and ability to turn living people into characters. Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife tells the extraordinary story of the book that became a force in the world. Along the way, Prose definitively establishes that Anne Frank was not an accidental author or a casual teenage chronicler but a writer of prodigious talent and ambition.

Touch

by: Francine Prose
release date: Jun 16, 2009
Touch
What really happened at the back of the bus? Did they, or didn''t they? Did she, or didn''t she? Something happened to fourteen-year-old Maisie Willard—something involving her three friends, all boys. But their stories don''t match, and the rumors spin out of control. Then other people get involved . . . the school, the parents, the lawyers. The incident at the back of the bus becomes the center of Maisie''s life and the talk of the school, and, horribly, it becomes news. With just a few words and a touch, the kids and their community are changed forever. From nationally acclaimed author Francine Prose comes an unforgettable story about the difficulties of telling the truth, the consequences of lying, and the most dangerous twist of all—the possibility that you yourself will come to believe something that you know isn''t true.

Scent of a Woman's Ink

by: Francine Prose
release date: Sep 01, 2000
Scent of a Woman's Ink
This compilation of heretofore uncollected essays shows noted novelist and cultural critic Francine Prose at her most eloquent, incisive, and provocative.When Francine Prose''s article, Scent of a Woman''s Ink--which discussed how women writers are consistently underrepresented among the winners of major American literary awards--appeared in Harper''s magazine thre e years ago, it touched off a storm of debate and counter-arguments, both in print and on the airwaves. In SCENT OF A WOMAN''S INK: ESSAYS BY FRANCINE PROSE, that article, along with Prose''s equally pithy and incisive writings about the art and politics of writing and its at times jarring intersection with the culture it documents, confirms Prose''s place as one of the most readable and relevant cultural critics writing today.From Learnining from Chekhov, her elegant and considered essay on the art and craft of writing to A Wasteland of One''s Own, her controversial and much-discussed piece about the commercially created and dumbed-down women''s culture for The New York Times, Prose''s essays are at once instructive and revelatory, and always provocative.

Primitive People

by: Francine Prose
release date: Sep 24, 2013
Primitive People
A Haitian émigré''s exposure to shallow suburbanites is "social satire at its slyest and best" from the New York Times–bestselling author ( Kirkus Reviews). When the heartbroken Simone flees her native Haiti, her best option to start a new life is a quick paper marriage to a Brooklyn cab driver and a job as an underpaid caregiver to two spoiled young children in the small community of Hudson Landing, New York. But her new boss is nothing like what she''s been led to expect. The self-absorbed amateur sculptor Rosemary Porter and her morose, eccentric children George and Maisie—deserted by their philandering husband and father—rattle aimlessly around their crumbling suburban mansion. The people of Hudson Landing seem welcoming at first, but as Simone settles into this new home, her sense of unease grows. Rosemary''s sarcastic best friend, Shelly, seems as suspicious of her as her shallow boyfriend, Kenny, a children''s hair salon owner who appears eager to befriend the new au pair. A neighbor known only as "The Count" strings dead animals from trees for no reason anyone can understand. As the local community roils with secrets and attempts to outdo each other with self-importance, Simone begins to wonder just where on earth she has fled to—and if it''s any better than the violence and betrayal she left behind. As always, National Book Award finalist Francine Prose "has a wickedly sharp ear for pretentious American idiom, and no telling detail escapes her observation" as Simone struggles to make sense of these odd people and this strange, new world ( The New York Times Book Review).

Blue Angel

by: Francine Prose
release date: Oct 13, 2009
Blue Angel
The National Book Award Finalist from acclaimed New York Times bestselling author Francine Prose—now the major motion picture Submission “Screamingly funny … Blue Angel culminates in a sexual harassment hearing that rivals the Salem witch trials.” —USA Today It''s been years since Swenson, a professor in a New England creative writing program, has published a novel. It''s been even longer since any of his students have shown promise. Enter Angela Argo, a pierced, tattooed student with a rare talent for writing. Angela is just the thing Swenson needs. And, better yet, she wants his help. But, as we all know, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Deliciously risque, Blue Angel is a withering take on today''s academic mores and a scathing tale that vividly shows what can happen when academic politics collides with political correctness.

Bigfoot Dreams

by: Francine Prose
release date: Sep 24, 2013
Bigfoot Dreams
From the "wonderfully quirky imagination" of the New York Times–bestselling author: A tabloid reporter is surprised to find magic in a mundane world ( The New York Times). Vera Pearl is a staff writer for This Week, a supermarket tabloid which trades in the bizarre and the absurd—though rarely, if ever, the true. No one is better than Vera at imagining these weird, wild stories, because more than anything, she wants them to be real. During one particularly slow week, Vera takes a photograph snapped by a colleague showing two children selling lemonade outside their Brooklyn home and drafts up a scoop to fit the snap, the story of two enterprising children who have discovered—and are profiting off of—the literal Fountain of Youth. By astonishing coincidence—or perhaps by magic—the details she concocts about the children (except for the properties of the tap water) turn out to be true, and hundreds of miracle-seekers descend upon this modern Lourdes-in-Flatbush. The resulting lawsuit sends this master of hoaxes into a very real tailspin: she is fired, her estranged husband flies in from Los Angeles to whisk away their precocious young daughter, and Vera takes off for Arizona to attend a meeting of the Cryptobiological Society, hoping for evidence of their furry quarry, Bigfoot. Just one glance, and Vera''s longing to finally transcend the quotidian may come true . . .

The Mirror: A Short Story from the collection, Reader, I Married Him

by: Francine Prose
release date: Apr 21, 2016
The Mirror: A Short Story from the collection, Reader, I Married Him
A short story by Francine Prose from the collection Reader, I Married Him: Stories inspired by Jane Eyre.

1974

by: Francine Prose
release date: Jan 01, 2024
1974

Cleopatra

by: Francine Prose
release date: Jan 01, 2023
Cleopatra

Loss of Memory Is Only Temporary

by: Francine Prose
release date: Jan 01, 2022
Loss of Memory Is Only Temporary

The Vixen

by: Francine Prose
release date: Jan 01, 2021
The Vixen

Titian's Pietro Aretino

by: Francine Prose
release date: Jan 01, 2020
Titian's Pietro Aretino

Cecily Brown

by: Francine Prose
release date: Jan 01, 2020
Cecily Brown

What to Read and Why

by: Francine Prose
release date: Jan 01, 2018
What to Read and Why
Celebrates the pleasures of reading and pays homage to the works and writers the author admires above all others, from Jane Austen to Charles Dickens to Jennifer Egan. In an age defined by hyper-connectivity and constant stimulation, Francine Prose makes a compelling case for the solitary act of reading and the great enjoyment it brings. Inspiring and illuminating, What to Read and Why includes selections culled from Prose's previous essays, reviews, and introductions, combined with new, never-before-published pieces that focus on her favorite works of fiction and nonfiction, on works by masters of the short story, and even on books by photographers like Diane Arbus. Prose considers why the works of literary masters such as Mary Shelley, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, and Jane Austen have endured, and shares intriguing insights about modern authors whose words stimulate our minds and enlarge our lives, including Roberto Bolaño, Karl Ove Knausgaard, Jennifer Egan, and Mohsin Hamid. Prose implores us to read Mavis Gallant for her marvelously rich and compact sentences, and her meticulously rendered characters who reveal our flawed and complex human nature; Edward St. Aubyn for his elegance and sophisticated humor; and Mark Strand for his gift for depicting unlikely transformations. Here, too, are original pieces in which Prose explores the craft of writing: "On Clarity" and "What Makes a Short Story." Written with her sharp critical analysis, wit, and enthusiasm, What to Read and Why is a celebration of literature that will give readers a new appreciation for the power and beauty of the written word.

(R)evolution

by: Francine Prose
release date: Jan 01, 2016
(R)evolution
"Inside these pages you will find poems, essays, and fiction from the next generation of women writers. Through the Girls Write Now program, each mentor-mentee pair develops and presents her best work at readings and events from Lincoln Center to the United Nations to the pages of this anthology. Structured around this year's theme, "(R)evolution," the Girls Write Now 2016 Anthology showcases the activism and power of today's emerging writers. These revolutionary pieces are evolving the narrative and changing literature, one girl at a time."--Back cover.

Mavis Gallant Collected Stories

by: Francine Prose
release date: Jan 01, 2016
Mavis Gallant Collected Stories

Mister Monkey

by: Francine Prose
release date: Jan 01, 2016
Mister Monkey

Peggy Guggenheim

by: Francine Prose
release date: Jan 01, 2015
Peggy Guggenheim

Lovers At The Chameleon Club Paris 1932 A Novel

by: Francine Prose
release date: Jan 01, 2015
Lovers At The Chameleon Club Paris 1932 A Novel
"A richly imagined and stunningly inventive story of love, art, and betrayal in Paris of the 20's, 30's, and 40's"--

Terry Winters

by: Francine Prose
release date: Jan 01, 2014
Terry Winters
"This exquisite, elegant volume includes every print made by the highly regarded American artist Terry Winters over the past fifteen years. Terry Winters' prints explore an enormous range of themes, from botany and biology to math and information technology. He has worked in nearly every mode of printmaking, including etching, screen-printing, lithography, and wood engraving. Frequently organized in serial groupings, Winters' prints display free floating cellular structures or clusters of spirals, knots, grids, and networks. His forcefully made works are rich in ambiguity and allusion. This book features fifty beautiful reproductions, accompanied by insightful texts and comparative paintings and drawings. The complete catalog of Winters' prints made between 1999 and 2014 is also included here, along with an essay by novelist and critic Francine Prose"--

Jo Ann Callis

by: Francine Prose
release date: Jan 01, 2014
Jo Ann Callis
"Jo Ann Callis: Other Rooms," the first publication to comprehensively feature Jo Ann Callis' mid-1970s investigation of the nude body and sexuality, is a revelation; the work is provocative, seductive and remarkably fresh. The artist's playful, evocative use of constrictions and overlays on the human form, including twine, belts, tape and other everyday materials, are both humorous and fraught, offering an intensely personal assessment of the variable meanings of pleasure and the female nude as a staple of fine art photography. Callis has been an active artist since the 1960s, working in painting, sculpture and photography, among other media, and is known for capturing complex and often opposing emotions in a single piece. "Jo Ann Callis: Other Rooms" is an exquisitely produced artist's book containing Callis' photographs of the human form from her 1976-77 provisionally titled series "Early Color," as well as a selection of black-and-white photographs from the same period. In this intimate volume, Callis photographs her models nude, frequently in close proximity, and in anonymous and mysterious settings, juxtaposing tactile props like honey, sand and fabric with skin. The photographs in this volume are at once beautiful and discomfiting, delicate and raw, mysterious and thoughtful, and confirm Callis' important place in the history of 1970s color photography.

Gail Albert Halaban

by: Francine Prose
release date: Jan 01, 2014
Gail Albert Halaban

Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932

by: Francine Prose
release date: Jan 01, 2014
Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932

Invisible City

by: Francine Prose
release date: Jan 01, 2013
Invisible City

Brick

by: Francine Prose
release date: Jan 01, 2013
Brick

Judah the Pious

by: Francine Prose
release date: Jan 01, 2013
Judah the Pious

Turning

by: Francine Prose
release date: Jan 01, 2012
Turning

Something in My Eye

by: Francine Prose
release date: Jan 01, 2012
Something in My Eye
40 results found


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