Best Selling Books by Janet Fitch

From the #1 New York Times –bestselling author. "A dark, crooked beauty that fulfills all the promise of White Oleander ." — Los Angeles Times Book Review Josie Tyrell, art model, runaway, and denizen of LA''s rock scene finds a chance at real love with Michael Faraday, a Harvard dropout and son of a renowned pianist. But when she receives a call from the coroner, asking her to identify her lover''s body, her bright dreams all turn to black. As Josie struggles to understand Michael''s death and to hold onto the world they shared, she is both attracted to and repelled by his pianist mother, Meredith, who blames Josie for her son''s torment. Soon the two women are drawn into a twisted relationship that reflects equal parts distrust and blind need. With the luxurious prose and fever pitch intensity that are her hallmarks, Janet Fitch weaves a spellbinding tale of love, betrayal, and the possibility of transcendence. "Lushly written, dramatically plotted . . . Fitch''s Los Angeles is so real it breathes." — Atlantic Monthly "There is nothing less than a stellar sentence in this novel. Fitch''s emotional honesty recalls the work of Joyce Carol Oates, her strychnine sentences the prose of Paula Fox." — Cleveland Plain Dealer "Fitch wonderfully captures the abrasive appeal of punk music, the bohemian, sometimes squalid lifestyle, the performers, the drugs, the alienation. This is crackling fresh stuff you don''t read every day." — USA Today "In dysfunctional family narratives, Fitch is to fiction what Eugene O''Neill is to drama." — Chicago Sun-Times "Riveting . . . An uncommonly accomplished page-turner." — Elle

The unforgettable story of a young woman''s odyssey through a series of Los Angeles foster homes on her journey to redemption. Astrid is the only child of a single mother, Ingrid, a brilliant, obsessed poet who wields her luminous beauty to intimidate and manipulate men. Astrid worships her mother and cherishes their private world full of ritual and mystery - but their idyll is shattered when Astrid''s mother falls apart over a lover. Deranged by rejection, Ingrid murders the man, and is sentenced to life in prison. White Oleander is the unforgettable story of Astrid''s journey through a series of foster homes and her efforts to find a place for herself in impossible circumstances. Each home is its own universe, with a new set of laws and lessons to be learned. With determination and humor, Astrid confronts the challenges of loneliness and poverty, and strives to learn who a motherless child in an indifferent world can become. Oprah Winfrey enjoyed this gripping first novel so much that she not only made it her book club pick, she asked if she could narrate the audio release.

A young Russian woman comes into her own in the midst of revolution and civil war in this "brilliant" novel set in "a world of furious beauty" (Los Angeles Review of Books). After the loves and betrayals of The Revolution of Marina M., young poet Marina Makarova finds herself alone amid the devastation of the Russian Civil War -- pregnant and adrift, forced to rely on her own resourcefulness to find a place to wait out the birth of her child and eventually make her way back to her native city, Petrograd. After two years of revolution, the city that was once St. Petersburg is almost unrecognizable, the haunted, half-emptied, starving Capital of Once Had Been, its streets teeming with homeless children. Moved by their plight, though hardly better off herself, she takes on the challenge of caring for these orphans, until they become the tool of tragedy from an unexpected direction. Shaped by her country''s ordeals and her own trials -- betrayal and privation and inconceivable loss -- Marina evolves as a poet and a woman of sensibility and substance hardly imaginable at the beginning of her transformative odyssey. Chimes of a Lost Cathedral is the culmination of one woman''s s journey through some of the most dramatic events of the last century -- the epic story of an artist who discovers her full power, passion, and creativity just as her revolution reveals its true direction for the future.

From the mega-bestselling author of White Oleander and Paint It Black, a sweeping historical saga of the Russian Revolution, as seen through the eyes of one young woman. St. Petersburg, New Year''s Eve, 1916. Marina Makarova is a young woman of privilege who aches to break free of the constraints of her genteel life, a life about to be violently upended by the vast forces of history. Swept up on these tides, Marina will join the marches for workers'' rights, fall in love with a radical young poet, and betray everything she holds dear, before being betrayed in turn. As her country goes through almost unimaginable upheaval, Marina''s own coming-of-age unfolds, marked by deep passion and devastating loss, and the private heroism of an ordinary woman living through extraordinary times. This is the epic, mesmerizing story of one indomitable woman''s journey through some of the most dramatic events of the last century.

A fifteen-year-old girl draws back from the false glamour of Los Angeles street life when an oft envied childhood friend becomes sexually promiscuous and overdoses on drugs.

Astrid is enig kind van een alleenstaande moeder, een beeldschone en extravagante dichteres. Het meisje aanbidt haar moeder, maar wordt op zichzelf teruggeworpen wanneer de moeder wegens moord wordt veroordeeld tot een levenslange gevangenisstraf. Witte Oleander is het onvergetelijke verhaal van Astrids pogingen om zich alleen staande te houden. Haar stoerheid, moed, warmte en humor maken Astrid tot een onweerstaanbaar en onvergetelijk romanpersonage. ''Dit is een van de mooiste en aangrijpendste romans die ik in lange tijd gelezen heb.'' Oprah Winfrey ''Een groots debuut.'' NRC Handelsblad ''Een meeslepende roman.'' Margriet ''Ontroerend.'' Cosmopolitan

Astrid est l''enfant unique d''une mère célibataire, Ingrid, brillante poétesse dont la lumineuse beauté n''est qu''une arme pour séduire et manipuler les hommes. Elle adule sa mère et chérit leur intimité. Mais son univers bascule lorsque Ingrid tombe amoureuse, renonçant à ses promesses de fidélité et d''exclusivité envers elle. Jusqu''au drame qui va les séparer. Laurier blanc raconte l''histoire d''Astrid, son errance dans les nombreux foyers d''accueil de Los Angeles, les épreuves qu''elle doit affronter pour trouver sa vérité et son chemin. Seuls la détermination et l''humour lui permettront de relever le défi, de lutter contre la solitude et la pauvreté, et d''apprendre ce que peut devenir un enfant sans mère dans un monde indifférent. Quête de soi, adieu nostalgique à l''enfance et au monde de la pureté : un roman poignant qui révèle un grand talent.

Astrid is 15 when she witnesses the arrest of her mother Ingrid for murdering her boyfriend. Suddenly on her own, Astrid is shuttled through a series of foster mothers and homes. As she struggles to master the techniques to survive, her mother''s powerful influence remains the only constant in Astrid''s life. For good, and for bad.