Most Popular Books by PAUL AUSTER

''One day there is life . . . and then, suddenly, it happens there is death.'' So begins Paul Auster''s moving and personal meditation on fatherhood. The first section, ''Portrait of an Invisible Man'', reveals Auster''s memories and feelings after the death of his father. In ''The Book of Memory'' the perspective shifts to Auster''s role as a father. The narrator, ''A'', contemplates his separation from his son, his dying grandfather and the solitary nature of writing and story-telling.

A deeply personal and moving memoir from the acclaimed author of The New York Trilogy and The Invention of Solitude "That is where the story begins, in your body, and everything will end in the body as well." Facing his sixty-third winter, internationally acclaimed novelist Paul Auster sits down to write a history of his body and its sensations—both pleasurable and painful. Thirty years after the publication of The Invention of Solitude, in which he wrote so movingly about fatherhood, Auster gives us a second unconventional memoir in which he writes about his mother''s life and death. Winter Journal is a highly personal meditation on the body, time, and memory, by one of our most intellectually elegant writers. In this intimate and introspective work, Auster reflects on his childhood in Brooklyn, his coming of age in New York City, and the profound impact of family life. A poignant exploration of aging and the complex relationship between mother and son, Winter Journal showcases Auster''s singular voice and extraordinary insight into the human condition.

Marco Stanley Fogg is an orphan, a child of the sixties, a quester tirelessly seeking the key to his past, the answers to the ultimate riddle of his fate. As Marco journeys from the canyons of Manhattan to the deserts of Utah, he encounters a gallery of characters and a series of events as rich and surprising as any in modern fiction. Beginning during the summer that men first walked on the moon, and moving backward and forward in time to span three generations, Moon Palace is propelled by coincidence and memory, and illuminated by marvelous flights of lyricism and wit. Here is the most entertaining and moving novel yet from an author well known for his breathtaking imagination.

The expanded edition of an essential collection of writings, essays, and interviews from Paul Auster, one of the finest thinkers and stylists in contemporary letters. The celebrated author of The New York Trilogy, The Book of Illusions, and 4 3 2 1 presents here a highly personal collection of essays, prefaces, true stories, autobiographical writings, and collaborations with artists, as well as occasional pieces written for magazines and newspapers, including his "breathtaking memoir" ( Financial Times), The Invention of Solitude. Ranging in subject from Sir Walter Raleigh to Kafka, Nathaniel Hawthorne to the high-wire artist Philippe Petit, conceptual artist Sophie Calle to Auster''s own typewriter, the World Trade Center catastrophe to his beloved New York City itself, Collected Prose records the passions and insights of a writer who "will be remembered as one of the great writers of our time" ( San Francisco Chronicle).

The Story of My Typewriter is the story of a manual Olympia model that is now more than 25 years old. Paul Auster''s discerning prose is combined with Sam Messer''s illustrations to stun fans of both author and illustrator alike.

The discovery of a mysterious notebook turns a man''s life upside down in this compulsively page-turning tale by "one of the great writers of our time" (San Francisco Chronicle). Several months into his recovery from a near-fatal illness, thirty-four-year-old novelist Sidney Orr enters a stationery shop in the Cobble Hill section of Brooklyn and buys a blue notebook. It is September 18, 1982, and for the next nine days Orr will live under the spell of this blank book, trapped inside a world of eerie premonitions and puzzling events that threaten to destroy his marriage and undermine his faith in reality. Why does his wife suddenly break down in tears in the backseat of a taxi just hours after Sidney begins writing in the notebook? Why does M. R. Chang, the owner of the stationery shop, precipitously close his business the next day? What are the connections between a 1938 Warsaw telephone directory and a lost novel in which the hero can predict the future? At what point does animosity explode into violence? To what degree is forgiveness the ultimate expression of love? Paul Auster''s mesmerizing novel reads like an old-fashioned ghost story. But there are no ghosts in this book—only flesh-and-blood human beings, wandering through the haunted realms of everyday life. At once a meditation on the nature of time and a journey through the labyrinth of one man''s imagination, Oracle Night is a narrative tour de force that confirms Auster''s reputation as one of the boldest, most original American writers.

The remarkable, acclaimed series of interconnected detective novels City of Glass, Ghosts, and The Locked Room, from New York Times bestselling author Paul Auster “Exhilarating . . . a brilliant investigation of the storyteller’s art guided by a writer-detective who’s never satisfied with just the facts.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer City of Glass: As a result of a strange phone call in the middle of the night, Quinn, a writer of detective stories, becomes enmeshed in a case more puzzling than any he might have written. Ghosts: Blue, a student of Brown, has been hired by White to spy on Black. From a window of a rented room on Orange Street, Blue keeps watch on his subject, who is across the street, staring out of his own window. The Locked Room: Fanshawe has disappeared, leaving behind his wife and baby and a cache of extraordinary novels, plays, and poems. What happened to him and why is the narrator, Fanshawe’s boyhood friend, lured obsessively into his life? Moving at the breathless pace of a thriller, this is a uniquely stylized trilogy of detective novels that The Washington Post Book World has classified as “post-existential private eye. . . . It’s as if Kafka has gotten hooked on the gumshoe game and penned his own ever-spiraling version.”

EDGAR AWARD NOMINEE • In this stunning debut novel, the first volume in Paul Auster’s acclaimed The New York Trilogy, an author determined to solve a mystery begins to descend into madness. “Remarkable . . . The book is a pleasure to read, full of suspense and action. . . . [A] strange and powerful adventure.”—The New York Times Book Review After a strange phone call in the middle of the night, Quinn, an author of detective stories, becomes enmeshed in a case more puzzling than any he might have written. Composed with hallucinatory clarity, City of Glass combines dark humor with Hitchcock-like suspense. City of Glass inaugurates the intriguing New York Trilogy of novels that The Washington Post Book World has classified as “post-existential private eye. . . . It’s as if Kafka has gotten hooked on the gumshoe game and penned his own ever-spiraling version.” The brilliant installments of Paul Auster’s The New York Trilogy include: CITY OF GLASS • GHOSTS • THE LOCKED ROOM

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A “compelling” (Los Angeles Times) novel of friendship, betrayal, estrangement, and the unpredictable intrusions of violence in the everyday—from “a literary original who is perfecting a genre of his own” (The Wall Street Journal) “Rich and complex . . . with fully fleshed characters, a fast-paced plot, thematic sophistication, and narrative cunning.”—The Boston Globe “Six days ago, a man blew himself up by the side of a road in northern Wisconsin.” So begins Peter Aaron’s story about his best friend, Benjamin Sachs. Sachs had a marriage Aaron envied, an intelligence he admired, a world he shared. And then suddenly, after a near-fatal fall that might or might not have been intentional, Sachs disappeared. Now Aaron must piece together the life that led to Sach’s death. His sole aim is to tell the truth and preserve it—before those who are investigating the case invent an account of their own. Leviathan is a daring and immensely moving story by an author whom The Times Literary Supplement has called “one of America’s most spectacularly inventive writers.”

From New York Times bestselling author Paul Auster, a dystopian, post-apocalyptic novel “reminiscent in many ways of Orwell’s 1984” (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution). “Powerful, original, imaginative, and handled with artistry . . . One of the better modern attempts at describing hell.”—The Washington Post Book World In a distant and unsettling future, the masses are homeless, theft is so rampant it is no longer a crime, and death—by arranging either a suicide or an assassination—is the only way out. It is in these circumstances that Anna Blume begins her search for her brother, a one-time journalist who may or may not still be alive, in an unnamed city whose destitute inhabitants dig through garbage and elusive government provides nothing but corruption. In her struggle to survive, Anna becomes a scavenger of objects from the past to sell for food and shelter. But she will also find friendship—and even love—in this devastated world. In the Country of Last Things is a tour de force that reaffirms Paul Auster’s stature as one of the most accomplished and singular talents of his generation.

Meet Mr. Bones, the canine hero of Paul Auster''s (“One of America''s most spectacularly inventive writers”—The TLS) remarkable novel, Timbuktu. Mr. Bones is the sidekick and confidant of Willy G. Christmas, the brilliant, troubled, and altogether original poet-saint from Brooklyn. Like Don Quixote and Sancho Panza before them, they sally forth on a last great adventure, heading for Baltimore, Maryland in search of Willy''s high school teacher, Bea Swanson. Years have passed since Willy last saw his beloved mentor, who knew him in his previous incarnation as William Gurevitch, the son of Polish war refugees. But is Mrs. Swanson still alive? And if she isn''t, what will prevent Willy from vanishing into that other world known as Timbuktu? Mr. Bones is our witness. Although he walks on four legs and cannot speak, he can think, and out of his thoughts Auster has spun one of the richest, most compelling tales in recent American fiction. By turns comic, poignant, and tragic, Timbuktu is above all a love story. Written with a scintillating verbal energy, it takes us into the heart of a singularly pure and passionate character, an unforgettable dog who has much to teach us about our own humanity.

In this rich and emotionally charged work, a man''s obsession with a silent film star sends him on a journey into a shadowy world of lies, illusions, and unexpected love.

“Nobody—nobody—has produced a better parable about the condition of the national consciousness at century’s end.”—The Boston Globe An enduringly brilliant novel of trial and triumph set in America in the 1920s, from New York Times bestselling author Paul Auster “A charmer pure and simple . . . Nothing less than the story of America itself.”—Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post Paul Auster’s dazzling, picaresque novel is the story of Walter Claireborne Rawley, renowned nationwide as “Walt the Wonder Boy.” It is the late 1920s, the era of Babe Ruth, Charles Lindbergh, and Al Capone, and Walt is a Saint Louis orphan rescued from the streets by the mysterious Hungarian Master Yehudi, who teaches Walt to walk on air. The vaudeville act that results from Walt’s marvelous new ability takes them across a vast and vibrant country, where they meet and fall prey to sinners, thieves, and villains, from the Kansas Klu Klux Klan to the Chicago mob. Walt’s rise to fame and fortune mirrors America’s own coming of age, and his resilience, like that of the nation, is challenged over and again.

The internationally bestselling author of The New York Trilogy, "one of America''s greatest living novelists," dazzlingly reinvents the coming-of-age story ( The Observer). Sinuously constructed in four interlocking parts, Paul Auster''s fifteenth novel opens in New York City in the spring of 1967, when twenty-year-old Adam Walker, an aspiring poet and student at Columbia University, meets the enigmatic Frenchman Rudolf Born and his silent and seductive girlfriend, Margot. Before long, Walker finds himself caught in a perverse triangle that leads to a sudden, shocking act of violence that will alter the course of his life. Three different narrators tell the story of Invisible, a novel that travels in time from 1967 to 2007 and moves from Morningside Heights, to the Left Bank of Paris, to a remote island in the Caribbean. It is a book of youthful rage, unbridled sexual hunger, and a relentless quest for justice. With uncompromising insight, Auster takes us into the shadowy borderland between truth and memory, between authorship and identity, to produce a work of unforgettable power that confirms his reputation as "one of America''s most spectacularly inventive writers" ( The Times Literary Supplement). "Occasionally, a novel is so masterful it leaves you breathless. Paul Auster''s Invisible is such a novel." — The Boston Globe "Magnificent . . . The results are revelatory." — Houston Chronicle "As soon as you finish Paul Auster''s Invisible, you want to read it again . . . It is the finest novel Paul Auster has ever written." —Clancy Martin, The New York Times Book Review "Auster has never been better." — The Seattle Times

Having recalled his life through the story of his physical self in Winter Journal, internationally acclaimed novelist Paul Auster remembers the experience of his development from within through the encounters of his interior self with the outer world in Report from the Interior. In the beginning, everything was alive. The smallest objects were endowed with beating hearts . . . From his baby''s-eye view of the man in the moon, to his childhood worship of the movie cowboy Buster Crabbe, to the composition of his first poem at the age of nine, to his dawning awareness of the injustices of American life, Report from the Interior charts Auster''s moral, political, and intellectual journey as he inches his way toward adulthood through the postwar 1950s and into the turbulent 1960s. Auster evokes the sounds, smells, and tactile sensations that marked his early life—and the many images that came at him, including moving images (he adored cartoons, he was in love with films), until, at its unique climax, the book breaks away from prose into pure imagery: The final section of Report from the Interior recapitulates the first three parts, told in an album of pictures. At once a story of the times—which makes it everyone''s story—and the story of the emerging consciousness of a renowned literary artist, this four-part work answers the challenge of autobiography in ways rarely, if ever, seen before.

Nathan Glass, a middle-aged man estranged from his friends and family, returns to Brooklyn hoping to mend his broken relationships and finally deal with the ghosts of his past.

The second book in the acclaimed New York Trilogy--a detective story that becomes a haunting and eerie exploration of identity and deception. It is a story of hidden violence that culminates in an inevitable but unexpectedly shattering climax.