Best Selling Books by Paula Fox

Born to nomadic and bohemian parents who rarely had time for her, the author presents a portrait of her childhood, detailing her many homes, from an orphanage in Manhattan to a sugar plantation in Cuba.

"A rare and wondrous thing....[Fox] knows how to create a character."— Vogue Luisa de la Cueva was born on the Caribbean island of Malagita, of a plantation owner''s son and a native woman, a servant in the kitchen. Her years on Malagita were sweet with the beauty of bamboo, banana, and mango trees with flocks of silver-feathered guinea hens underneath, the magic of a victrola, and the caramel flan that Mama sneaked home from the plantation kitchen. Luisa''s father, fearing revolution, takes his family to New York. In the barrio his once-powerful name means nothing, and the family establishes itself in a basement tenement. For Luisa, Malagita becomes a dream. Luisa does not dream of going to college, as her friend Ellen does, or of winning the lottery, as her father does. She takes a job as a servant and, paradoxically, grows more independent. She marries and later raises a son alone. She works as a servant all her life. A Servant''s Tale is the story of a life that is simple on the surface but full of depth and richness as we come to know it, a story told with consummate grace and compassion by Paula Fox.

Only his strange great-aunt seems to understand the thoughts of a boy who has spent his life concealing his emotions, on an eerie, snowy night after rescuing a dog that dislikes him.

From Newbery Medal–winning author Paula Fox, an isolated young girl discovers surprising revelations about her grandmother—and herself. Eleven-and-a-half-year-old Elizabeth Benedict is furious when she finds out she''ll be spending a month with her grandmother in Maine. She''s sure she''s being packed off to a remote island to live in a cottage without electricity or plumbing so that her parents can be alone with her new baby brother. While her grandmother spends her days painting, Elizabeth explores the island. She is drawn to Aaron, the strange son of their only neighbors. One day, something happens that changes everything—and reveals the real reason she was sent to Pring Island. A School Library Journal Best Book of the Year, this incandescent novel takes on themes of isolation, creativity, and family as an elderly woman confronts her own mortality with acceptance and dignity.

A little boy who can''t spell or ever seem to please his parents spends a week with a kooky babysitter and makes a special friend.

"Chekhovian. . . . Every line of Fox''s story, every gesture of her characters, is alive and surprising."—Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, New York Times On the eve of their trip to Africa, Laura Maldonada Clapper and her husband, Desmond, sit in a New York City hotel room, drinking scotch-and-sodas and awaiting the arrival of three friends: Clara Hansen, Laura''s timid, brow-beaten daughter from a previous marriage; Carlos, Laura''s flamboyant and charming brother; and Peter Rice, a melancholy editor whom Laura hasn''t seen for over a year. But what begins as a bon voyage party soon parlays into a bitter, claustrophobic clash of family resentment. From the hotel room to the tony restaurant to which the five embark, Laura presides over the escalating innuendo and hostility with imperial cruelty, for she is hiding the knowledge that her mother, the family matriarch, has died of a heart attack that morning. A novel as intense as it is unerringly observed, The Widow''s Children is another revelation of the storyteller''s art from the incomparable Paula Fox.

A Newbery Honor Book and Winner of the Christopher Award: A young boy fires a forbidden rifle—and must face the consequences. Ned Wallis''s minister father made him promise not to touch the rifle until he turns fourteen. But the eleven-year-old can''t resist sneaking outside and trying it out, just once. Ned takes aim, and fires—just as a dark shadow passes in front of him. When he looks up, a flickering face passes across the attic window. Someone was watching. When a feral cat appears outside the house of an elderly neighbor, with dried blood on its matted fur and a missing eye, Ned begins to wonder: Could he have shot this animal that night? Full of guilt and terrified that his secret will come out, Ned starts caring for the one-eyed cat. But will he be able to come clean about his broken promise and the shot in the dark? Spring brings the chance for redemption and a surprising revelation from an unexpected source in this New York Times Outstanding Children''s Book of the Year.

In this powerful historical novel a thirteen-year-old boy is kidnapped and brought aboard a slave ship, where he is forced to play music that will entice the slaves to exercise.

One of The Atlantic''s Great American Novels One of the New York Times'' 25 Most Significant New York City Novels From the Last 100 Years "A towering landmark of postwar Realism...A sustained work of prose so lucid and fine it seems less written than carved." —David Foster Wallace Otto and Sophie Bentwood live in a changing neighborhood in Brooklyn. Their stainless-steel kitchen is newly installed, and their Mercedes is parked curbside. After Sophie is bitten on the hand while trying to feed a stray, perhaps rabies-infected cat, a series of small and ominous disasters begin to plague the Bentwoods'' lives, revealing the fault lines and fractures in a marriage—and a society—wrenching itself apart. First published in 1970 to wide acclaim, Desperate Characters stands as one of the most dazzling and rigorous examples of the storyteller''s craft in postwar American literature — a novel that, according to Irving Howe, ranks with " Billy Budd, The Great Gatsby, Miss Lonelyhearts, and Seize the Day."

Eleven-year-old Clay must find a home on the streets of New York City in this award-winning, heartbreakingly honest novel. He was eleven years old, and he had never felt so alone in his life. Clay Garrity lived a normal life until his father lost his job and abandoned the family. Now his pregnant mother has deserted him too, leaving Clay alone in a welfare hotel with a jar of peanut butter and half a loaf of bread. Fearing being placed in foster care, Clay runs away. Alone in the city, Clay wanders down streets with boarded-up buildings and through dark alleys, until he comes to a small triangular park that looks like an island in a stream. In the light of a street lamp, he sees cardboard boxes, blankets, bundles—and people. Some are lying on benches, others inside boxes. Two of the men, Calvin and Buddy, offer to share their shelter, and Clay is grateful to have a place to stay during the bitter November cold. Before long, Calvin, Buddy, and Clay form a family amid the threatening dangers and despair of the streets. Clay knows that leaving the streets and going into foster care means that he may never see his parents again. But if he stays, he may not survive at all. An ALA Best Book for Young Adults, this acclaimed novel offers an intensely moving and candid look at the all-too-real lives of homeless teens.

"The best first novel I''ve read in quite a long time…A merciless uncovering of the exurban wastelands of the spirit." —New York Review of Books Poor George gives us George Mecklin, a restless, soft-spoken teacher at a private school in Manhattan. Depressed by his life of vague moral purpose, George discovers a local adolescent named Ernest breaking into his house. Rather than hand the boy over to the police, as his nagging wife insists, George instead decides to tutor him. His life consequently implodes. Filled with vividly acid portrayals of American life in the 1960s, prescient explorations of suburban anomie, and a riotously disturbing cast of supporting characters, Poor George is a classic American novel—further reminder of Paula Fox’s astonishing literary gifts. With an introduction by Jonathan Lethem.

An eleven-year-old boy gains a new understanding of himself and his father after a trip to Florida with unusual people.

Eight-year-old Maurice''s struggle to protect his bedroom full of treasured junk from unsympathetic parents undergoes a transformation when the family moves to the country.

America and the catastrophic world of twentieth-century war, mass murder, and horror are the backdrop of this story of Annie Gianfala, a young woman who finds herself cast adrift in Hollywood with World War II looming. Defending herself with despairing stubbornness against personal catastrophe, she is able to save her life and escape. "Enormously touching and wholly believable."— Washington Post Book World

In this elegant and affecting companion to her "extraordinary" memoir, Borrowed Finery, a young writer flings herself into a Europe ravaged by the Second World War (The Boston Globe) In 1946, Paula Fox walked up the gangplank of a partly reconverted Liberty with the classic American hope of finding experience—or perhaps salvation—in Europe. She was twenty-two years old, and would spend the next year moving among the ruins of London, Warsaw, Paris, Prague, Madrid, and other cities as a stringer for a small British news service. In this lucid, affecting memoir, Fox describes her movements across Europe''s scrambled borders: unplanned trips to empty castles and ruined cathedrals, a stint in bombed-out Warsaw in the midst of the Communist election takeovers, and nights spent in apartments here and there with distant relatives, friends of friends, and in shabby pensions with little heat, each place echoing with the horrors of the war. A young woman alone, with neither a plan nor a reliable paycheck, Fox made her way with the rest of Europe as the continent rebuilt and rediscovered itself among the ruins. Long revered as a novelist, Fox won over a new generation of readers with her previous memoir, Borrowed Finery. Now, with The Coldest Winter, she recounts another chapter of a life seemingly filled with stories—a rare, unsentimental glimpse of the world as seen by a writer at the beginning of an illustrious career.

In 1941, at twenty-three years of age, Helen leaves upstate New York for the first time and sets out in search of her aunt in New Orleans. There she finds a new life of passion and adventure.

Winner of the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award: A young girl learns some hard truths about human nature in this thought-provoking, beautifully crafted novel. Tomorrow, Emma''s uncle is coming to take her to his house on Long Island while her father undergoes surgery and her mother stays with him in hospital. For two whole weeks, Emma will be stuck with her father''s half-sister: the strange, bossy Aunt Bea. Luckily, Emma makes a friend at the beach, Bertie, and the two girls begin building a village made entirely of shells. There''s the mayor''s house, constructed of sand dollars and with a roof of pinecones, and the main street with white bubble shells. Every day the girls add to their village by the sea. Then, just before Emma is to return home, something awful happens. In this thoughtful novel, Newbery Medal and Hans Christian Andersen Award winner Paula Fox offers an unflinching and candid depiction of forgiveness and unconditional love.

Newbery Medal winner Paula Fox depicts a fateful summer on the mysterious Greek island of Thasos in this "haunting tale" ( The New York Times Book Review). Lily Corey and her older brother, Paul, have been summering on the Greek island of Thasos with their parents. For Lily, it''s been fun hanging out with her brother, exploring the island, and studying ancient mythology and archaeology—until they meet Jack Hemmings. When Paul and Jack become friends, Lily feels left out. She thinks Jack is a show-off and a fake. She also knows he''s sad and lonely, yet she still wishes the boys would include her on their wild adventures. Then, one day, Jack shows off too much and something terrible happens . . . Amid the wilds of an exotic Greek island, Lily and the Lost Boy is the "beautifully crafted" ( Kirkus Reviews) story of a young girl coming of age and discovering her courage and compassion.