Most Popular Books by Paula Fox

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."

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

"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

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.

Newbery Medal–winning author Paula Fox''s gripping and sensitive portrayal of a teenage girl who discovers her father is not the man she thought he was. Catherine Ames''s father, Harry, has always been a mystery. Her parents divorced when she was three, and she has spent most of her life in a Montreal boarding school. When Harry suggests a month-long stay with him at his summer cabin in Nova Scotia, Catherine is thrilled. Finally she''ll have the kind of relationship with her father that other girls at school have with theirs. But the bright summer quickly darkens. Harry drinks—a lot. The more Catherine witnesses his drinking, the more she begins to hate him. Only, Catherine can''t help but love him too. A travel writer with a poet''s tongue, Harry is clever and exciting, and tells wonderful stories—until he drinks again, and the playful father that takes her on picnics becomes someone dark and frightening. How can the man she grew up wishing to be close to seem so far away? And how can Catherine bring him back to her? A School Library Journal Best Book of the Year, The Moonlight Man is a lyrical and emotional account of love, acceptance, and the difficult lessons of growing up.

"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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Newbery Medal Winner: A young Louisiana boy faces the horrors of slavery when he is kidnapped and forced to work on a slave ship in this iconic novel. Thirteen-year-old Jessie Bollier earns a few pennies playing his fife on the docks of New Orleans. One night, on his way home, a canvas is thrown over his head and he''s knocked unconscious. When he wakes up, Jessie finds himself aboard a slave ship, bound for Africa. There, the Moonlight picks up ninety-eight black prisoners, and the men, women, and children, chained hand and foot, are methodically crammed into the ship''s hold. Jessie''s job is to provide music for the slaves to dance to on the ship''s deck—not for amusement but for exercise, as a way to to keep their muscles strong and their bodies profitable. Over the course of the long voyage, Jessie grows more and more sickened by the greed of the sailors and the cruelty with which the slaves are treated. But it''s one final horror, when the Moonlight nears her destination, that will change Jessie forever. Set during the middle of the nineteenth century, when the illegal slave trade was at its height, The Slave Dancer not only tells a vivid and shocking story of adventure and survival, but depicts the brutality of slavery with unflinching historical accuracy.

"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.

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.

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.

"Vividly rendered...haunting...[Paula Fox] writes with silken ease and a sensitivity to nuance." — Newsday In 1941, twenty-three-year-old Helen Bynum leaves home for the first time and sets out from rural New York to find her Aunt Lulu, an aging actress in New Orleans. There she finds a life of passion and adventure, possibilities and choices. Falling in with a bohemian group of intellectuals, she discovers romance and sex, friendship and risk, her world mirrored by the steamy mystery of the French Quarter.

"Not only can Fox see, she can hear, she can feel."—Zadie Smith, Harper''s This gathering of Paula Fox''s short work spans her illustrious career, from 1965 to the present including perfectly turned stories; pointed, engaging essays; and raw yet eloquent memoir.

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.