At the age of eighteen Paul Porterfield dreams of playing piano at the world's great concert halls, yet the closest he's come has been to turn pages for his idol, Richard Kennington, a former prodigy who is entering middle age. The two begin a love affair that affects their lives in ways neither cou[...]

David Leavitt's deliciously sharp novel is a multilayered dissection of literary and sexual mores in the get-ahead eighties, when outrageous success lay seductively within reach of any young writer ambitious enough to grab it. Martin Bauman — nineteen, talented, and insecure — is enrolled at a pre[...]

January, 1913, Cambridge. G.H. Hardy - eccentric, charismatic and considered the greatest British mathematician of his age - receives a mysterious envelope covered with Indian stamps. Inside he finds a rambling letter from a self-professed mathematical genius who claims to be on the brink of solving[...]

A skillful, literate ("New York Times Book Review") biography of the persecuted genius who helped create the modern computerTo solve one of the great mathematical problems of his day, Alan Turing proposed an imaginary computer. Then, attempting to break a Nazi code during World War II, he successful[...]

It is the summer of 1940, and Lisbon, Portugal, is the only neutral port left in Europe--a city filled with spies, crowned heads, and refugees of every nationality, tipping back absinthe to while away the time until their escape. Awaiting safe passage to New York on the SS" Manhattan, "two couples m[...]

Thirty years ago, David Leavitt first appeared on the literary scene with a gutsy story collection that stunned readers and reviewers. Just twenty-three, he was hailed as a prodigy of sorts: "remarkably gifted" ("The""Washington Post"), with "a genius for empathy" ("The""New York Times Book Review")[...]