In Iceland, the age of the Vikings is also known as the Saga Age. A unique body of medieval literature, the Sagas rank with the world's great literary treasures - as epic as Homer, as deep in tragedy as Sophocles, as engagingly human as Shakespeare. Set around the turn of the last millennium, these [...]

Longlisted for the 2014 National Book Award
From the winner of the Pulitzer Prize" " a powerful, engrossing new novel--the life and times of a remarkable family over three transformative decades in America.
On their farm in Denby, Iowa, Rosanna and Walter Langdon abide by time-honored value[...]

National Book Award Nominee
A Best Book of the Year: "The Washington Post," NPR, "USA Today," "San Francisco Chronicle," "Financial Times," "The Seattle Times," "St. Louis Post-Dispatch," "BookPage"
1920, Denby, Iowa: Rosanna and Walter Langdon have just welcomed their firstborn son, Frank[...]

The luminous novella and stories in The Age of Grief""explore the vicissitudes of love, friendship, and marriage with all the compassion and insight that have come to be expected from Jane Smiley, the Pulitzer Prize--winning author of A Thousand Acres."
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In "The Pleasure of Her Company," a lo[...]

This 100th Anniversary Edition of Willa Cather's masterpiece a new introduction by Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Jane Smiley. In this symphonically powerful and magnificently observed novel, Cather created one of the most winning heroines in American fiction, a woman whose calm, undemonstrative st[...]

Set in the world of horse racing, this novel puts us amongst trainers, horse-obsessed girls, billionaire breeders and restless track wives, painting a picture of a world that is passionate, cold-hearted, pure and corrupt.[...]

Abby Lovitt has always been more at ease with horses than with people. Her father insists they call all the mares Jewel and all the geldings George and warns Abby not to get attached: the horses are there to be sold.[...]

Margaret Mayfield is nearly an old maid at twenty-seven when she marries Captain Andrew Jackson Jefferson Early. He's the most famous man their Missouri town has ever produced: a naval officer and an astronomer - a genius who, according to the local paper, has changed the universe. Margaret's mother[...]

Abby Lovitt doesn't realize how unprepared she is when she takes her beloved horse, True Blue, to a clinic led by the most famous equestrian anyone knows. The biggest surprise, though, is that Sophia, the girl who never makes a mistake, suddenly makes so many that she stops riding. Who will ride her[...]

In a second volume of original essays drawn from the long-running "New York Times" column, another group of contemporary literature's finest voices muse on the challenges and gifts of language and creativity. Contributors include Elmore Leonard, Arthur Miller, Amy Tan and Edmund White.[...]

This work is part of the "Continuum Contemporaries" series giving readers accessible and informative introductions to 30 of the most popular, most acclaimed and most influential contemporary novels. It contains a biography of the novelist, a full-length study of the novel, a summary of how the novel[...]