Twenty-two short stories that will lift your spirits or break your heart from acclaimed author Warren Adler, well known for iconic novel turned international box-office hit The War of the Roses. Written to celebrate the author’s return to New York City after 40 years away from it, Adler focuses his laser eye on New York City in these 22 deftly crafted and compelling short stories. New York, the frenetic, tough-minded, generous-hearted city, magnet for people’s hopes and aspirations, is as vividly and lovingly portrayed here as any of the characters.

Cyril Avery is not a real Avery - or at least that's what his adoptive parents tell him. And he never will be. But if he isn't a real Avery, then who is he? Born out of wedlock to a teenage girl cast out from her rural Irish community and adopted by a well-to-do if eccentric Dublin couple via the intervention of a hunchbacked Redemptorist nun, Cyril is adrift in the world, anchored only tenuously by his heartfelt friendship with the infinitely more glamourous and dangerous Julian Woodbead.

New York book editor Maris Matherly-Reed knows a best seller when she sees one - even if it is just a tantalizing partial manuscript submitted by a writer identified only as P.M.E., with the return address of an obscure island off the Georgia coast. Maris is intrigued enough to search for him.

Young Pip Tyler doesn't know who she is. She knows that her real name is Purity, that she's saddled with $130,000 in student debt, that she's squatting with anarchists in Oakland, and that her relationship with her mother - her only family - is hazardous. But she doesn't have a clue who her father is, why her mother chose to live as a recluse with an invented name, or how she'll ever have a normal life.

It’s 2017, and Olga and her brother, Pedro “Prieto” Acevedo” are bold-faced names in their hometown of New York. Prieto is a popular Congressman representing their gentrifying Latinx neighborhood in Brooklyn while Olga is the tony wedding planner for Manhattan’s powerbrokers. Despite their alluring public lives, behind closed doors things are far less rosy. Sure, Olga can orchestrate the love stories of the one percent, but she can’t seem to find her own...until she meets Matteo, who forces her to confront the effects of long-held family secrets.

The world renowned author of The Satanic Verses and The Ground Beneath Her Feet, Salman Rushdie is a Whitbread Award winner and recipient of the Booker Prize. His first truly American novel, Fury is a metaphorically rich black comedy that reflects the pressure-cooker of modern life. Malik Solanka, irascible doll-maker and retired historian of ideas, suffers the pain of wanting without knowing exactly what it is he wants.

A Happy Marriage is both intimate and expansive: It is the story of Enrique Sabas and his wife, Margaret, a novel that alternates between the romantic misadventures of the first weeks of their courtship and the final months of Margaret’s life as she says good-bye to her family, friends, children, and Enrique.

Now a major motion picture directed by Stephen Frears ( The Queen, High Fidelity) and starring Judi Dench ( Skyfall, Notes on a Scandal) and Steve Coogan ( The Trip, Hamlet 2): the heartbreaking true story of an Irishwoman and the secret she kept for 50 years. When she became pregnant as a teenager in Ireland in 1952, Philomena Lee was sent to a convent to be looked after as a "fallen woman". Then the nuns took her baby from her and sold him, like thousands of others, to America for adoption. Fifty years later, Philomena decided to find him.

First comes love. Then comes marriage. Then comes...a baby carriage? Isn’t that what all women want? Not so for Claudia Parr. And just as she gives up on finding a man who feels the same way, she meets warm, wonderful Ben. Things seem too good to be true when they fall in love and agree to buck tradition with a satisfying, child-free marriage. Then the unexpected occurs: one of them has a change of heart.

Four hundred years after Shakespeare's death, Keenan's smart and passionate memoir brings new life to his work. With 14 of his plays as a springboard, she explores the many facets of love and sexuality - from desire and communication to fetish and fantasy. In A Midsummer Night's Dream, Keenan unmasks Helena as a sexual masochist - like Jillian herself. In Macbeth, she examines criminalized sexual identities and the dark side of "privacy".

When her boss tells her about the discoveries in a cramped, decrepit apartment in the ninth arrondissement, Sotheby' s continental furniture specialist April Vaught does not hear "dust" or "rats" or "shuttered for 70 years". She hears Paris. She hears escape. She cannot board the plane fast enough. When she arrives, April quickly learns the apartment is more than just some rich hoarder' s repository. Beneath the dust and cobwebs and stale perfumed air is a literal goldmine - and not just in terms of actual dollars.

In Sins of the Fathers, Susan Howatch takes the reader into the world of the very rich, a family divided from generation to generation by a great fortune and the consequences of a terrible secret that lies at the very heart of their wealth.

Best-selling author and PEN and Beyond Margins Award finalist Thrity Umrigar’s acclaimed novels “resonate with rich prose and vibrant depictions of India” ( Booklist). In The World We Found, Armaiti, Laleh, Kavita, and Nishta - once friends at the University of Bombay - reconnect 30 years later when Armaiti is diagnosed with cancer. Coming together, all four women are forced to reexamine their lives.

During a terrible heat wave in 1991 - the worst in a decade - 10-year-old Anton has been locked in an apartment in the projects, alone, for seven days, without air conditioning or a fan. With no electricity, the refrigerator and lights do not work. Hot, hungry, and desperate, Anton shatters a window and climbs out. Cutting his leg on the broken glass, he is covered in blood when the police find him. Juanita, his mother, is discovered in a crack house less than three blocks away, nearly unconscious and half-naked.

Pru Dunning has everything she ever wanted: a successful boyfriend, a thriving nursing career, and a truly comfortable life. But then the strange voicemails start. Scarletta, the woman calls herself. She seems to know Pru, although Pru certainly doesn't know that name, nor does she recognize the glamorous voice leaving her poisonous messages. Pru begins to carefully investigate. But when she suddenly becomes a person of interest in a murder case, it feels like Scarletta’s toxic voice, lashing out from the shadows, will silence all beauty in Pru’s perfect life, once and for all.

A Happy Marriage is both intimate and expansive: It is the story of Enrique Sabas and his wife, Margaret, a novel that alternates between the romantic misadventures of the first weeks of their courtship and the final months of Margaret’s life as she says good-bye to her family, friends, children, and Enrique.

Cyril Avery is not a real Avery - or at least that's what his adoptive parents tell him. And he never will be. But if he isn't a real Avery, then who is he? Born out of wedlock to a teenage girl cast out from her rural Irish community and adopted by a well-to-do if eccentric Dublin couple via the intervention of a hunchbacked Redemptorist nun, Cyril is adrift in the world, anchored only tenuously by his heartfelt friendship with the infinitely more glamourous and dangerous Julian Woodbead.

Best-selling author and PEN and Beyond Margins Award finalist Thrity Umrigar’s acclaimed novels “resonate with rich prose and vibrant depictions of India” ( Booklist). In The World We Found, Armaiti, Laleh, Kavita, and Nishta - once friends at the University of Bombay - reconnect 30 years later when Armaiti is diagnosed with cancer. Coming together, all four women are forced to reexamine their lives.

When Laila Lawrence becomes an orphan at 23, the sudden loss unexpectedly introduces her to three glamorous cousins from New York who show up unannounced at her mother's funeral. The three siblings are scions of the wealthy family from which Laila's father had been estranged long before his own untimely demise 10 years before. Two years later, Laila has left behind her quiet life in Grosse Point, Michigan to move to New York City, landing her smack in the middle of her cousins' decadent world.

During a terrible heat wave in 1991 - the worst in a decade - 10-year-old Anton has been locked in an apartment in the projects, alone, for seven days, without air conditioning or a fan. With no electricity, the refrigerator and lights do not work. Hot, hungry, and desperate, Anton shatters a window and climbs out. Cutting his leg on the broken glass, he is covered in blood when the police find him. Juanita, his mother, is discovered in a crack house less than three blocks away, nearly unconscious and half-naked.

Catherine, busy working with refugee and immigrant women through her small firm, Babylon Sisters, has taken on a powerful new client. She doesn't have much time for Phoebe's complicated questions of paternity - that is, until Phoebe's real father, B. J., a renowned investigative reporter, shows up in town to work on a story connected to Catherine.

" Facets pits the arrogant, self-centered John against the newly vengeful Hillary, the creative and sensitive Pamela, and the doggedly self-made Cutter. Spanning three decades, Facets is as much a family drama as any I've ever written. My writing style may have changed since 1990, but the heart and soul of my characters have not. Please enjoy Facets as much as I did then - and do now."

This unprecedented audio project is as thought-provoking as it is mesmeric. The Night Listener is a meditation on the power of voices and the faith we place in them, and an extraordinary audio experience from an American literary icon.

Emmie Wilcox was only six when her sister, Roxy, was thrown out of their New York City apartment. Their stern father's military style left no room for rebellion, and Roxy was continually defiant and rebellious. Emmie is obedient, respectful. Two sisters, total opposites - yet Emmie is secretly obsessed with the mystery and imposed silence surrounding Roxy. She wants excitement, and being a good girl all the time is harder than it seems. Finally, Emmie goes behind her father's back to track down and spy on the sister she can't help but be fascinated with.

Ever since Bell’s mother died while serving time for a murder she didn’t commit, Bell’s been focused on one thing: revenge. She knows her mother was set up by Jonathon Gable, the head of both the powerful Gable family and an international banking corporation. Now she’s determined to take him down - from the inside.

When legendary film director Dorian Rasmirez gambles his fortune on an opulent remake of Wuthering Heights, he knows it’s his last chance to salvage his career. Thanks to a bitter public feud with producer Harry Greene, Dorian desperately needs a hit - a big one - and he’ll do anything to get it. Even cast Hollywood bad girl Sabrina Leon in the lead role. Plucked from obscurity, Sabrina catapulted to fame at an early age. Now the young starlet is as famous for her battles with drugs and alcohol as she is for her intoxicating beauty.

The world renowned author of The Satanic Verses and The Ground Beneath Her Feet, Salman Rushdie is a Whitbread Award winner and recipient of the Booker Prize. His first truly American novel, Fury is a metaphorically rich black comedy that reflects the pressure-cooker of modern life. Malik Solanka, irascible doll-maker and retired historian of ideas, suffers the pain of wanting without knowing exactly what it is he wants.

History professor Ned Brummel is living happily with his partner of 12 years in small-town Maine when he receives a phone call from his estranged friend - Jack - telling him that another friend - Andy - is very ill and possibly near death. As Ned boards a plane to Chicago on his way to his friend's bedside, he embarks on another journey into memory, examining the major events and small moments that have shaped his world and his relationships with these two very different, very important men.

Four hundred years after Shakespeare's death, Keenan's smart and passionate memoir brings new life to his work. With 14 of his plays as a springboard, she explores the many facets of love and sexuality - from desire and communication to fetish and fantasy. In A Midsummer Night's Dream, Keenan unmasks Helena as a sexual masochist - like Jillian herself. In Macbeth, she examines criminalized sexual identities and the dark side of "privacy".

Seventeen-year-old Lorelei Patio is the adopted daughter of 200-year-old vampire Sergio Patio. She never realized why her family has had to move so often or why she is not permitted to get too friendly with other young people. In fact, except for one shocking moment that seemed more like a dream, Lorelei never fully realized who and what her father was nor what her sisters were brought up to do for him. But one day, that all changed.