Books by Lily Tuck
News from Paraguay, The
by Lily Tuck
“Brimming with rich descriptions of a beautiful country….The News From Paraguay evolves from a quirky, elegant tale of an unconventional love affair into a sweeping epic.” — Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Lily Tuck’s impressive novel offers a kaleidoscopic portrait of 19th century Paraguay, a largely untouched wilderness where European and American figures mix with the Spanish aristocracy of the capital and the indigenous peoples from the surrounding areas.
The year is l854. In Paris, Francisco Solano—the future dictator of Paraguay—begins his courtship of the young, beautiful Irish courtesan Ella Lynch with a poncho, a Paraguayan band, and a horse named Mathilde. Ella follows Franco to Asunción and reigns there as his mistress. Isolated and estranged in this new world, she embraces her lover's ill-fated imperial dream—one fueled by a heedless arrogance that will devastate all of Paraguay.
With the urgency of the narrative, rich and intimate detail, and a wealth of skillfully layered characters, The News from Paraguay recalls the epic novels of Gabriel García Márquez and Mario Vargas Llosa.
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The Rest Is Memory: A Novel
by Lily Tuck
The heartbreaking story of a young Catholic girl transported to Auschwitz becomes a Rashomon-like rondo by one of our greatest novelists.
Esquire • Best Books of Fall 2024
"The Rest Is Memory is a literary resurrection, as shattering as it is astonishing. Lily Tuck has done the impossible; from darkness and hideous cruelty, she has woven an unforgettable paean to hope, to life, to justice." ―Junot Diaz First glimpsed riding on the back of a boy’s motorcycle, fourteen-year-old Czeslawa comes to life in this mesmerizing novel by Lily Tuck, who imagines her upbringing in a small Polish village before her world imploded in late 1942. Stripped of her modest belongings, shorn, and tattooed number 26947 on arriving at Auschwitz, Czeslawa is then photographed. Three months later, she is dead.
How did this happen to an ordinary Polish citizen? This is the question that Tuck grapples with in this haunting novel, which frames Czeslawa’s story within the epic tragedy of six million Poles who perished during the German occupation. A decade prior to writing The Rest Is Memory, Tuck read an obituary of the photographer Wilhelm Brasse, who took more than 40,000 pictures of the Auschwitz prisoners. Included were three of Czeslawa Kwoka, a Catholic girl from rural southeastern Poland. Tuck cut out the photos and kept them, determined to learn more about Czeslawa, but she was only able to glean the barest facts: the village she came from, the transport she was on, that she was accompanied by her mother and her neighbors, her tattoo number, and the date of her death. From this scant evidence, Tuck’s novel becomes a remarkable kaleidoscopic feat of imagination, something only our greatest novelists can do.
“Beautifully written, all the while instilling a sense of horror” (Susanna Moore), Tuck’s language swirls about, yet not a word is out of place. The subtly rotating images tumble out at us, accelerating as we learn about Czeslawa’s tragic stay in Auschwitz, the lives of real people such as the barbaric Commandant Rudolf Höss; his unconscionable wife, Hedwig; the psychiatrist and child rescuer Janusz Korczak; and the mordant Polish short story writer Tadeusz Borowski. Although we are certain of Czeslawa’s fate, we have no choice but to keep turning the pages, thoroughly mesmerized by Tuck’s near otherworldly prose.
In Lily Tuck’s hands, The Rest Is Memory becomes an unforgettable work of historical reclamation that rescues an innocent life, one previously only recalled by a stark triptych of photographs. 1 map
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$17.99
The Rest Is Memory: A Novel
by Lily Tuck
The heartbreaking story of a young Catholic girl transported to Auschwitz becomes a Rashomon-like rondo in the hands of one of our greatest novelists.
First glimpsed riding on the back of a boy’s motorcycle, fourteen-year-old Czeslawa comes to life in this mesmerizing novel by Lily Tuck, who imagines her upbringing in a village in southeastern Poland before her world imploded in late 1942. Stripped of her modest belongings, shorn, tattooed number 26947 on arriving at Auschwitz, Czeslawa is then photographed by prisoner Wilhelm Brasse. Three months later she is dead.
How did this―the fictionalized account of a real person who was Catholic―happen? This is the question that Tuck grapples with in this haunting novel, which frames Czeslawa’s story within the epic tragedy of six million Poles, Jewish and Catholic, who perished during the German occupation. Also evoking, among others, the writer Tadeusz Borowski’s ill-fated life and Janusz Korczak’s valorous attempts to save orphaned children, Czeslawa becomes an unforgettable work of historical reclamation that rescues an innocent life, one previously only recalled by a stark triptych of photographs. 1 map
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$24.99
Limbo, and Other Places I Have Lived: Short Stories
by Lily Tuck
In an elegant and penetrating first short-story collection, Limbo, and Other Places I Have Lived, Lily Tuck's characters travel to unknown, exotic places and, while there, find themselves deeply immersed in observation -- of the natives, the local customs, the foreign landscape -- in an effort to discern some elemental truth about who they themselves are. Instead, these women meet with disorientation, confusion; they are disappointed by the people closest to them -- lovers, husbands, family members. Finally, they arrive at the sometimes heartbreaking but ultimately optimistic realization that the answers they seek lie not in other people or places but within themselves.
Limbo, and Other Places I Have Lived is a brilliant collection from a writer of exceptional poise and insight.
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Woman of Rome: A Life of Elsa Morante
by Lily Tuck
Elsa Morante was born in 1912 to an unconventional family of modest means. She grew up with an independent spirit, a formidable will, and a commitment to writing—she wrote her first poem when she was just two years old. During World War II, Morante and her husband, the celebrated writer Alberto Moravia, were forced to flee occupied Rome—Moravia was half-Jewish (as was she) and wanted by the Fascists—and hide out in a remote mountain hut. After the war, Morante published a series of prize-winning novels, including Arturo's Island and History, a seminal account of the war, which established her as one of the leading Italian writers of her day.
Lily Tuck's elegant and unusual biography also evokes the heady time during the postwar years when Rome was the film capital of the world and Morante's counted among her circle of friends the filmmakers Pier Paolo Pasolini, Luchino Visconti, and the young Bernardo Bertolucci. A charismatic and beautiful woman, Morante had a series of love affairs—most unhappy—as well as friendships with such famous literary luminaries as Carlo Levi, Italo Calvino, and Natalia Ginzburg. As a couple, Morante and Moravia—the Beauvoir-Sartre of Italy—captivated the nation with their intense and mutual admiration, their arguments, and their passion.
Wonderfully researched with the cooperation of the Morante Estate, filled with personal interviews, and written in graceful and succinct prose, Woman of Rome introduces the American reader to a woman of fierce intelligence, powerful imagination, and original talent.
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Woman of Rome: A Life of Elsa Morante
by Lily Tuck
The first biography in any language of one of the most celebrated Italian writers of the twentieth century.
Born in 1912 to an unconventional family of modest means, Elsa Morante grew up with an independent spirit, a formidable will, and an unshakable commitment to writing. Forced to hide from the Fascists during World War II in a remote mountain hut with her husband, renowned author Alberto Moravia, she re-emerged at war's end to take her place among the premier Italian writers of her day. When Rome was film capital of the world, she counted Pasolini, Visconti, and the young Bertolucci among her circle of friends. She was charismatic, beautiful, and fiercely intelligent; her marriage, a passionate union of literary giants, captivated a nation; her love affairs were intense and often tragic. And until now few Americans have known of this remarkable woman and her powerful, original talent.
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The News from Paraguay: A Novel
by Lily Tuck
“Brimming with rich descriptions of a beautiful country….The News From Paraguay evolves from a quirky, elegant tale of an unconventional love affair into a sweeping epic.” — Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Lily Tuck’s impressive novel offers a kaleidoscopic portrait of 19th century Paraguay, a largely untouched wilderness where European and American figures mix with the Spanish aristocracy of the capital and the indigenous peoples from the surrounding areas.
The year is l854. In Paris, Francisco Solano—the future dictator of Paraguay—begins his courtship of the young, beautiful Irish courtesan Ella Lynch with a poncho, a Paraguayan band, and a horse named Mathilde. Ella follows Franco to Asunción and reigns there as his mistress. Isolated and estranged in this new world, she embraces her lover's ill-fated imperial dream—one fueled by a heedless arrogance that will devastate all of Paraguay.
With the urgency of the narrative, rich and intimate detail, and a wealth of skillfully layered characters, The News from Paraguay recalls the epic novels of Gabriel García Márquez and Mario Vargas Llosa.
Copies
No copies available.
The Double Life of Liliane
by Lily Tuck
Mixing family lore, historical events, and photographs, this autobiographical novel creates a portrait of the writer as a young woman...enlivening.”New Yorker
A mosaic of storytelling that is both poetic and absorbing.” NPR.com
With The Double Life of Liliane National Book Award winner Lily Tuck delivers the most beguiling work of [her] career” (The Millions)an astonishing and riveting autobiographical novel in the manner of W.G. Sebald and Karl Ove Knausgaard, replete with photos and documents. Following the child Liliane as she comes of age between two very different worldsthat of her German movie producer father and her beautiful, artistically talented motherthe preternaturally imaginative Liliane uncovers the stories of family members as diverse as Moses Mendelssohn and Mary Queen of Scots, piecing together vivid histories, through both World Wars and across continents. This is an intimate and dynamic coming of age portrait of the writer as a young woman.
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Sisters
by Lily Tuck, David McPhail, Danielle Steel, Lynne Cheney, Sharon J. Wohlmuth, Carol Saline, Judith Caseley, Sandra Deeble
This engaging book is about the special relationship between two sisters. “McPhail’s gentle story and appealing drawings exude warmth and an air of exuberance, involving the reader with two sisters.”--Publishers Weekly
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Sisters
by Lily Tuck, David McPhail, Danielle Steel, Lynne Cheney, Sharon J. Wohlmuth, Carol Saline, Judith Caseley, Sandra Deeble
Sisters are different in so many ways, yet alike in many more. But there is one heartfelt way in which they are most alike—they love each other so very much.
David McPhail's celebration of the joys—and trials—of sisterhood has been a favorite with sisters of all ages for almost twenty years. Now published in full color for the first time, in its original intimate size, a new generation of sisters will love to read this treasure . . . together.
Features a presentation page, a personal touch for gift giving.
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No copies available.
Sisters
by Lily Tuck, David McPhail, Danielle Steel, Lynne Cheney, Sharon J. Wohlmuth, Carol Saline, Judith Caseley, Sandra Deeble
With more than 1 million copies sold, Sisters changed the face of photo-essay books and spoke volumes to every person blessed with a female sibling. Now the updated and revised edition of highly acclaimed New York Times bestseller, a moving portrayal of the profound relationship between sisters, is available in a charming Miniature Edition™.
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Sisters
by Lily Tuck, David McPhail, Danielle Steel, Lynne Cheney, Sharon J. Wohlmuth, Carol Saline, Judith Caseley, Sandra Deeble
None
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Sisters
by Lily Tuck, David McPhail, Danielle Steel, Lynne Cheney, Sharon J. Wohlmuth, Carol Saline, Judith Caseley, Sandra Deeble
Kika has just been adopted -- and she's worried. There's so much that's new to her: a different language, new friends to make, and something she's never had before -- a family.
Melissa has a new sister -- and she's excited. There's so much to share with Kika: trips to the playground, afternoons at the library, and birthday parties.
Through each new experience, Kika and Melissa discover that sisterhood can be fun, challenging, and sometimes unpredictable, but always rewarding. Best of all, a sister is a friend for life.
Copies
No copies available.
Sisters
by Lily Tuck, David McPhail, Danielle Steel, Lynne Cheney, Sharon J. Wohlmuth, Carol Saline, Judith Caseley, Sandra Deeble
Sisters are different in so many ways, yet alike in many more. But there is one heartfelt way in which they are most alike—they love each other so very much.
David McPhail's celebration of the joys—and trials—of sisterhood has been a favorite with sisters of all ages for almost twenty years. Now published in full color for the first time, in its original intimate size, a new generation of sisters will love to read this treasure . . . together.
Features a presentation page, a personal touch for gift giving.
Copies
No copies available.
Sisters
by Lily Tuck, David McPhail, Danielle Steel, Lynne Cheney, Sharon J. Wohlmuth, Carol Saline, Judith Caseley, Sandra Deeble
Four sisters, a Manhattan brownstone, and a tumultuous year of loss and courage are at the heart of Danielle Steel’s new novel about a remarkable family, a stunning tragedy—and what happens when four very different young women come together under one very lively roof.
Candy–it’s the only name she needs—is blazing her way through Paris, New York, and Tokyo as fashion’s latest international supermodel. . . .
Her sister Tammy has a job producing the most successful hit show on TV, and a home she loves in L.A.’s Hollywood Hills. . . . In New York, oldest sister Sabrina is an ambitious young lawyer, while Annie is an American artist in Florence, living for her art. . . . On one Fourth of July weekend, as they do every year, the four sisters come home to Connecticut for their family’s annual gathering. But before the holiday is over, tragedy strikes and their world is utterly changed.
Suddenly, four sisters who have been fervently pursuing success and their own lives—on opposite sides of the world—reunite to share one New York brownstone, to support each other and their father, and to pick up the pieces while one sister struggles to heal her shattered body and soul. Thus begins an unscripted chapter of their lives, as a bustling house is soon filled with eccentric dogs, laughter, tears, friends, men . . . and the kind of honesty and unconditional love only sisters can provide. But as the four women settle in, they are forced to confront the direction of their respective lives. As the year passes and another July Fourth approaches, a season of grief and change gives way to new beginnings—as a family comes together to share its blessings and a future filled with surprises and, ultimately, hope.
With unerring insight and compassion, Danielle Steel tells a compelling story of four sisters who love and laugh, struggle and triumph . . . and are irrevocably woven into the fabric of each other’s lives. Brilliantly blending humor and heartbreak, she delivers a powerful message about the fragility—and the wonder—of life.
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Sisters
by Lily Tuck, David McPhail, Danielle Steel, Lynne Cheney, Sharon J. Wohlmuth, Carol Saline, Judith Caseley, Sandra Deeble
“Tuck’s prose is elegant.” ― New York Times Book Review
Lily Tuck’s critically-lauded, bestselling I Married You for Happiness was hailed by the Boston Globe as “an artfully crafted still life of one couple’s marriage.” In her singular new novel Sisters, Tuck gives a very different portrait of marital life, exposing the intricacies and scandals of a new marriage sprung from betrayal.
Tuck’s unnamed narrator lives with her new husband, his two teenagers, and the unbanishable presence of his first wife―known only as she. Obsessed with her, our narrator moves through her days presided over by the all-too-real ghost of the first marriage, fantasizing about how the first wife lives her life. Will the narrator ever equal she intellectually, or ever forget the betrayal that lies between them? And what of the secrets between her husband and she, from which the narrator is excluded? The daring and precise build up to an eerily wonderful denouement is a triumph of subtlety and surprise.
With Sisters, Lily Tuck delivers riveting psychological portrait of marriage, infidelity, and obsession; charting with elegance and insight love in all its phases.
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Sisters
by Lily Tuck, David McPhail, Danielle Steel, Lynne Cheney, Sharon J. Wohlmuth, Carol Saline, Judith Caseley, Sandra Deeble
Best friend, rival, unfailing ally, confidante, role model and many more all in the same person, your sister will always be your sister. Friends may come and go, but sisters share an unbreakable bond that lasts a lifetime. Sisters explores the closeness shared by female siblings and celebrates the most intimate of family ties.
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Sisters
by Lily Tuck, David McPhail, Danielle Steel, Lynne Cheney, Sharon J. Wohlmuth, Carol Saline, Judith Caseley, Sandra Deeble
None
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The House at Belle Fontaine: Stories
by Lily Tuck
Tuck packs a small universe and decades of emotional history into each story.”Stephan Lee, Entertainment Weekly
Lily Tuck’s The House at Belle Fontaine brings together ten of the award-winning author’s most exquisitely-wrought and captivating stories. These intimate tales traverse time and continents, revealing apprehensions, passions, secrets, and tragedies among lovers, spouses, landlords and tenants, and lifelong friends. In crisp and penetrating prose, Tuck delicately probes at the lives of her characters as they navigate exotic locales and their own hearts: an artist learns that her deceased husband had an affair with their young houseguest; a retired couple strains to hold together their forty-year-old marriage on a ship bound for Antarctica; and a French family flees to Lima in the 1940s with devastating consequences for their daughter’s young nanny.
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The House at Belle Fontaine: Stories
by Lily Tuck
Ice’ encompasses whole worlds, the landscape of the heart imposed upon the landscape of Antarctica.”Kirkus Reviews
The elegantly conceived, intimate stories of The House at Belle Fontaine span the better part of the twentieth century and almost every continent, revealing apprehensions, passions, secrets, and tragedies among lovers, spouses, landlords and tenants, and lifelong friends. In her crisp and penetrating prose, Tuck delicately probes at the lives of her characters as they navigate exotic locales and their own hearts: an artist learns that her deceased husband had an affair with their young houseguest; a retired couple strains to hold together their forty-year-old marriage on a ship bound for Antarctica; and a French family flees to Lima in the 1940s with devastating consequences for their daughter’s young nanny.
All published or soon to be in prestigious literary quarterlies including the PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories 2011, these tales make up a crowning collection by one of our most revered American authors.
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Heathcliff Redux: A Novella and Stories
by Lily Tuck
A mesmerizing new novella and stories from National Book Award winner Lily Tuck
A provocative and haunting new collection from critically acclaimed writer Lily Tuck, Heathcliff Redux, A Novella and Stories explores, with cool precision, the hidden dynamics and unspoken conflicts at the heart of human relationships.
In the novella, a married woman reads Wuthering Heights at the same time that she falls under the erotic and destructive spell of her own Heathcliff. In the stories that follow, a single photograph illuminates the intricate web of connections between friends at an Italian café; a forgotten act of violence in New York’s Carl Schurz Park returns to haunt the present; and a woman is prompted by a flurry of mysterious emails to recall her time as a member of the infamous Rajneesh cult.
With keen psychological insight and delicate restraint, Heathcliff Redux, A Novella and Stories pries open the desires, doubts, and secret motives of its characters and exposes their vulnerabilities to the light. Sharp and unflinching, the novella and stories together form an exquisitely crafted collection from one of our most treasured, award-winning writers.
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I Married You For Happiness
by Lily Tuck
His hand is growing cold, still she holds it,” is how this riveting, deeply moving story of a forty-three year old marriage by National Book Award winner Lily Tuck begins. Unfolding over a single night, Nina sits at the bedside of her husband, Philip, whose sudden and unexpected death is the reason for her lonely vigil. Too shocked yet to grieve, she lets herself remember the defining moments of their long marriage, beginning with their first meeting in Paris. She is an artist, he a highly accomplished mathematicianit was a collision of two different worlds that merged to form an intricate and passionate love.
Slender, powerful, and utterly engaging, I Married You For Happiness is not only an elegant elegy to a man and a marriage, but also a meditation on the theory of probability and how chance can affect both a life and one’s consideration of an afterlife.
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The Double Life of Liliane A Novel
by Lily Tuck
"Tuck is a genius."--Los Angeles Book Review
Lily Tuck has had a wonderful and accomplished career as a National Book Award winning novelist, story writer, essayist and biographer. She is one of our most distinguished contributors to American literature. With The Double Life of Liliane, Tuck writes what may well be her crowning achievement to date, and, significantly too, her most autobiographical work.
As the child of a German movie producer father who lives in Italy and a beautiful, artistically talented mother who resides in New York, Liliane's life is divided between those two very different worlds. A shy and observant only child with a vivid imagination, Liliane uncovers the stories of family members as diverse as Moses Mendelssohn, Mary Queen of Scots and an early Mexican adventurer, and pieces together their vivid histories, through both World Wars and across continents.
What unfolds is an astonishing and riveting metanarrative: an exploration of self, humanity, and family in the manner of W.G. Sebald and Karl Ove Knausgaard. Told with Tuck's inimitable elegance and peppered with documents, photos, and a rich and varied array of characters, The Double Life of Liliane is an intimate and poignant coming of age portrait of the writer as a young woman.
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