Counterpoint: 634 books

Walton tracks the fate of Lily and Charlie, two down-and-out musicians on the run from an army of “very well-connected” thugs out not just for blood but for spirit. Fleeing by car, foot, air, bicycle, train, covered wagon and dirigible, the two make their way with Lily’s baby from Sunset Boulevard...

Louie Cameron --jazz musician architect beach bum philosopher-- is no stranger to women. Free wheeling across CA, drifting across a phantasmagoria of surf-swept beaches and golden women, he has already met three that want to make an honest man of him. Hounded by guilt, he has been running from one...

“Honor, destiny, caprice, oblivion—Nova’s novel parlays them all into a life-and-death struggle” in this New Yorker Best Book Pick (The Seattle Times). What does it mean to be a decent man? To love well, with fidelity and constancy? These are the lessons posed in this emotional metaphysical...

Thirteen “diamond-sharp stories” of loss, rescue, and redemption told “with precision and a depth of insight and empathy that enfold the reader” (Publishers Weekly, starred review).   Valerie Trueblood’s second collection of short stories brings readers inside the minds of psychologically...

Margaret Rose is a talented but nervous violinist given to bouts of stage fright and unrequited love; Webster Hale is a biologist who, on principle, refuses to kill animals in order to study them. In Angels Go Naked, a novel told in stories, Cornelia Nixon, a writer whose gift is apparent on every page,...

The story begins with the unhappy marriage of junior clerk Earl Summerfield to the much older Bianca. Feeling victimized by his cold wife and mocking superiors at work, Earl decides to keep a diary, a chronicle of his apparently crumbling marital relations, the paranoia and abuses he is seemingly...

“Manages to be both warm-hearted and violent at once—a complex, deeply imagined family tale which finds unexpected gifts at its conclusion.” —Kent Haruf, author of Plainsong Hardscrabble ranchers Renny and Ben Cross are estranged, elderly spouses living on opposite ends of their sprawling...

Sportswriter Vic Worsley is forty-four, divorced, and burned out. His basketball column for the San Francisco Chronicle is fueled by strong coffee, red wine, and anger, instead of the love he once had for the game. But his life is about to be changed by two women. One is Greta Eagleheart, whom he...

The short fiction of Thaisa Frank has captivated readers for two decades, and now many of those pieces are collected in one volume, along with several new stories. In the title story, a lonely mother and housewife orders an enchanted man from a website called The Wondrous Traveler, who arrives with...

Twelve years have passed since Kei’s husband, Rei, disappeared and she was left alone with her three-year-old daughter. Her new relationship with a married man-the antithesis of Rei-has brought her life to a numbing stasis, and her relationships with her mother and daughter have spilled into routine,...

The much-anticipated new novel by the 2016 winner of the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award for Fiction; The Lightkeepers has sold more than 30,000 copies across formats For readers who devour smart, detail rich, page-turning literary thrillers, for fans of books such as We Are...

Gina Berriault’s work as a storywriter of great psychological empathy and extraordinary elegance and subtlety was celebrated widely at the end of her life. Her collection Women in Their Beds, won the PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction, the National Books Critics Prize in fiction and the Rea Prize for...

**From the New York Times–bestselling author of Crazy for the Storm. “**Body Heat meets Swimming Pool with an injection of Patricia Highsmith” (The Hollywood Reporter). Nathan is a young artist traveling across Europe in search of the emotional fire that has been missing from his work....

**“Based on the author’s own experiences as a rock journalist in the ‘60s, this trippy novel has bold-faced names (Jimi! Cher! Mick!) and adventures galore.” —**People Magazine Lola Bensky, a nineteen-year-old rock journalist and high-school dropout, is sent by her Australian newspaper...