The Permanent Press: 217 books

It’s Christmas of 2002. Joseph Steiner, a New York television executive, has just lost his job in the economic downturn that followed September 11. America is about to invade Iraq, and the world is losing sympathy for its only superpower. As for Steiner, his run of good luck and privilege seems...

A spunky young woman strives to escape from the social customs and cultural restraints that have spanned three political regimes: in a privileged childhood spent in the Czechoslovakian countryside prior to World War II, as a schoolgirl during the Nazi occupation, and as an adolescent and young adult witnessing the diminishing promise of communist rule.

In the author’s words “American Dreams was a radical experiment, because the whole idea was to let the stories erupt and evolve on their own. I would draw a word and then use that word in the most interesting sentence I could think of, and then create the next most interesting (and connected)...

A Week in Winter is the story of a group of refugees that have sought asylum at an American consulate in Eastern Europe. As the staff prepares for the arrival of the ambassador, events unfold and the fate of the refugees becomes increasingly uncertain.

In the sequel to his much heralded The Rain and The Fire and The Will of God, Donald Wetzel continues the story of John, or Jack, and Rodney, two boys whose innocence, honor, and integrity is tested as they search a river for a lost boat and find more than they had bargained for along the way.

“I wake up and remember,” begins Theodora Mapes, the narrator of Emily Hammond’s first novel. What follows is the story of Theo’s journey from Colorado to California in search of the truth about her past. Separated from her husband and newly pregnant, Theo has come back to California looking...

The Charles Club is not the best men’s club in Boston—most people assume the Somerset is—but it is one of the oldest, rowdiest, and most alcoholic. It is also facing the greatest crisis of its one-hundred-and-twenty-five–year history. Demetria Constantine, the beautiful young Boston politico...

Set in a central European country about five years after the fall of communism, K.C. Frederick’s third novel, Accomplices, moves with a fevered urgency reminiscent of Graham Greene. As the nation confronts unprecedented changes, the protagonist, Stivan, must put his own life together. A man who’s...

This is the talented Burkholz’s (Strange Bedfellows) ninth novel, the first volume of his projected Ibiza Tapestry trilogy. Max Levi-Morris, a well-known novelist teaching creative writing at a small, prestigious North Carolina college, uses the five graduate students in a seminar as subjects for...

Waiting at the airport of a Caribbean island for his homeward bound plane, Edward Ray—the bookman of the title—reflects on this week, which has changed his life. First, there was the cargo ship voyage to San Juan de Pinos, a journey shared by an odd assortment of fellow passengers whose lives...

“Walk tall, man,” the junkie behind him whispered. “Don’t let the bastards see that you care.” They were standing in line at police headquarters in Los Angeles, waiting to be fingerprinted. The twenty-two year old writer had just been arrested on a “vag-lewd” charge. Or, to put it more...

Manifesto for the Dead is a surreal noir that takes as its main character the master of noir, the late crime novelist Jim Thompson at the end of his career, suspecting he has been framed by a Hollywood producer for the murder of a young starlet. An intricate blend of biography, fiction, and suspense,...

“Fat girls have fewer choices in life. This is painful but true. You’ll never be the center of attention; never the belle of the ball. No one gives fat girls the benefit of the doubt. Skinny, pretty girls get the best of everything. We get whatever’s left.”   So warns the mother of Wilma...

From the war-torn Jordan Valley to our nation’s capital, Exiles reaches into the life of one man and one woman to explore one of the longest-lasting and most painful situations in our time: the displacement of the Palestinians and the unceasing turmoil in the Middle East. This is a story about the...