Atlantic Monthly Bookshelf

Jane Austen began writing in her early teens, and filled three notebooks with her fiction. This collection of her earliest work reflects her interest in the novel as a genre and also presents many of her poems, written to console or amuse friends and rarely reprinted. (read more)

As a college student Michael visited Egypt Hill, the curiously named estate of his roommate's family, for a garden party, and in one afternoon met a host of eccentric characters who have stayed with him ever since.

But now nothing in Egypt Hill is as it was, or at least how it once seemed....At the heart of the turmoil is a lie so shameful, every Hanbury is responsible for its concealment. With his marriage crumbling in a series of telephone calls and his son growing more peculiar by the day, Michael is witness to the spectacular unraveling of a family — until a violent accident draws him, inexorably, into the fold (read more)

An ensemble story marked by Yael Hedaya's exquisite sensitivity, Accidents follows its cast through fragility, vulnerability, and joy, accruing the small events of unremarkable days to produce a grand vision of the shared life. Rarely has the fictional world of family been plumbed with such knowingness, humor, and love. (read more)

"Bait and Switch, Barbara Ehrenreich's remarkable follow-up to Nickel and Dimed, examines life in the ever-increasing population of the white-collar unemployed. Veering from the absurd (Wizard of Oz dolls) to the unsettling (Christian prayer breakfasts billed as networking opportunities), the world of middle-class unemployment is a perfect target for Ehrenreich's trademark illuminating investigation and incisive wit."
Jill, Powells.com (read more)

Set on both sides of the Atlantic, Zadie Smith's third novel is a brilliant analysis of family life, the institution of marriage, intersections of the personal and political, and an honest look at people's deceptions. It is also, as you might expect, very funny indeed. (read more)

"On the surface, most of the stories in Willful Creatures shouldn't ring true at all ? a lonely man keeps a tiny man for a pet; a woman makes sculptures out of words and noble gases ? and yet each delivers an emotional impact rarely matched in short fiction. Think of a roller coaster: Bender's magical flourishes crank you up, up, up along the tracks until, suddenly, break-necking back toward reality, a single line tears your stomach out. It's addictive." Dave, Powells.com (read more)

From a National Book Award winner comes a masterful novel set in the 1940s about a woman finding a new life for herself and her grown children after her husband's death. (read more)

Drawing on seven years of his own research and the work of other esteemed Lincoln scholars, Shenk reveals how the sixteenth president harnessed his depression to fuel his astonishing success. Lincoln found the solace and tactics he needed to deal with the nation's worst crisis in the coping strategies he had developed over a lifetime of persevering through depressive episodes and personal tragedies....By consciously shifting his goal away from personal contentment (which he realized he could not attain) and toward universal justice, Lincoln gained the strength and insight that he, and America, required to transcend profound darkness. (read more)

"Shalimar the Clown is a welcome addition to the Rushdie canon. Moving across the globe, Rushdie follows his characters from terrorist camps to the privileged world of Los Angeles, motivated by shades of love, curiosity, and burning vengeance. His prose is as gorgeous and playful as ever, and the themes he illuminates here face us dead-on as we look forward across the twentieth-first century."
Jill, Powells.com (read more)