Robert Fass

When widowed mule breeder Cy Bellman reads in the newspaper that colossal ancient bones have been discovered in the salty Kentucky mud, he sets out from his small Pennsylvania farm to see for himself if the rumors are true: that the giant monsters are still alive and roam the uncharted wilderness beyond the Mississippi River. Promising to write and to return in two years, he leaves behind his daughter, Bess, to the tender mercies of his taciturn sister...

"1986, London: Klaudia is about to start high school. She's embarrassed by her German father. He's the janitor at her school, he has a funny accent and a limp. And when the kids at school taunt her by saying that he was a Nazi, she can't dispute them with confidence. She's never known exactly what he may or may not have done during the war. It's a period of time no one will ever discuss. 1995, Leeds: Eliza is in love. She has dropped out of university...

If you were a mouse trapped in a maze and someone kept moving the cheese, what would you do? In a world where most mice dutifully accept their circumstances, ask no questions, and keep chasing the cheese, Deepak Malhotra tells an inspiring story about three unique and adventurous mice-Max, Big, and Zed-who refuse to accept their reality as given. “I Moved Your Cheese” reveals what is possible when we finally discard long-held and widely accepted...

"Our narrator, Francisco Goldberg, an American writer, has been living and working in Mexico City as a journalist for over a decade, but has recently returned to New York City in hopes of 'going home again.' It's been five years since the end of his last relationship and he is falling in love again with a new woman. Soon, though, he is beckoned back to Boston by his former high school girlfriend who was witness to his greatest youthful humiliations,...

A respected Mexican businessman finds his idyllic life crumbling in the face of his wife's infidelity with a corrupt director of national security, his brother-in-law's worship of a child preacher, and his mistress' break with reality.

Their names were Bob Palmer, Gordy Cox, Tim McCoy, and Chuck Vervalin, and in 1941, when they joined the navy, they were not trying to prove their patriotism-they were just looking for a job that would provide "three hots and a cot." But on April 22, 1943, the war took a terrible turn for them. While on patrol deep in enemy waters, their submarine, the USS Grenadier, was torpedoed and sent crashing to the ocean floor. Listed as lost in action and...

Draws on cutting-edge scientific studies to discuss the U-shaped trajectory of happiness, which declines from the optimism of youth before surging upward again after age fifty, and offers ways to endure the slump during midlife.

As the "Titanic" and her passengers sank slowly into the Atlantic Ocean after striking an iceberg late in the evening of April 14, 1912, a nearby ship looked on. Second Officer Herbert Stone, in charge of the midnight watch on the "SS Californian" sitting idly a few miles north, saw the distress rockets that the "Titanic" fired. The next morning, the "Titanic" was at the bottom of the sea and more than 1,500 people were dead. When they learned the...

"We tend to think of Edgar Allan Poe as a loner, living in a world of his own imagination and detached from his physical environment. Poe might seem like a Nowhere Man, but of course he was always somewhere - just not at the same address for very long. The Man of the Crowd chronicles Poe's rootless life, focusing on the American cities where he lived the longest: Richmond, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York. The Poe who emerges in The Man of the...

When Melisande Stokes, an expert in linguistics and languages, accidentally meets military intelligence operator Tristan Lyons in a hallway at Harvard University, it is the beginning of a chain of events that will alter their lives and human history itself. The young man from a shadowy government entity approaches Mel, a low-level faculty member, with an incredible offer. The only condition: she must sign a nondisclosure agreement in return for the...