Thomas Mallon Bücher

From the author of Henry and Clara, a dazzling, hilarious novel that captures the heart and soul of New York in the Jazz Age. Bandbox is a hugely successful magazine, a glamorous monthly cocktail of 1920s obsessions from the stock market to radio to gangland murder. Edited by the bombastic Jehoshaphat “Joe” Harris, the magazine has a masthead that includes, among many others, a grisly, alliterative crime writer; a shy but murderously determined copyboy; and a burned-out vaudeville correspondent who’s lovesick for his loyal, dewy assistant. As the novel opens, the defection of Harris’s most ambitious protégé has plunged Bandbox into a death struggle with a new competitor on the newsstand. But there’s more to come: a sabotaged fiction contest, the NYPD vice squad, a subscriber’s kidnapping, and a film-actress cover subject who makes the heroines of Fosse’s Chicago look like the girls next door. While Harris and his magazine careen from comic crisis to make-or-break calamity, the novel races from skyscraper to speakeasy, hops a luxury train to Hollywood, and crashes a buttoned-down dinner with Calvin Coolidge. Thomas Mallon has given us a madcap and poignant book that brilliantly portrays the gaudiest American decade of them all.

Ten years since the death of the world-renowned and controversial intellectual, this stylish edition is one of twelve commemorating Christopher Hitchens' most wry and provocative works.

NOW A SHOWTIME LIMITED SERIES STARRING MATT BOMER, JONATHAN BAILEY, AND ALLISON WILLIAMS • A searing historical novel set in 1950s Washington, D.C.—a world of dominated by personalities like Nixon, Lyndon Johnson, and Joe McCarthy—and infused with political drama, unexpected humor, and heartbreak. • From the acclaimed author of Watergate and Up With the Sun "Crisp, buoyant prose." —The New York Times Book Review In a world of bare-knuckled ideology and secret dossiers, Timothy Laughlin, a recent college graduate and devout Catholic, is eager to join the crusade against Communism. An encounter with a handsome State Department official, Hawkins Fuller, leads to Tim's first job and, after Fuller's advances, his first love affair. As McCarthy mounts a desperate bid for power and internal investigations focus on “sexual subversives” in the government, Tim and Fuller find it ever more dangerous to navigate their double lives while moving between the diplomatic world of Foggy Bottom and NATO's front line in Europe.

Nearly forty years have passed since Ruth Hyde Paine, a Quaker housewife in suburban Dallas, offered shelter and assistance to a young man named Lee Harvey Oswald and his Russian wife, Marina. For nine months in 1963, Mrs. Paine was so deeply involved in the Oswalds’ lives that she eventually became one of the Warren Commission’s most important witnesses. Mrs. Paine’s Garage is the tragic story of a well-intentioned woman who found Oswald the job that put him six floors above Dealey Plaza—into which, on November 22, he fired a rifle he’d kept hidden inside Mrs. Paine’s house. But this is also a tale of survival and resiliency: the story of a devout, open-hearted woman who weathered a whirlwind of investigation, suspicion, and betrayal, and who refused to allow her enmeshment in the calamity of that November to crush her own life. Thomas Mallon gives us a disturbing account of generosity and secrets, of suppressed memories and tragic might-have-beens, of coincidences more eerie than conspiracy theory. His book is unlike any other work that has been published on the murder of President Kennedy.

Set against the backdrop of May 24, 1962, the narrative intertwines the lives of diverse characters, including a convicted killer, a novelist, and a conflicted priest, all while astronaut Scott Carpenter orbits Earth. Central to the story is Gregory Noonan, a fifth-grader fascinated by space, whose fate becomes unexpectedly connected to Carpenter’s mission. As Gregory escapes school to witness the climax of the flight at Grand Central Terminal, the novel explores themes of aspiration, connection, and the impact of momentous events on ordinary lives.

This fictional narrative explores the life of Dick Kallman, a little-known C-list celebrity whose tragic end unfolded in 1980s New York City. Once an up-and-coming actor with roles in Broadway productions and a part of Lucille Ball's Desilu workshop, Dick's career took a downturn, leading to his untimely murder. The story is narrated by Matt Liannetto, Dick's occasional pianist and longtime friend, who offers insight into both their lives. As a talented journeyman pianist, Matt finds himself on the periphery of Broadway's most significant moments while grappling with his identity as a gay man in a time of societal change. The narrative spans over thirty years, from the vibrant studio lots of the 1950s to the gritty streets of 1970s Manhattan, filled with a dynamic array of characters vying for fame. Readers will encounter icons like Sophie Tucker and engage in gossip about Rock Hudson during intermissions at Judy Garland's comeback show. Acclaimed for his ability to breathe life into historical figures, the author masterfully weaves a tale that encompasses crime, showbiz, love, and pivotal moments in the evolution of gay life in the post-war era.

1996 National Book Award Winner for Fiction.The elegant short fictions gathered hereabout the love of science and the science of love are often set against the backdrop of the nineteenth century. Interweaving historical and fictional characters, they encompass both past and present as they negotiate the complex territory of ambition, failure, achievement, and shattered dreams. In "Ship Fever," the title novella, a young Canadian doctor finds himself at the center of one of history's most tragic epidemics. In "The English Pupil," Linnaeus, in old age, watches as the world he organized within his head slowly drifts beyond his reach. And in "The Littoral Zone," two marine biologists wonder whether their life-altering affair finally was worth it. In the tradition of Alice Munro and William Trevor, these exquisitely rendered fictions encompass whole lives in a brief space. As they move between interior and exterior journeys, "science is transformed from hard and known fact into malleable, strange and thrilling fictional material" (Boston Globe).