In The Music Teacher, a penetrating and richly entertaining look into the heart and mind of a woman who has failed both as an artist and as a wife, Barbara Hall, award-winning creator and writer of such hit television series as Judging Amy and Joan of Arcadia, tells the story of a violinist who has accepted the limitations of her talent and looks for the casual satisfaction of trying to instill her passion for music in others. She gets more than she...

Augie is a poor but exuberant boy growing up in Chicago during the Depression. While his friends all settle into chosen professions, Augie demands a special destiny. He tests out a wild succession of occupations, proudly rejecting each as too limiting—until he tangles with the glamorous perfectionist Thea.

Winner of the National Book Award when it was first published in 1964, Herzog traces five days in the life of a failed academic whose wife has recently left him for his best friend. Through the device of letter writing, Herzog movingly portrays both the internal life of its eponymous hero and the complexity of modern consciousness. Like the protagonists of most of Bellow's novels—Dangling Man, The Victim, Seize the Day, Henderson the Rain King,...

"Aleksandar and Isobel are siblings and former classical music prodigies, once destined for greatness. As the only Eastern European family growing up on their block on the far southside of Chicago, the pair were inseparable until each was forced to confront the absurdity of tragedy at an early age and abandon their musical ambitions. Now in their twenties, they find themselves encountering ridiculous jobs, unfulfilling romantic relationships, and...

When Paul Miller' pharmaceutical company goes public, making his family IPO millionaires he files for divorce and tries to cut his wife Janice out of the new fortune. The Millers' older daughter, Margaret, has been dumped by her newly famous actor boyfriend and is sliding toward bankruptcy, she flees for home where her younger sister Lizzie, 14, is struggling with problems of her own. Formerly chubby, Lizzie has been enjoying her newfound popularity...

A collection of biographies of fictitious authors.

"An aspiring actor, two truant teenagers, a musical composer and his wife, a single mother, an aspiring major leaguer, and a social climber accused of murder - these are the characters that populate The Whole of the Moon. Set along historic Route 66 and loosely linked by a library copy of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, Brian Rogers' novel is about determination and failure and life in southern California away from the red carpet" --