For readers of Melissa Bank or Jhumpa Lahiri: witty, seductive stories of expatriate women, their loves and losses. "Interesting women -- are we ever going to be free of them? I meet them everywhere these days, now that there is no longer such a thing as an interesting man!" So drawls the narrator of one of Andrea Lee's jewel-like stories, herself, undeniably, an Interesting Woman. These gleaming, sensual stories bend a wit worthy of Colette's on a demimonde of expatriates, teenage 'pocket divas', girlfriends, wives, mistresses and daughters. Each focuses on a moment of seduction, of self-discovery, where the mocking detachment of the outsider is briefly pulled aside. An American, chained by her Italian husband's belief in her conventional wholesomeness, surprises him with two costly call girls for his birthday; but her pleasure in her own daring remains wistfully private. A New England beauty has a brief love affair, alternately lyrical and perverse, with a European prince more than twice her age. A woman, having earlier left her husband 'in a moment of epic distraction', has his new ex to stay, changing forever their understanding of the man they both married. 'Interesting Women' teases the reader with ironic glimpses of the charged games of sexual power between men and women, and women with each other. It is that delicious rarity: a summer read of sophisticated intelligence, whose gorgeous images will linger long.

Interesting Women

Literature & Fiction

Andrea Lee

Contemporary

Fourth Estate Paperbacks

For readers of Melissa Bank or Jhumpa Lahiri: witty, seductive stories of expatriate women, their loves and losses. "Interesting women -- are we ever going to be free of them? I meet them everywhere these days, now that there is no longer such a thing as an interesting man..." So drawls the narrator of one of Andrea Lee's jewel-like stories, herself, undeniably, an Interesting Woman. These gleaming, sensual stories bend a wit worthy of Colette's on a demimonde of expatriates, teenage "pocket divas," girlfriends, wives, mistresses and daughters. Each focuses on a moment of seduction, of self-discovery, where the mocking detachment of the outsider is briefly pulled aside. An American, chained by her Italian husband's belief in her conventional wholesomeness, surprises him with two costly call girls for his birthday; but her pleasure in her own daring remains wistfully private. A New England beauty has a brief love affair, alternately lyrical and perverse, with a European prince more than twice her age. A woman, having earlier left her husband "in a moment of epic distraction," has his new ex to stay, changing forever their understanding of the man they both married. INTERESTING WOMEN teases the reader with ironic glimpses of the charged games of sexual power between men and women, and women with each other. It is that delicious rarity: a summer read of sophisticated intelligence, whose gorgeous images will linger long.

The Italian phrase Mai due senza tre–“never two without three”–forms the basis of Andrea Lee’s spellbinding novel of betrayal. Sophisticated and richly told, Lost Hearts in Italy reveals a trio caught in the grip of desire, deception, and remorse.When Mira Ward, an American, relocates to Rome with her husband, Nick, she looks forward to a time of exploration and awakening. Young, beautiful, and in love, Mira is on the verge of a writing career, and giddy with the prospect of living abroad.On the trip over, Mira meets Zenin, an older Italian billionaire, who intrigues Mira with his coolness and worldly mystique. A few weeks later, feeling idle and adrift in her new life, Mira agrees to a seemingly innocent lunch with Zenin and is soon catapulted into an intense affair, which moves beyond her control more quickly than she intends. Her job as a travel writer allows clandestine trysts and opulent getaways with Zenin to Paris, Monte Carlo, London, and Venice, and over the next few years, now the mother of a baby daughter, she struggles between resisting and relenting to this man who has such a hold on her. As her marriage erodes, so too does Mira’s sense of self, until she no longer resembles the free spirit she was on her arrival in theon her arrival in the Eternal City. Years later, Mira and Nick, now divorced and remarried to others, look back in an attempt to understand their history, while a detached Zenin assesses his own life and his role in the unlikely love triangle. Each recounts the past, aided by those witness to their failure and fallout.An elegant, raw, and emotionally charged read, Lost Hearts in Italy is a classic coming-of-age story in which cultures collide, innocence dissolves, and those we know most intimately remain foreign to us.

Lost Hearts in Italy : A Novel

HarperCollins Publishers Canada, Limited

They Went: The Art and Craft of Travel Writing (The Writer's Craft)

Six renowned travel writers describe the creative process involved in this popular form of narrative, drawing on their own works to reveal how to create a sense of place

IAN FRAZIER

Calvin Trillin

Mark Salzman

Vivian Gornick

Tobias Schneebaum

Houghton/Mifflin

Russian Journal

Travel

Asia

Faber&Faber

History

Europe

Faber and Faber

This novel, in the words of its title character, is set in "the hermetic world of the old-fashioned black bourgeoisie--a group largely unknown to other Americans, which has carried on with cautious pomp for years in eastern cities and suburbs, using its considerable funds to attempt poignant imitations of high society, acting with genuine gallantry in the struggle for civil rights, and finally producing a generation of children educated in newly integrated schools and impatient to escape the outworn rituals of their parents."

Sarah Phillips: Novel

United States

Red Island House

Simon Schuster Ltd

From National Book Award–nominated writer Andrea Lee, an epic, gorgeously evocative novel about love and identity, following two decades in the marriage between an African American professor and her wealthy Italian husband as it unfolds on the remote and mysterious island of Madagascar.\nShay is surprised when her husband Senna declares his intention to build her a spectacular dream house on an idyllic beach in the tropical island nation of Madagascar.\nBut the Red Island House casts a spell from the moment she sees it, and before she knows it Shay has become the somewhat reluctant mistress of a sprawling household, caught between her privileged American upbringing and education, and her connection to the continent of her ancestors.\nAt first, she’s content to be an observer of the passionate affairs and fierce ambitions and rivalries around her. But as she and her husband raise children and establish their own rituals on the island, Shay finds herself drawn ever deeper into an extraordinary place with its own laws and logic, a provocative paradise full of magic and myth whose fraught colonial legacy continues to reverberate. Soon the collision of cultures comes right to Shay’s door, forcing her to make a life-altering decision.\nA sweeping novel about marriage and loyalty, identity and heritage, fate and freedom, Red Island House reintroduces readers to a powerhouse literary voice and an extravagantly lush, enchanted world.

Red Island House: A Novel

Simon & Schuster Audio and Blackstone Publishing

From John Smith's 1616 description of the New World to George W. Bush's address to the American people after 9/11; from the poems of the seventeenth century to the hymns of the twentieth; from John Winthrop to Martin Luther King Jr. American Voices takes you on a fascinating journey through history in the words of Americans whose voices still speak today.

American Voices: A Collection of Documents, Speeches, Essays, Hymns, Poems, and Short Stories from American History

RAYMOND CARVER

JOHN UPDIKE

Alice Adams

ANDREA BARRETT

Charles Baxter

SANDRA CISNEROS

Laurie Colwin

Frank Conroy

Harriet Doerr

Dennis McFARLAND

Joyce

Judith Rossner

John Sayles

Christopher Tilghman

Stephanie Vaughn

Amy, Tan

jane-smiley

Americas

Notgrass Company

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Books by Andrea Lee