“A JOLLY READ–McPhee’s characters are wonderfully weird. . . . Romance mingles with mind-swelling musings on superclusters and string theory. . . . The end equation is an elegant inquiry into the randomness of love and the glory of fate.” –Entertainment Weekly As a reporter for New York’s last evening tabloid, Marie Brown writes about the bizarre and the scandalous. But her life is hardly either. She’s too single, too tall, and too pragmatic for anything other than her routine–which consists of going to work and going to the library, where she indulges in her one passion, physics, and in conversations with Marco Trentadue, the strange “freelance intellectual” in blue pajamas. Then the trajectory of her life takes an unexpected turn. Nora Mars–glamour girl, star of stage and screen–is near death. Marie has worshipped Nora since she was in high school. Naturally she will write Nora’s obit. When Marie meets Nora’s charismatic third ex-husband for an interview, she struggles between a reporter’s integrity and plain old lust. What Marie uncovers is a story of a starlet who took the exigencies of fame into her own hands–and the inspiration to do the same with her own love life.

The Center of Things (Ballantine Reader's Circle)

McPhee, Jenny

Literature & Fiction

Ballantine Books

"We drove across America to talk with girls--girls from a variety of landscapes and communities and backgrounds....We traveled through the rolling golden hills of the Palouse of eastern Washington, along the shaded banks of the San Antonio River, onto the trading floor of a brokerage firm in the dizzying heights of a Dallas skyscraper. We spoke with a girl who competes in the dying sport of sidesaddle riding; a Hmong girl who became an American citizen. We talked with a blues-rock musician, ballerinas, surfers, an ice skater, a girl who makes and plays with dolls....In this book, we wanted to look at ordinary girls and record both visually and verbally the extraordinary things that girls do and the drives and desires that lead them to do those things." So begins Girls, a radiant collection of original photographs and life stories by Jenny, Laura, and Martha McPhee, sisters who know a great deal about being girls (they were raised in the sixties and seventies, at the height of the women's movement) and about being around other girls (there were five sisters in the family, not to mention a mom, a stepmom, and four stepsisters), and who are now raising girls of their own. But what is it like to be a girl in America today? What constitutes a normal girl's experiences? How do girls talk about themselves and define themselves? How do they set themselves apart, and how do they fit in? These are the questions the McPhees asked on their cross-country odyssey, which spanned more than two years. Girls is the illuminating, thought-provoking, and ultimately triumphant look at the answers they found. Girls will introduce you to a rich and diverse population--extraordinary girls pursuing their passions and "normal" girls discovering creative ways to define themselves. We meet young poets, novelists, musicians, unicyclists, football players, philanthropists, activists, chess players. Beautifully written by novelists Jenny and Martha McPhee and illustrated with the striking black-and-white images of award-winning photographer Laura McPhee, Girls reveals the astonishing scope of girls' lives today, and indicates the spirit, energy, and determination with which the women of tomorrow will fashion the future.

Girls: Ordinary Girls and Their Extraordinary Pursuits

Politics & Social Sciences

McPhee, Martha

McPhee, Laura

Women's Studies

Random House]

“Every story is a love story.”–Nora Mars, Evil Love, (1962) Nora Mars–glamour girl, star of stage and screen, B-movie goddess–has slowly aged out of mainstream popularity and quickly slipped into a coma. Known as much for her astonishing looks, her five husbands, and her way with words (“I’m all for love at first sight. It saves a lot of time”) as for her movie career, Nora Mars has been a tabloid’s dream diva. Marie Brown, the heroine of Jenny McPhee’s debut novel The Center of Things, is everything that Nora is not: too tall, too plain, too unmarried, and always too early. But she also happens to be Nora’s number-one fan and knows enough to use the star’s untimely near-death to advance her own career at the Gotham City Star by insisting on writing her obit. Along the way she meets the charismatic Rex Mars, Nora Mars’s husband number-three, and struggles between reportorial integrity and plain old lust. But Marie also has a secret life: She spends every free moment at the library, pursuing her fascination with physics. Here she meets the strange, intriguing Marco Trentadue, a “freelance intellectual” who bears a striking resemblance to Peter Lorre. While Marie is drawn more and more to Rex, she gradually finds Marco to be the stranger attractor. Interweaving vignettes from Marie’s past, movie lore and lines, and metaphorical physics, Jenny McPhee limns the randomness of everyday life, the conflicting pulls of libido and intellect, and the choices–conscious or not–that shape the search for true love.

The Center of Things

Contemporary

DOUBLEDAY

No Ordinary Matter: A Novel

Hiring a private detective to investigate the mysterious auto accident that took their father's life twenty-five years earlier, a pregnant neurologist and a soap-opera writer find their quest challenged when the father of the neurologist's baby lands a role on the writer's show. 35,000 first printing.

Literary

Free Press

A beautiful, oddly carved violin becomes the link between two generations of musicians, as they move from Hungary during the devastation of World War I, to Vienna and the approaching Anschluss, to a modern-day auction at Christie's in London

Canone Inverso: A Novel

Maurensig, Paolo

Henry Holt Co.

Dante Sabato, a poet, translator, and novelist, has always been torn between his dark desire to end his life and his sexual attraction to women, but when two beautiful American women, expatriate sisters Gladys and Prudence, enter his life, he finds himself caught up in a ménage that threatens his ability to destroy himself, in a novel set against the backdrop of postwar Italy. By the author of No Ordinary Matter.

A Man of No Moon: A Novel

United States

Counterpoint

It’s 1948, and postwar Rome is giddy and chaotic. Poet Dante Sabat is attending yet another film industry soirée at Tullio Merlini’s apartment off the Via del Corso. Disaffected and deeply self-absorbed, Dante finds Tullio’s glamorous evenings tedious but welcomes any distraction. This rainy evening, the distraction is double: sisters Gladys and Prudence Godfrey, both beautiful, sharp-witted, and remarkably compelling American actresses who have recently arrived in Rome. As the new acquaintances leave the party together, it marks the beginning of a story of three damaged people struggling to live with their memories, and with themselves. Exhausted by fascism and the Second World War, Dante finds refuge in the hope offered by the resurgent cinema, by American literature, and, in particular, by the pragmatic optimism and sexual energy of his American lovers. But after decades of struggling to defend the fallibility of his art, his nation, his family, and his own humanity, he remains convinced that the best expression of hope is to give up his life. The question for Dante is: Can Gladys and Prudence change his mind? Will he let them?

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by McPhee, Jenny. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by McPhee, Jenny

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by McPhee, Jenny. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Center of Things (Ballantine Reader's Circle)

Girls: Ordinary Girls and Their Extraordinary Pursuits

The Center of Things

No Ordinary Matter: A Novel

No Ordinary Matter: A Novel

Canone Inverso: A Novel

A Man of No Moon: A Novel

A Man of No Moon: A Novel