Review\nVividly imagined, scrupulously researched, and almost disorienting in its authenticity . . . A historical classic . . . Nothing short of splendid. ― The Philadelphia Inquirer\nPeter Quinn’s extraordinarily fine and ingenious novel, Banished Children of Eve, shows how much we are made of history . . . Unflinching in its depiction of prejudice and, for that matter, of grace, Quinn deftly weaves the lives of his characters into an intricate web of past and present, of association and moral involvement, until I, at least, had a sense not only of this terrible time but of history itself at the fundamental level, of the individual actions that make up its fabric. ― The Boston Sunday Globe\nHistorical fiction as well made and whole as this is not common . . . Convincing and intriguing . . . Hardly a page of this book is without some revelation. ― The New York Times Book Review\nOne of the very, very best of modern historical novels. -- Thomas Flanagan\nNamed one of the top twenty books every Irish American should read by Irish Central\nThe Civil War has just entered its third bloody year, and the North is about to impose its first military draft, a decision that will spark the most devastating and destructive urban riot in American history. Banished Children of Eve traces that event as its tentacles grip New York City. The cast is drawn from every stratum: a likeable and laconic Irish-American hustler, an ambitious and larcenous Yankee stockbroker, an immigrant serving girl, a beautiful and mysterious mulatto actress and her white minstrel lover as well as a cluster of real-life characters, including scheming, ever-pompous General George McClellan; fiery, fierce Archbishop “Dagger John” Hughes; and fast-declining musical genius Stephen Foster. The fates of these characters coalesce in the cataclysm of the Draft Riots, as a pivotal period in the history of New York and the nation is painfully, vividly, magically bought to life.

Banished Children of Eve: A Novel of Civil War New York (New York ReLit)

Quinn, Peter

Literature & Fiction

New York ReLit

Dry Bones, the third novel of the Fintan Dunne series by Peter Quinn, follows Fintan, who works for the OSS, the forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The novel is set during World War II, when Fintan teams up with several of his colleagues working to rescue several intelligence officers who had been fighting the Nazis inside Czechoslovakia. Things go awry and the team soon uncovers a huge conspiracy that may change the course of their careers and their lives. After the end of the war, many of his colleagues have bad things happen to them. The common thing about his friends who either go missing or end up dead is that they were trying to unearth the mystery of an infamous doctor who had gone missing. It seems the CIA is determined to ensure that what happened to the infamous doctor who had made his name experimenting on prisoners of war remained a secret.

Dry Bones (The Fintan Dunne Trilogy)

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Mystery

Product Description 
It’s just another murder, one of the hundreds of simple homicides in 1939: A spinster nurse is killed in her apartment; a suspect is caught with the murder weapon and convicted. Fintan Dunne, the P.I. lured onto the case and coerced by conscience into unraveling the complex setup that has put an innocent man on Death Row, will soon find that this is a murder with tentacles which stretch far beyond the crime scene . . . to Nazi Germany, in fact; following it to the end leads him into a murder conspiracy of a scope that defies imagination. The same clouds are rolling over Berlin, where plans for a military coup are forming among a cadre of Wehrmacht officers. Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of the Military Intelligence, is gripped by a deadly paralysis: He is neither with the plotters nor against them. Joining them in treason would violate every value he holds as an officer. Betraying the plotters to the Gestapo Chief, Reinhard Heydrich, might just forsake the country’s last hope to avert utter destruction and centuries of shame. Heydrich is suspicious. With no limits to Hitler’s manic pursuit of territorial expansion, with crimes against the people candy-coated as racial purification, the “hour of the cat” looms when every German conscience must make a choice. When Canaris receives an order to assist in a sinister covert operation on foreign shores, his hour has come. 
Hour of the Cat is a stunning achievement: tautly suspenseful, hauntingly memorable, and brilliantly authentic. 
 Review 
A chilling history lesson wrapped in a murder mystery... It is the best kind of historical novel, driven by memorable characters, a suspenseful plot, and real-life questions. ― 
USA Today\nThe pacing is tight, the descriptions of New York in the 1930s rich, the characters engaging, and the dialogue pitch perfect. Only a churl could resist. ― 
Boston Globe\nNoir to the core... Smart and evocative. ― 
Minneapolis Star-Tribune\nHour of the Cat is the hour of Peter Quinn's genius. It's been said a million times but I'll say it again: I couldn't put it down. ― 
Frank McCourt 
 Review 
A chilling history lesson wrapped in a murder mystery... It is the best kind of historical novel, driven by memorable characters, a suspenseful plot, and real-life questions. ― 
USA Today\nThe pacing is tight, the descriptions of New York in the 1930s rich, the characters engaging, and the dialogue pitch perfect. Only a churl could resist. ― 
Boston Globe\nNoir to the core... Smart and evocative. ― 
Minneapolis Star-Tribune\nHour of the Cat is the hour of Peter Quinn's genius. It's been said a million times but I'll say it again: I couldn't put it down. ― 
Frank McCourt 
 About the Author 
Peter Quinn is a novelist, political historian, and foremost chronicler of New York City. He is the author of 
Looking for Jimmy: In Search of Irish America and a trilogy of historical detective novels.

Hour of the Cat (The Fintan Dunne Trilogy)

Peter Quinn’s The Man Who Never Returned is a noir-ish, stylized detective narrative set in 1950s New York. It follows Fintan, a retired detective turned private investigator who has been given the job of finding Judge Crater, who just went missing in 1930. Based on a real story, it is quite an intriguing tale that was even more so for people living at the time. The famous missing-person case is comparable to the Amelia Earhart missing-person case, though it could have been an even more interesting one. It was alleged that the missing judge may have had information about underhanded dealings in the New York judiciary. It was believed that if such information came to light, Franklin D. Roosevelt, then governor of New York, would have had a hard time becoming the president of the United States. There were also rumors that the judge, who was a known ladies’ man, had either decided to disappear or had fallen afoul of the mafia. Featuring hardboiled characters and a beautiful re-creation of New York from the ’50s, it is quite a compelling read.

The Man Who Never Returned (The Fintan Dunne Trilogy)

Genre Fiction

Review\nThere’s no moving away from this wrenching, beautifully told story. ― Los Angeles Times\nControlled and brilliant . . . elegantly written. The elaborate plot machinery . . . is seamless. ― The Wall Street Journal\nPlenty of . . . mordant humor, but none of it masks or trivializes the awful losses . . . . Affecting. ― The Washington Post Book World\nDramatically beautiful . . . a poignant, sobering ― and often hilarious ― view of New York gay life in the age of AIDS. ― Houston Post\nBefore the onset of his irreversible decline, Eddie Socket always suspected he was on the verge of something. Now that “something” has arrived in the form of Merrit Mather, an attractive older gentleman of impeccable taste in everything from sweaters to his numerous sexual conquests. That Merrit happens to be the lover of Eddie’s agitated boss, Saul, hardly fazes the smitten Eddie; that the elusive Merrit loses interest in Eddie with dizzying speed hardly dims his ardor. While Eddie continues his futile chase, he finds solace in his roommate, Polly, involved in her own implausible affair with a self-involved banker. Both Eddie and Polly eventually conclude that solitude is their best option. But even that is not possible as Eddie finds his life taking an unexpected turn―a turn that that serves as the catalyst for Eddie, love-ravaged Polly, and the indomitable Saul to reclaim their lives.\nFirst published in 1989 and winner of the 1990 Lambda Literary Award for Best Gay Debut Novel, The Irreversible Decline of Eddie Socket is one of the first novels to respond to the global AIDS crisis. A comedy of absurdist horror, it weaponizes the comic as a way of intensifying the tragic aspects of AIDS, which were especially acute in the early 1980s, and the scars of which are still visible today.\nFrom the Back Cover\n“There’s no moving away from this wrenching, beautifully told story.”―Los Angeles Times

The Irreversible Decline of Eddie Socket

Weir, John

United States

Review\nA wry memoir of the AIDS era that is not so much elegy as ode to a hopeful and even lyric future. ― The Baltimore Sun\nExtraordinary . . . among other things one of the best books about how ordinary folks live in New York now.---Edmund White, The Village Voice\nWeir’s prose has humor and grace to spare. ― Publishers Weekly\nA lovely, wrenching, funny, erudite novel, heavy with history and loss and beauty.---David Rakoff\nSet in a rapidly gentrifying New York City determined to move beyond the decimation of a generation a decade earlier, What I Did Wrong is a day in the life of Tom, a forty-two-year-old English professor, haunted by the death of his best friend, Zack, who died theatrically and calamitously of AIDS. Tom himself slouches gingerly and precariously into middle age questioning every certainty he had about himself as a gay man while negotiating the field of his college classes, populated as they are with guys whose cocky bravado can’t quite compensate for their own confused masculinity. Tom tries to balance his awkwardly developing friendships with them. In the process, he begins to find common ground with these proud young men and, surprisingly, a way to claim his own place in the world, and in history.\nA powerfully moving―and often disarmingly funny―book about loss, character, and sexuality in the wake of AIDS, What I Did Wrong is a survivor’s tale in an age when all certainties have lost their logic and focus. It is a romance that embraces its objects from the traumas of toxic masculinity to the aftermath of catastrophic loss amidst the enduring allure of New York City in all its manic and heartbreaking grandeur.\nFrom the Back Cover\n“A wry memoir of the AIDS era that is not so much elegy as ode to a hopeful and even lyric future.”―The Baltimore Sun

What I Did Wrong

Looking for Jimmy: A Search for Irish America

Review\nYou don't have to be Irish or Irish-American to love this book. Whoever you are, you are in it. This is the kind of book you will want to bestow on anyone with, or without, a hyphen in their history.---Frank McCourt\nAn exceptionally thoughtful and interesting inquiry into Irish America. ― The Washington Post\nA sweeping tale of disaster, survival, and triumph. ― San Francisco Chronicle\nA wonderful addition to the story of the Irish in America...teem[ing] with deep, surprising insights.---Pete Hamill\nCharming... A timely reminder that controversy over immigration exists as very much part of a continuum. ― The New York Times\nThe Irish American story―a 150-year saga―is a fascinating one, and Quinn tells it superbly. A charming, informative, and memorable book. ― America Magazine\nIn this stunning work chronicling the author’s exploration of his own past―and the lives of many hundreds of thousands of nameless immigrants who struggled alongside his own ancestors―Peter Quinn paints a brilliant new portrait of the Irish-American men and women whose evolving culture and values continue to play such a central role in all of our identities as Americans. In Quinn’s hands, the Irish stereotype of “Paddy” gives way to an image of “Jimmy”―an archetypal Irish-American. From Irish immigration to modern politics, Quinn vibrantly weaves together the story of a remarkable people and their immeasurable contribution to American history and culture.

Looking for Jimmy: A Search For Irish America

Biographies & Memoirs

Community & Culture

On its surface, I Am Elijah Thrush is the story of Millicent De Frayne and her sensational half-century campaign to win the love of Elijah Thrush. Elijah, after ruining the lives of countless men and women, is finally in love "incorrectly, if not indecently," with his great-grandson, Bird of Heaven. To support an unusual habit, a young Black man, Albert Peggs, reluctantly agrees to tell their remarkable story. It is in this telling that the ambitions, desires, and true natures of Elijah, Millicent, and Albert come to light. With a delicately controlled balance of whimsy and pathos, James Purdy gives us this comedy of the heroic, the tragic, and the truly bizarre. Met with critical bewilderment upon its initial publication fifty years ago, this new edition offers a Foreword by Robert J. Corber illuminating Purdy's "complicated allegory" of objectification, desire, and race in the immediate post-civil rights moment.

I Am Elijah Thrush

PURDY, James

Following the discovery of an anonymous libretto, Abner Blossom comes out of retirement to write an opera based on the life of infamous novelist-turned-photographer Cyril Vane. But those who knew Vane and his Russian-born wife, the silent-screen star Madame Olga Petrovna, are prepared to go to any length to suppress the truth about them. Vane's dark secret follows him to the grave. But his jealous and vengeful widow and her faded cronies employ all the means at their disposal to prevent the opening of Blossom's opera. Out with the Stars is peopled by the Gothic characters readers of James Purdy have come to anticipate and relish, from Val Sturgis, Kentucky boy made good and now Blossom's protégé to Francis X. Beauregard, aging star of the silver screen now living surrounded by streetwise hustlers in his Brooklyn mansion. Back in print for the first time since 1993, Purdy's flamboyant tale of New York City's pre-Stonewall bohemia includes an incisive Foreword by Robert J. Corber, placing the work within its rich social and cultural context.

Out with the Stars

Manhattan: Letters from Prehistory

CIXOUS, Hélène

Arts & Literature

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