Christopher Bollen takes on the North Fork of Long Island

"Artists, collectors, curators and gallerists with homes on the East End of Long Island are sure to be scanning a new murder mystery next summer to see if they get bumped off.

Christopher Bollen, former editor-in-chief of Interview magazine, has written, 'Orient,' set in the same North Fork town where real-life residents include artists Rob Pruitt, Elizabeth Peyton, Lisa Yuskavage, Wade Guyton, T. J. Wilcox and Kelley Walker.

'People will see themselves in some of the characters,' warns Bollen, who hatched the plot while staying an artist’s home in the titular town. 'There’s the Russian collector, the Swiss gallerist and the crazy older photographer.'"

- Page Six

Read the full article here.

It's Tiny's turn to shine in a new book by David Levithan

“If you couldn’t get enough of big gay hero Tiny Cooper in “Will Grayson, Will Grayson,” then gird your loins and warm up your vocal chords: He’s back, in an amazing musical companion novel! “Hold Me Closer: The Tiny Cooper Story” is David Levithan’s own enthusiastic followup to the book he co-wrote with John Green, in which Tiny gets his long-awaited and much-deserved turn in the spotlight. And while it won’t be on shelves until March 2015, we’ve got an exclusive first peek at its beautiful cover, which is decorated with some very holiday season-appropriate sparkle.

MTV News got in touch with Levithan to get some scoop about the “Tiny Cooper” cover, and the story behind it.”

– MTV News

Read more… 

We Are Not Ourselves is one of Entertainment Weekly’s 10 Best Fiction Books of the Year

“Ten years in the making, Thomas' epic debut traces three generations of Irish-Americans living in New York, all driven by the goal of doing better than their parents—and making sure their children do better than they have. It's a wrenching meditation on the limits of the American dream for immigrants and the working class during the 20th century. But it's also just a gripping family drama. Be prepared to ugly-cry at the end.”

– Entertainment Weekly

See Entertainment Weekly’s 10 Best Fiction Books of the Year.

Akhil Sharma’s Family Life is one The New York Times 10 Best Books of The Year

“Sharma’s austere but moving novel tells the semi-autobiographical story of a family that immigrates from India to Queens, and has just begun to build a new life when the elder son suffers severe brain damage in a swimming pool accident. Deeply unnerving and gorgeously tender, the book chronicles how grief renders the parents unable to cherish and raise their other son; love, it suggests, becomes warped and jagged and even seemingly vanishes in the midst of mourning.”

– New York Times

See The New York Times 10 Best Books of the Year.

Ottessa Moshfegh has a short story in the new issue of The Paris Review

Slumming
By Ottessa Moshfegh

“Half a dozen years had passed since that first summer in Alna, and almost nothing had changed. The town was still full of young people crashing junk cars, dirty diapers littering the parking lots. There were x-ed–out smiley faces spray-painted over street signs, on the soaped-up windows of empty storefronts, all over the boarded-up Dairy Queen long since blackened by fire and warped by rain. And the zombies, of course, still inhabited Alna’s shadowy, empty hilltop downtown. They slumped on the curb nodding, or else they rifled through dumpsters for things to fix or sell. I often saw them speed-walking up and down the slopes of Main Street with toasters or TV sets under their arms, ghost faces smeared with Alna’s dirt, leaving a trail of garbage in their wake. If they ever left Alna, cleaned up, shipped out, the magic of the place would vanish. Monday, Wednesday, Friday—I figured three times a week was a sane frequency—I visited that bus-depot restroom, my ten-dollar bill at the ready.”

Read the full story at The Paris Review.

Congrats Rivka, Matt, Akhil and Zach!

We’re happy to see that Rivka Galchen, Matthew Thomas, Akhil Sharma, and Zachary Lazar all made The New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2014.

See the complete New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2014 list.