Jonathan Franzen

It's December 23, 1971, and heavy weather is forecast for Chicago. Russ Hildebrandt, the associate pastor of a liberal suburban church, is on the brink of breaking free of a marriage he finds joyless-unless his wife, Marion, who has her own secret life, beats him to it. Their eldest child, Clem, is coming home from college on fire with moral absolutism, having taken an action that will shatter his father. Clem's sister, Becky, long the social queen...

Whether exploring his complex relationship with his uncle, recounting his young adulthood in New York, or offering an illuminating look at the global seabird crisis, these pieces contain all the wit and disabused realism that we've come to expect from Franzen. These essays trace the progress of a unique and mature mind wrestling with itself, with literature, and with some of the most important issues of our day, made more pressing by the current political...

The fourth novel in the Martin Beck mystery series finds Beck heading a major manhunt in pursuit of a mass murderer. On a cold and rainy Stockholm night, nine bus riders are gunned down by a mysterious assassin. The press portrays it as a freak attack and dubs the killer a madman. But Superintendent Martin Beck thinks otherwise—one of his most ambitious young detectives was among those killed—and he suspects it was more than coincidence. Working...

Otto and Sophie Bentwood live in a changing neighborhood in Brooklyn. Their stainless steel sink is new, their Mercedes is parked at the curb. But when Sophie is bitten by a possibly rabies-infected stray cat, a series of disasters begin to plague the Brentwoods' lives, revealing the fault lines in a marriage--and a society--wrenching itself apart.