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The Air We Breathe

Andrea Barrett

A novel of love during wartime from the National Book Award-winning author of Ship Fever.
In Fall 1916, Americans debate whether to enter the European war. "Preparedness parades" march and headlines report German spies. But in an isolated town in the Adirondacks, the danger is barely felt. At Tamarack Lake the focus is on the sick. Wealthy tubercular patients live in private cure cottages; charity patients, mainly immigrants, fill the public sanatorium. For all, time stands still.
An enterprising patient initiates a discussion group. When his well-meaning efforts lead instead to a tragic accident and a terrible betrayal, the war comes home, bringing with it anti-immigrant prejudice and vigilante sentiment. The conjunction of thwarted desires and political tension binds the patients so deeply that, finally, they speak about what's happened in a single voice.
Presented unabridged on 8 CDs.
Ship Fever

Andrea Barrett
The Story Behind the Story: 26 Stories by Contemporary Writers and How They Work

In a splendid display of show-and-tell, 26 writers tell a story and lift the curtain to reveal how they did it.
This big, beautiful anthology of short fiction is for readers, writers, and anyone curious about the mysterious processes of literary minds. All contributors have been recent faculty members of the prestigious Warren Wilson Low Residency Program, including such literary favorites as Margot Livesey, Charles Baxter, Robert Boswell, Jim Shepard, Antonya Nelson, David Shields, and the editors themselves.
Each writer was asked to submit an original story, accompanied by an essay describing the challenges of the story and how they were met. Since writers resist herding, the editors were happily surprised by the wide range of essays—"fiction writers, when given the space, think about their work very differently." We learn about the genesis of a story, how story evolves, what was eventually relinquished and why, and how a story—surprisingly—might "insist" on changing.
Arranged alphabetically by author, and beginning with Richard Russo's cogent introduction, this volume is a treasure throughout.
The Fountain Overflows (New York Review Books Classics)

Rebecca West

The lives of the talented Aubrey children have long been clouded by their father?s genius for instability, but his new job in the London suburbs promises, for a time at least, reprieve from scandal and the threat of ruin. Mrs. Aubrey, a former concert pianist, struggles to keep the family afloat, but then she is something of a high-strung eccentric herself, as is all too clear to her daughter Rose, through whose loving but sometimes cruel eyes events are seen. Still, living on the edge holds the promise of the unexpected, and the Aubreys, who encounter furious poltergeists, turn up hidden masterpieces, and come to the aid of a murderess, will find that they have adventure to spare.

In The Fountain Overflows, a 1957 best seller, Rebecca West transmuted her own volatile childhood into enduring art. This is an unvarnished but affectionate picture of an extraordinary family, in which a remarkable stylist and powerful intelligence surveys the elusive boundaries of childhood and adulthood, freedom and dependency, the ordinary and the occult.
The Voyage of the Narwhal

Andrea Barrett
Servants of the Map: Stories

Andrea Barrett
The Widow's Children

Paula Fox, Andrea Barrett
The Master of Ballantrae: A Winter's Tale (Modern Library Classics)

Robert Louis Stevenson

Stevenson’s brooding historical romance demonstrates his most abiding theme—the elemental struggle between good and evil—as it unfolds against a hauntingly beautiful Scottish landscape, amid the fierce loyalties and violent enmities that characterized Scottish history. When two brothers attempt to split their loyalties between the warring factions of the 1745 Jacobite rising, one family finds itself tragically divided. Stevenson’s remarkably vivid characterizations create an acutely moving, psychologically complex work; as Andrea Barrett points out in her Introduction, “The brothers’ characters, not the historical facts, shape the drama.”

This Modern Library Paperback Classic includes illustrations reproduced from the original edition.
The Needle's Eye

Margaret Drabble

Simon Camish, an embittered, diffident lawyer in a loveless marriage, would not have particularly noticed Rose Vassiliou had he not been asked to drive her home one night after a dinner party. Yet at one time she had been notorious-her name constantly in the news.
Now, separated from her Greek husband, she lives alone with her three children. Despite all the efforts and sneers of her friends, she refuses to move from her slum house in a decaying neighborhood to which she has become attached. Gradually, Simon becomes aware that Rose is a woman of remarkable integrity and courage. He is drawn into her affairs when her husband takes legal action to reopen the question of custody of the children-a scheme for getting his wife back. And, while the precise nature of their ties eludes him, Simon comes to realize that Rose and her Greek ex-husband are forever and inextricably bound to each other.
Secret Harmonies

Andrea Barrett

Two lifetime friends and partners struggle to make sense of their lives in the rural hills of western Massachusetts when discord enters their marriage. Reprint."
The Middle Kingdom

Andrea Barrett

A woman attending an international science conference falls forever out of love with her husband and very much in love with China and its magnificent culture. Reprint."
Tono-Bungay (Modern Library Classics)

H.G. Wells

The story of an apprentice chemist whose uncle’s worthless medicine becomes a spectacular marketing success, Tono-Bungay earned H. G. Wells immediate acclaim when it appeared in 1909. It remains a sparkling chronicle of chicanery and human credulity, and is today regarded by many as Wells’s greatest novel. As Andrea Barrett observes in her Introduction, “Through its detailed, often brilliant descriptions and powerful imagery, [Tono-Bungay] slyly satirizes British imperial policy as a whole. . . . The insights into class, money, advertising, public relations, and the power of the press still ring horrifyingly true.”

This Modern Library Paperback Classic is set from the text of the original 1909 edition.
Prize Stories 1998 (Prize Stories (O Henry Awards))

Larry Dark, Andrea Barrett
The Forms of Water

Andrea Barrett

Eighty-year-old Brendan Auberon begins a complex journey when he dupes his nephew into hijacking the nursing home van so that Brendan can see Paradise Valley one last time. Reprint. NYT. "
Lucid Stars

Andrea Barrett

From the 1996 National Book Award-winning author of Ship Fever and Other Stories. What begins as a classic boy-meets-girl tale in 1955 becomes something far different when marriage and two children do not bring a family closer together. Lucid Stars is the moving story of how one family learns to survive by becoming a planetary system that just happens to be missing its sun.