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Winter's Tale

Mark Helprin

On the 25th Anniversary of its First Publication, the Audio Debut of this Magical Novel of Love, Death and New York.
This is a book about the beauty and complexity of the human soul, about God, love, and justice, and yet you can lose yourself in it as if it were a dream. You will be transported to New York of the Belle Epoque, to a city clarified by a siege of unprecedented winters. One night, Peter Lake--orphan, master-mechanic, and master second-story man--attempts to rob a fortress-like mansion on the Upper West Side. Though he thinks the house is empty, the daughter of the house is home. Thus begins the affair between the middle-aged Irish burglar and Beverly Penn, a young girl who is dying. Because of a love that at first he cannot fully understand, Peter, a simple and uneducated man, will be driven "to stop time and bring back the dead." His great struggle, in a city ever alight with its own energy and beset by winter, is a truly beautiful and extraordinary story.
Presented unabridged on 22 CDs.
Soldier of the Great War

Mark Helprin

An old man's magnificent tale of love and war-a recapitulation of a life and a reckoning with mortality told by one of America's most acclaimed novelists.
Freddy and Fredericka

Mark Helprin
Memoir from Antproof Case

Mark Helprin

An elderly American living in Brazil reminisces about his various lives as World War II ace, multimillionaire investment banker, insane asylum inmate, thief, murderer, lover, and protector of the innocent. By the author of Winter's Tale. 50,000 first printing.
The Pacific and Other Stories

Mark Helprin

Mark Helprin's fiction is at once so effortlessly imaginative and deeply imagined as to regularly elicit from critics comparisons to Joyce, Kafka, Poe, Mann, and others. John Gardner said of Helprin, "He moves from character to character and from culture to culture as if he'd been born and raised everywhere," and Reynolds Price wrote in The New York Times Book Review, "Such ambitious reach is almost unheard of in our short fiction." Helprin is indisputably one of the great writers of our time.

And now, almost ten years since his last book, Helprin returns with The Pacific and Other Stories, a collection of sixteen stories that display the remarkable scope, incomparable wit, and deft prose that have come to be his signature. A British paratrooper jumps into occupied territory in order to reconnoiter enemy positions and direct artillery fire, but a roof breaks his fall; shattered physically and fully alone, he must decide the extent of his devotion to his mission. The 1958 New York Yankees gain an unexpected teammate in a puny, teenage Hasidic Jew whom God has called to rescue the "House of Ruth." An opera impresario who has made his career on and ruined the life of a laundress-turned-diva now considers whether he ought to pluck from obscurity a soprano singing on a side street in Venice. A novelist in the 1940s, completely forgotten within the vast bureaucracy at U.S. Steel, constructs for himself a lifesaving sinecure. A September 11 widow receives an astonishing gift from the contractor working on her new apartment. In 1972, a female reservist in the Israeli Army who has despaired of love finds it at the very last minute and in its finest expression, while floating in the sea off Haifa.

Helprin's stories exhibit the constantly changing variety of the ocean itself, the peaks and troughs of life depicted as they blend indistinguishably into one another. Lighthearted, glittering fables are met with starker tales that sound the depths of sacrifice and duty. And although many stories are of the present, the pre-World War II past and its promise of a simpler, purer way of life return with tidal regularity to haunt a modern-day world that has slighted tranquillity and reflection.

The Pacific and Other Stories is a resplendent, engulfing, powerful collection of lasting substance and emotional import.
A City in Winter

Mark Helprin
Refiner's Fire

Mark Helprin

An orphaned immigrant's experiences take him from the Hudson River Valley to Harvard, off to sea on a British merchant ship, then finally back to his birthplace, where he serves as an Israeli soldier in the Yom Kippur War.
Swan Lake

Mark Helprin

The two-time Caldecott medalist illustrates Mark Helprin's enchanting story of the characters in Tchaikovsky's famous ballet.
The Veil of Snows

Mark Helprin

"Long ago, in the time of the old emperor, I was young and just beginning in my profession. The Usurper was there, and one could not escape his evil presence.... An enthralling story in the time-honored tradition of Lewis Carroll and C. S. Lewis. Although her kingdom has lived in peace for many years, the queen has always feared the day the Usurper would return to plunge her city into darkness. Even as she rejoices in the birth of her first child, she sees signs of impending danger. Her husband and his army have vanished in the wilderness. With only a short time left to reinforce the kingdom's defense, her faithful general masterminds a strategy to keep the city safe, against great odds. But even when the Usurper's victory may seem to be complete, the mysterious veil of snows hides a symbol of undying hope. The Veil of Snows is a moving and powerful tale about the light of the human spirit,light that can never be wholly extinguished. The Veil of Snows, which stands on its own as a compelling story, also completes the Helprin/Van Allsburg trilogy that began with their first collaboration, Swan Lake, which Publishers Weekly called "elegant and beautiful...wise and musical." As Kirkus noted in a pointered review of A City in Winter, the second book, "The sheer scale of the city [Helprin] envisions will enthrall readers of any age...." Mark Helprin is the acclaimed author of books for adults and children, including A Soldier of the Great War and the best-selling Winter's Tale (both Harcourt). He lives in New York state. Chris Van Allsburg is a two-time Caldecott winner, for Jumanji and The Polar Express (both Houghton).
A Dove of the East: And Other Stories

Mark Helprin

The twenty stories here, many of which first appeared in The New Yorker and have since been anthologized throughout the world, are strikingly beautiful essays on enduring and universal questions: In Rome, in the hour of his death, and American priest must choose between his Church and his God. An Israeli scout risks the safety and respect of his comrades in an act of transfiguring gentleness and charity. In a hot, dirty typewriter ribbon factory in the Bronx, a young man finds love. A Dutch child in a Canadian orphanage carries in her heart, her love for her parents and the pain of war. A soldier is overpowered by his days of burying the dead. A Sicilian widow meditates on the end of her family line. These twenty stories are strikingly beautiful pieces on enduring, universal questions by a writer the San Francisco Review of Books calls "a master crafter of the short story."
Ellis Island and Other Stories

Mark Helprin

Winner of the Prix de Rome and the National Jewish Book Award, these ten stories and the title novella, "Ellis Island," exhibit tremendous range and versatility of style and technique, yet are closely unified in their beauty and in their concern with enduring and universal questions.
The Best American Short Stories 1988 (Best American Short Stories)
Winter's Tale (LEATHER BOUND)

Mark Helprin

Leather bound book accented in 22kt gold.
WINTER'S TALE (Signed Modern Classics)

Mark Helprin