Francine Prose

1953. Simon Putnam, newly hired by a distinguished New York publishing firm, gets his first assignment: editing The Vixen, the Patriot and the Fanatic, a lurid bodice-ripper improbably based on the recent trial and execution of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. It is a potboiler intended to shore up the firm's failing finances. Simon's mother was a childhood friend of Ethel Rosenberg's; his parents mourn Ethel's death. Simon meets The Vixen author, reckless,...

"A richly imagined and stunningly inventive story of love, art, and betrayal in Paris of the 20's, 30's, and 40's"-- Paris in the 1920s shimmers with excitement, dissipation, and freedom. It is a place of intoxicating ambition, passion, art, and discontent, where louche jazz venues like the Chameleon Club draw expats, artists, libertines, and parvenus looking to indulge their true selves. Lou Villars, an extraordinary athlete and scandalous cross-dressing...

"It has been years since Swenson, a professor of creative writing at a small New England college, has published a novel of his own. It's been even longer since a student of his has shown a glimmer of talent. And academia, with its increasingly stifling politically correct environment, isn't what it used to be. Enter Angela Argo, a pierced, tattooed student with a rare gift for writing. Fearless and ambitious, Angela seems like the answer to Swenson's...

The New York Times–bestselling author takes on New Agers as one woman searches for meaning in this “brilliantly satiric but . . . sweet-natured” novel (Publishers Weekly).
 
Thirty-year-old Martha is stagnating in a demeaning, woefully underpaid job as a fact-checker at frothy fashion magazine Mode and an unhappy relationship with an unrepentant jerk. But she stumbles upon...

In the aftermath of a nearby school shooting, a grief and crisis counselor takes over Central High School and enacts increasingly harsh measures to control students, while those who do not comply disappear.

"Set in Tunisia in the mid-1960s, it is the story of Howard Ingham, an American writer who has gone abroad to work on a movie, a love story too sordid to be set in America. But in Tunisia, little goes according to plan. Amid the tea shops and alleys of the souk, the sun-blasted architecture, the beaches, and the hotels frequented by international tourists, Ingham's morality begins to shift in the withering heat"--P. [4] of cover.

"The acclaimed New York Times bestselling author weaves an ingenious, darkly humorous, and brilliantly observant story that follows the exploits and intrigue of a constellation of characters affiliated with an off-off-off-off Broadway children's musical. Mister Monkey--a screwball children's musical about a playfully larcenous pet chimpanzee--is the kind of family favorite that survives far past its prime. Margot, who plays the chimp's lawyer, knows...

Francine Prose argues that the diary of Anne Frank is as much a deliberate work of art as it is an historical record, noting its literary merits and thoroughly investigating the diary's unique afterlife as one of the world's most read, and banned, books.

Celebrates the pleasures of reading and pays homage to the works and writers the author admires above all others, from Jane Austen to Charles Dickens to Jennifer Egan. In an age defined by hyper-connectivity and constant stimulation, Francine Prose makes a compelling case for the solitary act of reading and the great enjoyment it brings. Inspiring and illuminating, What to Read and Why includes selections culled from Prose's previous essays, reviews,...