A letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family's history that began before he was born--a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam--and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is...

"Cathy Bonidan's The Lost Manuscript is a charming epistolary novel about the love of books and magical ability they have to bring people together. Sometimes a book has the power to change your life... When Anne-Lise Briard books a room at the Beau Rivage Hotel for her vacation on the Brittany coast, she has no idea this trip will start her on the path to unearthing a mystery. In search of something to read, she opens up her bedside table drawer in...

Finally a novel that puts the "pissed" back into "epistolary." Jason Fitger is a beleaguered professor of creative writing and literature at Payne University, a small and not very distinguished liberal arts college in the midwest. His department is facing draconian cuts and squalid quarters, while one floor above them the Economics Department is getting lavishly remodeled offices. His once-promising writing career is in the doldrums, as is his romantic...

"I've suffered for my art, now its your turn." So begins the tale of Ted Wallace, unaffectionately known as the Hippopotamus. Failed poet, failed theater critic, failed father and husband, Ted is a shameless womanizer, drinks too much, and is at odds in his cranky but maddeningly logical way with most of modern life. Fired from his newspaper, Ted seeks a few months' repose and free liquor at Swafford Hall, the country mansion of his old friend Michael...

"When event planner Hallie Goodman receives party-inspiration material from the bride of her latest wedding project, the last thing she expects to find is a collection of digital videos from Darcy’s ex-boyfriend. Hallie knows it’s wrong to keep watching these personal videos, but this guy is cute, funny, and an astronaut on the International Space Station to boot. She’s only human. And it’s not long until she starts sending e-mails and video...

"Jen Dixon is not your typical Kansas City kindergarten class mom—or mom in general. Jen already has two college-age daughters by two different (probably) musicians, and it’s her second time around the class mom block with five-year-old Max—this time with a husband and father by her side. Though her best friend and PTA President sees her as the 'wisest' candidate for the job (or oldest), not all of the other parents agree. From recording parents’...

Grace Porter is reeling from grief after her partner of seven years unexpectedly leaves. Amidst her heartache, the 30 year-old library tech is tasked with reading newly discovered letters that Amelia Earhart wrote to her lover, Gene Vidal. She becomes captivated by the famous pilot who disappeared in 1937. Letter by letter, she understands more about the aviation hero while piecing her own life back together. When Grace discovers she is pregnant,...

Somewhere around 1969, I began to grow dissatisfied with the underlying principle of most novels - that a disembodied voice in the first or third person was telling us a story. I liked the idea of novels passing themselves off as documents and drew inspiration from Mark Harris's Wake Up, Stupid and Sue Kaufman's Diary of a Mad Housewife, the first, ostensibly a collection of letters, the second, duh, a diary. (One could, of course, go back further,...

Las apariencias pueden engañar, y en un siglo en el que destacan, la joven María Ana De LaTour, noble de 22 años, lo aprenderá, ¡y a qué costo!. Su curiosidad la llevará a escribir a una reclusa de su misma edad que pondrá frente a una realidad que conoce de mucho tiempo atrás, pero que se niega a enfrentar. Cuando la nobleza conoce al tercer estado a finales del siglo XVII, pueden tener tanto que decirse que un detalle trastornar por completo...

Business As Usual by Jane Oliver and Ann Stafford was first published in 1933. It's a delightful illustrated novel in letters from Hilary Fane, an Edinburgh girl fresh out of university who is determined to support herself by her own earnings in London for a year, despite the mutterings of her surgeon fiancé. After a nervous beginning looking for a job while her savings rapidly diminish, she finds work as a typist in the London department store of...