The Permanent Press Ord: 139 books

At twenty-four, Philip Halsey has too much of everything. His stock market investments have replicated like breeding hamsters, and his recent real estate venture seems sure to score big in the Reagan boomtime eighties. Philip’s discovery that he’s not the scion of old New England wealth, but rather...

A young American couple is touring Germany with their two children. During an Alpine hike, the parents, eager to hunt mushrooms down the slope, settle their drowsy children to nap in the glade. When the kids awake, the sun has set and they are alone, their world changed. They are found eventually by strangers and returned to an America they might have never known.

A compendium of the highlights and lowlights from the careers of our 43 chief executives—from George Washington to George Bush Jr.—told with wit and accuracy, clearly reminding us that presidents are also people. Under the mutton-chop whiskers, behind the bulging waistcoats, presidents were actually human.

“Brought back into print after 14 years and published in paperback for the first time, this leisurely meditation on the art of acting and on the author’s life in that art demonstrates a good-natured sense of humor and an engaging style. In a series of essays, Broun gently knocks the theatrical...

Written with the drama and suspense of a detective story, KAL Flight 007: The Hidden Story takes the reader through the process of piecing together the evidence surrounding the unexplained flight of a Korean airliner over Soviet strategic territories on September 1, 1983—a flight brought to a tragic end when a Soviet interceptor shot down the airliner, killing all 269 people aboard.

A white man has been lynched two months before twenty-three-year-old Donald Gambell returns to his New Jersey hometown. As the first black member of the police force, Gambell learns the routines of his new work—the traffic stops and domestic quarrels, the bullying and bragging—from his partner...

“Erskine Childers, one of the unsung heroes of Ireland’s struggle for independence, was born in England, spent his boyhood in Ireland, then went to Cambridge University. He fought for England in the Boer War and as an aviator in World War I, publishing his widely praised novel The Riddle of the...

“Walk tall, man,” the junkie behind him whispered. “Don’t let the bastards see that you care.” They were standing in line at police headquarters in Los Angeles, waiting to be fingerprinted. The twenty-two year old writer had just been arrested on a “vag-lewd” charge. Or, to put it more...

In this small gem of a novel, a thoughtful boy on the lip of adolescence struggles to make sense of the evil that resides in his small town. Told with brilliant, lyric push, this tale reveals the unconscious rush that childhood is, that nagging dream that still persists because it means something...

“Fat girls have fewer choices in life. This is painful but true. You’ll never be the center of attention; never the belle of the ball. No one gives fat girls the benefit of the doubt. Skinny, pretty girls get the best of everything. We get whatever’s left.”   So warns the mother of Wilma...

Set on the Mediterranean island of Ibiza, but ranging afield to a small college town in North Carolina, to the streets of Manhattan, and to the barrio chino of Barcelona, Writer-in-Residence tells the story of a successful American painter named David Bloom, who, to the horror of his family, his friends,...

From the war-torn Jordan Valley to our nation’s capital, Exiles reaches into the life of one man and one woman to explore one of the longest-lasting and most painful situations in our time: the displacement of the Palestinians and the unceasing turmoil in the Middle East. This is a story about the...

This is the last thing Helen, a young, impetuous Californian, wants to hear from her Sikh lover, Tej, whom she is determined to marry against all opposition. After the initial shock, however, Helen’s innate optimism reasserts itself and she carries on with her preparations to follow Tej back to...

A most unusual novel is Manoucher Parvin’s Dardedel: Rumi, Hafez, and Love**in New York. For starters, it’s written in free verse. For another, it contrasts the world of thirteenth and fourteenth century Persia with that of present day New York, by bringing back to life the famed Persian poets...