A Partial History Of Lost Causes

Abandoning her life when her father succumbs to Huntington's disease, Massachusetts native Irina discovers an unanswered letter from her father to an internationally renowned chess champion and political dissident, who she decides to visit in Russia. A first novel.

FINALIST FOR THE PEN/HEMINGWAY PRIZE FOR DEBUT FICTION In Jennifer duBois’s mesmerizing and exquisitely rendered debut novel, a long-lost letter links two disparate characters, each searching for meaning against seemingly insurmountable odds. With uncommon perception and wit, duBois explores the power of memory, the depths of human courage, and the endurance of love. NAMED BY THE NATIONAL BOOK FOUNDATION AS A 5 UNDER 35 AUTHOR • WINNER OF THE CALIFORNIA BOOK AWARD GOLD MEDAL FOR FIRST FICTION • WINNER OF THE NORTHERN CALIFORNIA BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION • NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY O: THE OPRAH MAGAZINE “Astonishingly beautiful and brainy . . . [a] stunning novel.”—O: The Oprah Magazine “I can’t remember reading another novel—at least not recently—that’s both incredibly intelligent and also emotionally engaging.”—Nancy Pearl, NPR In St. Petersburg, Russia, world chess champion Aleksandr Bezetov begins a quixotic quest: He launches a dissident presidential campaign against Vladimir Putin. He knows he will not win—and that he is risking his life in the process—but a deeper conviction propels him forward. In Cambridge, Massachusetts, thirty-year-old English lecturer Irina Ellison struggles for a sense of purpose. Irina is certain she has inherited Huntington’s disease—the same cruel illness that ended her father’s life. When Irina finds an old, photocopied letter her father wrote to the young Aleksandr Bezetov, she makes a fateful decision. Her father asked the chess prodigy a profound question—How does one proceed in a lost cause?—but never received an adequate reply. Leaving everything behind, Irina travels to Russia to find Bezetov and get an answer for her father, and for herself. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Salon • BookPage Look for special features inside. Join the Random House Reader’s Circle for author chats and more. Praise for A Partial History of Lost Causes “A thrilling debut . . . [Jennifer] DuBois writes with haunting richness and fierce intelligence. . . . Full of bravado, insight, and clarity.”—Elle “DuBois is precise and unsentimental. . . . She moves with a magician’s control between points of view, continents, histories, and sympathies.”—The New Yorker “A real page-turner . . . a psychological thriller of great nuance and complexity.”—The Dallas Morning News “Terrific . . . In urgent fashion, duBois deftly evokes Russia’s political and social metamorphosis over the past thirty years through the prism of this particular and moving relationship.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review) “Hilarious and heartbreaking and a triumph of the imagination.”—Gary Shteyngart

A shocking crime triggers a media firestorm for a controversial talk show host in this provocative novel—a story of redemption, a nostalgic portrait of New York City, and a searing indictment of our culture of spectacle. One of the The New York Times’s “10 Books to Watch for in April” • “Jennifer duBois is a brilliant writer.”—Karen Russell, author of Vampires in the Lemon Grove Talk show host Matthew Miller has made his fame by shining a spotlight on the most unlikely and bizarre secrets of society, exposing them on live television in front of millions of gawking viewers. However, the man behind The Mattie M Show remains a mystery—both to his enormous audience and to those who work alongside him every day. But when the high school students responsible for a mass shooting are found to be devoted fans, Mattie is thrust into the glare of public scrutiny, seen as the wry, detached herald of a culture going downhill and going way too far. Soon, the secrets of Mattie’s past as a brilliant young politician in a crime-ridden New York City begin to push their way to the surface. In her most daring and multidimensional novel yet, Jennifer duBois vividly portrays the heyday of gay liberation in the seventies and the grip of the AIDS crisis in the eighties, alongside a backstage view of nineties television in an age of moral panic. DuBois explores an enigmatic man’s downfall through the perspectives of two spectators—Cel, Mattie’s skeptical publicist, and Semi, the disillusioned lover from his past. With wit, heart, and crackling intelligence, The Spectators examines the human capacity for reinvention—and forces us to ask ourselves what we choose to look at, and why. Praise for The Spectators With The Spectators, duBois is staking out larger literary territory. The new novel is full of small pleasures that accumulate as proof that this writer knows her stuff. . . . DuBois’s mastery of . . . details earns our trust as she expands The Spectators into a billowing meditation on the responsibility of public figures to contribute something worthwhile to the culture. Although her book takes place decades ago, duBois’s message has a contemporary urgency as well.”—The New York Times “Heart-rending and visceral . . . DuBois’s language is dexterous, and her pacing impressive. . . . The Spectators is a treatise on the media’s power and a finely wrought example of intimate pain.”—USA Today

An American foreign-exchange student arrested for murder. A desperate father determined to win her freedom. The brilliant lawyer tasked with her prosecution. And the sphinx-like young man who happens to be her only alibi. When Lily Hayes arrives in Buenos Aires for her semester abroad, she is enchanted by everything she encounters: the colourful buildings, the street food, the elusive guy next door. Her studious roommate, Katy, is a bit of a bore, but Lily hasn’t come to Argentina to hang out with other Americans. Five weeks later, Katy is found brutally murdered in their shared home, and Lily is the prime suspect. But who is Lily Hayes? It depends on who’s asking. As the case takes shape — revealing deceptions, secrets, and suspicious DNA — Lily appears alternately sinister and guileless through the eyes of those around her. With mordant wit and keen emotional insight, Jennifer duBois delivers a novel of propulsive psychological suspense and rare moral nuance. Cartwheel will keep you guessing until the final page, and its questions about how well we really know one another — and ourselves — will linger well beyond.

A band of orphan avengers. A cursed stone. A horde of zombie outlaws. This is Keech Blackwood’s new life after Bad Whiskey Nelson descends upon the Home for Lost Causes and burns it to the ground. With his home destroyed and his family lost, Keech will have to use the lessons he learned from Pa Abner to hunt down the powerful Char Stone. Luckily, he has the help of a ragtag team of orphans. Together, they’ll travel through treacherous forests, fight off the risen dead, and discover that they share mysterious bonds as they search for the legendary stone. Now it’s a race against the clock, because if Bad Whiskey finds the stone first...all is lost. But Keech and the other orphans won’t hesitate. Because they’re more than just heroes. They’re Lost Causes. Legends of the Lost Causes marks the thrilling start to an action-packed middle grade series by debut authors Brad McLelland and Louis Sylvester. Praise for Legends of the Lost Causes A Junior Library Guild selection "This is a fun and exciting story, written with the utmost respect for the Osage culture." —Wah-Zha-Zhi Cultural Center "A rip-roaring adventure in the Wild West, filled with cowboys, magic, and a horde of undead villains that'll have you hunkered down in your bedroll, turning pages long after the campfire has died down." —Heidi Schulz, author of the New York Times bestselling Hook's Revenge "I don’t get to use the word rollicking enough but there’s no other word for this book: a rollicking adventure filled with mystery and magic that crackles like a brush fire." —Emma Trevayne, author of The House of Months and Years "Thrilling, dark, and full of heart, this is a Western like none I’ve ever read. I loved it." —Stefan Bachmann, author of The Peculiar and The Whatnot "McLelland and Sylvester imbue the adventure with a Louis L’Amour-esque flair refreshed for today’s readers by the thoughtful incorporation of American frontier history and Osage culture. This is an easy read for fans of Westerns like Bowman’s Vengeance Road." —The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

"A bold, stunning book...The reader is drawn in not because we want to find out what happened, but why it happened..."--NPR A psychologically twisting novel about a politically-charged act of violence that echoes through a small Spanish town; a debut novel that the New York Times Book Review calls "a triumph." It's 2004 in Muriga, a quiet town in Spain's northern Basque Country, a place with more secrets than inhabitants. Five years have passed since the kidnapping and murder of a young local politician-a family man and father-and the town's rhythms have almost returned to normal. But in the aftermath of the Atocha train bombings in Madrid, an act of terrorism that rocked a nation and a world, the townspeople want a reckoning of Muriga's own troubled past: Everyone knows who pulled the trigger five years ago, but is the young man now behind bars the only one to blame? All That Followed peels away the layers of a crime complicated by history, love, and betrayal. The accounts of three townspeople in particular-the councilman's beautiful young widow, the teenage radical now in jail for the crime, and an aging American teacher hiding a traumatic past of his own-hold the key to what really happened. And for these three, it's finally time to confront what they can find of the truth. Inspired by a true story, All That Followed is a powerful, multifaceted novel about a nefarious kind of violence that can take hold when we least expect. Urgent, elegant, and gorgeously atmospheric, Urza's debut is a book for the world we live in now, and it marks the arrival of a brilliant new writer to watch.

This book deals with a selection of research topics in theoretical physics that have (almost) been proven to be a dead-end or continue at least to be highly controversial. Nevertheless, small but dedicated research communities continue to work on these issues. In a series of essays this book describes their work and struggle as well as the chances of any breakthrough in these areas. It is written as both an entertainment and serious study.

The Tragedy of Arthur is an emotional and elaborately constructed tour de force from “one of the best writers in America” (The Washington Post). Its doomed hero is Arthur Phillips, a young novelist struggling with a con artist father who works wonders of deception. Imprisoned for decades and nearing the end of his life, Arthur’s father reveals a treasure he’s kept secret for half a century: The Tragedy of Arthur, a previously unknown play by William Shakespeare. Arthur and his twin sister inherit their father’s mission: to see the manuscript published and acknowledged as the Bard’s last great gift to humanity . . . unless it’s their father’s last great con. By turns hilarious and haunting, this virtuosic novel, which includes Shakespeare’s (?) lost play in its entirety, brilliantly subverts our notions of truth, fiction, genius, and identity, as the two Arthurs—the novelist and the ancient king—play out their strangely intertwined fates. A New York Times Notable Book • A New Yorker Reviewers’ Favorite of the Year • A Wall Street Journal Best Novel of the Year • A San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year • A Chicago Tribune Favorite Book of the Year • A Library Journal Top Ten Book of the Year • A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year • One of Salon’s five best novels of the year Look for special features inside. Join the Circle for author chats and more.