Recounts Hardin's first encounters with Tessa and their ensuing love affair that became a vortex pulling in everyone around them.

Sell Your First Book & Develop a Successful and Sustainable Writing Career Before you can land a book deal—before you can even attract the interest of agents and editors—you need to be visible. How do you become visible? You develop a platform, or a way of reaching your readers. Everybody can develop a platform, and this book shows you how to do it while you're still writing. This book offers: A step-by-step approach to creating, growing, and nurturing a platform An economical approach to self-promotion (no need to spend thousands) A clear way to uncover your strengths and weaknesses as an author The strategies that are essential (or not) to online promotion A philosophy of authorship that leaves you confident, empowered, and equally partnered with agents, editors, and publishers (instead of waiting to be discovered) A diverse set of tools and methods for getting known (not just web-based tools or ideas for extroverts) After you read this book, you'll be able to answer the inevitable question: "What's your platform?" You'll learn the hows and whys of becoming visible and how to cultivate visibility from scratch. Best of all, you won't need any previous knowledge or experience to get started. Growing a writing career isn't just about landing one book deal and then scrambling like crazy. There is a more strategic and steady way to lay the groundwork so you can avoid scrambling altogether—and Get Known Before the Book Deal is the only comprehensive book that shows you how.

From the recipient of the PEN/Malamud Award, the Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Rea Award for the Short Story: a gorgeously rendered, passionate account of a relationship threatened by secrets, set against the backdrop of national tragedy. When Natasha, a talented young artist working as a congressional aide, meets Michael Faulk, an Episcopalian priest struggling with his faith, the stars seem to align. Although he is nearly two decades older, they discover in each other the happy yearning and exhilaration of lovers, and within months they are engaged. Shortly before their wedding, while Natasha is vacationing in Jamaica and Faulk is in New York attending the wedding of a family friend, the terrorist attacks of September 11 shatter the tranquillity of the nation’s summer. Alone in a state of abject terror, cut off from America and convinced that Faulk is dead, Natasha makes an error in judgment that leads to a private trauma of her own on the Caribbean shore. A few days later, she and Faulk are reunited, but the horror of that day and Natasha’s inability to speak of it inexorably divide their relationship into “before” and “after.” They move to Memphis and begin their new life together, but their marriage quickly descends into repression, anxiety, and suspicion. In prose that is direct, exact, and lyrical, Richard Bausch plumbs the complexities of public and personal trauma, and the courage with which we learn to face them. Above all, Before, During, After is a love story, offering a penetrating and exquisite portrait of intimacy, of spiritual and physical longing, and of the secrets we convince ourselves to keep even as they threaten to destroy us. An unforgettable tour de force from one of America’s most distinguished storytellers.

THE GLOBAL BESTSELLER • Soon to be a BBC One and HBO Max limited four-part series, starring Gugu Mbatha-Raw (The Morning Show; Misbehaviour) and multiple Golden Globe, BAFTA, and Emmy-nominated actor David Oyelowo (Selma; Les Misérables) “A pitch-perfect novel of psychological suspense” (Lee Child) that spins one woman’s seemingly good fortune, and another woman’s mysterious fate, through a kaleidoscope of duplicity, death, and deception Please make a list of every possession you consider essential to your life. The request seems odd, even intrusive—and for the two women who answer, the consequences are devastating. EMMA Reeling from a traumatic break-in, Emma wants a new place to live. But none of the apartments she sees are affordable or feel safe. Until One Folgate Street. The house is an architectural masterpiece: a minimalist design of pale stone, plate glass, and soaring ceilings. But there are rules. The enigmatic architect who designed the house retains full control: no books, no throw pillows, no photos or clutter or personal effects of any kind. The space is intended to transform its occupant—and it does. JANE After a personal tragedy, Jane needs a fresh start. When she finds One Folgate Street she is instantly drawn to the space—and to its aloof but seductive creator. Moving in, Jane soon learns about the untimely death of the home’s previous tenant, a woman similar to Jane in age and appearance. As Jane tries to untangle truth from lies, she unwittingly follows the same patterns, makes the same choices, crosses paths with the same people, and experiences the same terror, as the girl before. Praise for The Girl Before “Dazzling, startling, and above all cunning—a pitch-perfect novel of psychological suspense.”—Lee Child “The Girl Before generates a fast pace. . . . [J. P.] Delaney intersperses ethics questions on stand-alone pages throughout the book. . . . The single most ingenious touch is that we’re not provided either woman’s answers.”—The New York Times “J. P. Delaney builds the suspense.”—Vanity Fair “Immediate guarantee: You will not be able to put this book down. . . . Fans of Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train will realize that there’s not only more where that came from, but it’s also more thrilling.”—American Booksellers Association

*One of Bloomberg's Best Books of the Year* The master geopolitical forecaster and New York Times bestselling author of The Next 100 Years focuses on the United States, predicting how the 2020s will bring dramatic upheaval and reshaping of American government, foreign policy, economics, and culture. In his riveting new book, noted forecaster and bestselling author George Friedman turns to the future of the United States. Examining the clear cycles through which the United States has developed, upheaved, matured, and solidified, Friedman breaks down the coming years and decades in thrilling detail. American history must be viewed in cycles—particularly, an eighty-year "institutional cycle" that has defined us (there are three such examples—the Revolutionary War/founding, the Civil War, and World War II), and a fifty-year "socio-economic cycle" that has seen the formation of the industrial classes, baby boomers, and the middle classes. These two major cycles are both converging on the late 2020s—a time in which many of these foundations will change. The United States will have to endure upheaval and possible conflict, but also, ultimately, increased strength, stability, and power in the world. Friedman's analysis is detailed and fascinating, and covers issues such as the size and scope of the federal government, the future of marriage and the social contract, shifts in corporate structures, and new cultural trends that will react to longer life expectancies. This new book is both provocative and entertaining.

'Askildsen's dry, absurd humour is not unlike that of Beckett... His short stories are packed with irony, and the dialogue is sharp and expressive' TLS Spare, taut and told with flashes of pitch-black humour, the short stories of Norwegian master Kjell Askildsen capture all the strangeness of modern existence. In this selection of tales, spanning the whole of his brilliant career, unnerving encounters occur, lonely individuals try to connect, families and relationships are fractured, and we are confronted by the fragility and absurdity of life. 'Full of compelling strangeness. Lives surge through a few brittle pages, suppressed loves and resentments threaten to erupt' Independent