THE RUNAWAY INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER “The Bride Stripped Bare shows us the inside–out of marriage, infidelity, obsession and taxi drivers (I may never take a cab ride in London again). . . . Few books can be both dark and light. This one dances on the edge, and sometimes crosses it, with much satisfaction to be had on either side.”— Valerie Frankel, author of The Accidental Virgin An explosive novel of sex, secrecy, and escape. A woman disappears. Her car lies abandoned on a remote bluff; no body is found. Known by her family and friends as quiet and self-contained, she has left behind an incendiary diary chronicling a disturbing journey of sexual awakening. The diary opens on her honeymoon in Morocco: she believes herself to be happy—or happy enough, anyway. Swiftly, this security masquerading as love fractures in an act of massive betrayal, only to propel her into a world of desire and fantasy and recklessness. In need of guidance, she finds an unlikely heroine in the anonymous author of a dusty, rare manuscript. Written by a woman in the 1600s, it is a cry from the heart for women to live and love freely. Emboldened, she allows herself to discover the intoxicating power of knowing what she wants and how to get it. The question is, how long can her soul sustain a perilous double life? Coolly impassioned, Bride Stripped Bare tells shocking truths about love and sex. Couched in a deceptively simple style, its gorgeous, incantatory rhythms will make you question whether it is ever entirely possible to know another person.

This is a wonderful comic novel, about philosophy, the nature of art, the beauty of the ordinary, and about quirky, complete, night & day victims of obsessive–compulsive disorder. Two charming, over–anxious, germ–phobic friends, Isaac and Greg take a road trip from Boston to Philadelphia. They are both obsessed with Marcel Duchamp, his art and his ideas, and thus the destination has to be the largest collection of Duchamp in the world, The Philadelphia Art Museum, the actual place "The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even" was to be delivered when it was cracked and broken in shipment. The piece is sometimes known as The Large Glass, and today it sits in the middle of a large gallery proudly displayed in its broken state which Duchamp repaired and then certified had been his intention all along. The two men are driven in a rented disinfected Winnebago by Kelly, a beautiful art scholar who smells like a mixture of lemons and fresh sawdust. They intend to pick up an ancient chocolate grinder, an exact working sculptural copy of one used in a Duchamp painting. Isaac intends to grind his own pure chocolate, which will prevent the build–up or arterial plaque, because his mother died of a stroke. Every action has its own suitable reaction, and then some. Isaac hopes eventually to overcome his devotion to his many obsessions and to re–enter the world, evidently his version of the real world. He is not an unreliable narrator, he is a hyper–reliable narrator, consumed by his own attention and thrilled with the connections he sees everywhere all at once. Of course when he finally gets to the museum he must dress–up as a woman to visit the collection.

"The book is a study of thirteen twentieth-century artists, and of the erotic and effective sensiblities expressed in their work. Matisse's odalisques and Picasso's demoiselles, Bonnard's bathers, Balthus's Lolitas and de Kooning's harpies. By exploring the relationship between artist and model the author examines what such artists seek to express through the form of the nude, whether the result is closer to portraiture, as in the work of Lucian Freud, or violently abstract, as in Picasso. The complex relationship between biography and art is also considered in the work of Bonnard and Schiele, whose marriages radically changed their treatment of the nude."--BOOK JACKET.

Octavio Paz conveying “his awareness of Duchamp as a great cautionary figure in our culture, warning us with jest and quiet scandals of the menacing encroachment of criticism, science and even art.” —New York Times Book Review

From the author of the international bestseller The Bride Stripped Bare comes the raw and resonant story of a middle-aged wife and mother who attempts to reclaim her lost sense of self by exploring the memory of an old love affair, the consequences of which have remained unresolved for years. Nikki Gemmell is “one of the few truly original voices to emerge in a long time” (Time Out New York), and With My Body is a unique and captivating novel. Poetic and boldly, unabashedly sensual, Gemmell’s gorgeous writing and explosive content evoke the seductive power of The Secret Life Of Catherine M, Damage, and The Story of O, but this instant classic bears a modern insight into present-day sexuality and that could only come from the intimate and invigorating voice of Nikki Gemmell.

Journalist and historian Marquis tells the story of French-born American painter and all-around celebrity Duchamp (1887-1968). A substantially different version of the biography was published as Marcel Duchamp: Eros, c'est la vie by Whitson in 1980. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

“The most must-read of all must-reads.” —Marie Claire “A kickass debut from start to finish.” —Colson Whitehead, author of The Underground Railroad Lee Cuddy is seventeen years old and on the run. Betrayed by her family after taking the fall for a friend, Lee finds refuge in a cooperative of runaways holed up in an abandoned building they call the Crystal Castle. But the façade of the Castle conceals a far more sinister agenda, one hatched by a society of fanatical men set on decoding a series of powerful secrets hidden in plain sight. And they believe Lee holds the key to it all. Aided by Tomi, a young hacker and artist with whom she has struck a wary alliance, Lee escapes into the unmapped corners of the city—empty aquariums, deserted motels, patrolled museums, and even the homes of vacationing families. But the deeper she goes underground, the more tightly she finds herself bound in the strange web she’s trying to elude. Desperate and out of options, Lee steps from the shadows to face who is after her—and why. A novel of puzzles, conspiracies, secret societies, urban exploration, art history, and a singular, indomitable heroine, The Readymade Thief heralds the arrival of a spellbinding and original new talent in fiction.